By Zack Cimini

Lets take it back to August when you were game planning for that potential sleeper. Every owner feels they?ve had a successful draft, but it?s even better when you land your sleepers in late rounds. While you talk trash about how everything fell into your hands like you wanted, the other owners are laughing at your jabbering. Then the season starts and what do you know your sleepers are producing.

As your sleepers are producing it brings up a misconception that makes it tough on the owner. You have your higher profiled athletes either not producing to their form, or riding the bench gaining quality points. You?re automatic thought is to take a look at offers from opposing teams or waive the player if he is not producing. Shockingly, in a few leagues I saw owners waive Plaxico Burress after the first few weeks. As soon as they waived him is when he had his best stretch of the season during weeks four through ten, in which he had at least six fantasy points each week to go along with four total touchdowns. From then on he fell off the map because of the rising play of Antwaan Randle El and injury. The owner that picked him up definitely gained in that stretch as he used Burress as his third wide receiver to go along with Randy Moss and Darrell Jackson.

Don?t get caught up on your bench players taking over your team. Here is a breakdown of some players that rose quickly, but fell just as fast.

Thomas Jones
Jones was considered to be a sleeper because of his potential and new environment. Any time you have a new starter at running back that back is going to get a lot of attention in the fantasy world. Still, most owners didn?t want to risk having Jones as their second back, so he slipped into the fifth or sixth rounds. For almost two months Jones was proving to be well worthy of his pick, and was making his way into owners starting lineups. He had five touchdowns in seven games, and looked well onto his way of having a break through year. Then the Bears offensive production fell tremendously without Rex Grossman, and on top of that Jones got hurt. Since that early start he went without a productive game until this past week.

Quentin Griffin
Here is a guy that was being praised like no other in the preseason and first few weeks of the regular season. Outrageous comparisons to Barry Sanders because of his stature, and another legacy back to add to Denver?s history were insane. He had an explosive week one but then fumbling problems and the emergence of Reuben Droughns canceled his season. Any thoughts of being a backup to Droughns were thrown out as well as he was determined out for the season with a knee injury.

Warrick Dunn
His early success in the touchdown category was expected to be a pattern by fantasy owners. Throughout his whole career he has always been a monster for yards, but six touchdowns in the first five weeks were raising eye brows. The Falcons then finally started using TJ Duckett more, and Dunn was banged up with a few injuries here and there. Still in all he has had a great year and is a quality number two fantasy back, if you want to get a top quarterback or wide receiver early.

Clinton Portis
There is nothing more disturbing to an owner than to have a star running back that jumps on and off the radar every other game. Portis?s all around stats look great, but he has caused many owners to have a heart attack this year. He has had too many games were he has been quiet and ineffective, and we hope that has to do with being on a new team that is trying to find itself offensively.

The moral of the story is too think ahead for the whole season and not just stretches. If a player is quiet early on in the year just be patient, but do not waive that player for nothing. The waiver wire is as thin as can be, and an automatic assumption is that your player would be picked up in a heartbeat just based on hope and revival. An impatient owner is going to have a long struggling mid season. I?ve seen plenty of owners start off 4-1 and have a successful start, only to go on a three to five game losing streak because of them banking on certain players.