Rejoice fantasy owners. It's a day to celebrate!!! After much speculation that his holdout was going to drag into the 2012 regular season, Steelers WR Mike Wallace made news when he showed up to the team's headquarters Tuesday. Expected to sign his one-year, $2.742 million restricted free agent tender, this is great news for fantasy football owners who had taken a chance that Wallace would eventually show up. So the good news is that Wallace can finally start practicing with the team.
However, there is still some bad news.
Don't worry. It's not as bad as you think. Even though Wallace will still have about a week and a half to practice with the team, he is way behind the learning curve in regards to the team's new offense run by OC Todd Haley. It's going to take him more than a week to get acclimated to a new scheme. However, I don't think it will take Wallace that long to feel comfortable with it.
Fantasy Outlook:
Owners will want to start him right out of the gate when the Steelers play the Broncos Sunday night in Week One. However, I might be a little bit apprehensive since he will still likely be behind everyone else. No doubt the talent is there, but even someone like Wallace can't just show up and know everything. The team could use Wallace more as a decoy against the Broncos secondary and use Antonio Brown and Emmanuel Sanders more than usual. So if you have similar options, I might think about keeping Wallace on the bench for at least one week. That is unless we hear he is looking like he was never gone between now and that first game. In that case, if you're a risk taker, by all means plug him in. I know many still will.
Now if only the fantasy gods can hear our pleas to get Jaguars RB Maurice Jones-Drew back in camp as well.
