Fantasy Football Strategy Tip: Finding the Donnie Avery’s and other Diamonds in the Rough

With your season in full swing, you are bound to have a few guys that you never take out of your line up, guys you can count on week to week to produce. If you're lucky, you'll actually have a quarterback, two running backs, and a pair of wide receivers that you can count on.

Should that be the case you can start counting your money—you're going to win your league barring a catastrophic meltdown or injuries.

If you are like most players though, you are still looking for that one guy (or two) that might be better than what you have. Since the season is in full swing, of course the best players and most of the good ones will be gone (so don't expect to find a shining star); hence, the ‘diamond in the rough.'

Decent running backs are nearly impossible to find past the half-way point of the season. However, decent wide receivers can still be found.  Follow these steps and you'll see who's worth grabbing:

1. Go to the stats section of your league and click on ‘wide receivers.' This will show you the free agents available in your league.
2. Go to the ‘Targets' column; click on it to see what players remaining are targeted the most. If your league does not have this category try one of the other sites until you find one that does (ESPN does on the fantasy site and under the league statistics tab).

Take the guy that is targeted most and dump your worst player. It will help if he is on a team that is typically behind a lot or has a poor running game meaning they will be passing often. Even if he has not caught a high percentage of his passes, the team must have some faith in him to keep throwing in his direction. If he actually deserves that faith he'll start catching a few more of those balls.

Hopefully right after you pick him up.

If you want to see what wide receivers are available in a standard 12-team ESPN league that could be game savers down the line in your fantasy season be sure and check out the gallery!