Each week I will write about one or more players unfamiliar to many fantasy owners. I will not always recommend them as immediate waiver-wire pickups, but I do recommend knowing who they are and following their weekly progress.

Ernest Wilford, WR, Jaguars

Wilford is a rookie fourth-round pick from Virginia Tech whose size and leaping ability make him a natural red zone target. He immediately took to that role, scoring touchdowns on each of his first two NFL receptions, the first in week 1 and the second in week 2.

You know a wide receiver has good size when he was originally awarded his college scholarship to play defensive end. And you know he's got great leaping ability when, in addition to playing football in college, he was also winning track championships in the triple jump and high jump.

After moving to WR in his second year at Virginia Tech, he had success there as well, becoming the only player in school history to catch more than 50 passes in a season. And he did it twice.

Because of Wilford's size, strength, toughness, and leaping ability, he is already the Jaguars' premier red zone threat. By itself, that gives him some fantasy value, although it is minor: you could start him in a pinch and hope to get lucky with a score.

But Wilford won't have sustained fantasy value until he becomes a bigger part of the offense between the twenties. That is already starting to happen. After being targeted just three times outside the red zone in his first three games, he has been targeted 10 times outside the red zone in his last two games.

Barring injury, Wilford will remain behind Jimmy Smith and Reggie Williams on the depth chart (even though he has more receptions, yards, and touchdowns than Williams). But you could see him become the clear #3 WR ahead of Troy Edwards as he keeps progressing over the second half of the season.

For an NFL team's #3 WR to have fantasy value, the passing game as a whole must be fairly productive. So Byron Leftwich's development as a passer will be important. But so far this year, although Leftwich is still quite prone to making mistakes, he has shown some big-play ability and is coming off of back-to-back 300-yard games.

The combination of Wilford's red zone prowess, his overall athleticism, his room for improvement over the second half of the season, and the continued development and maturity of the Jaguars' passing offense as a whole - these all make Wilford a player to watch.

Jesse Chatman, RB, Chargers

It's a popular and often sensible strategy to "handcuff" a player to his backup in case he gets hurt - e.g., if you drafted Marshall Faulk in an early round, it made sense to draft Stephen Jackson in the middle/later rounds. That way if Faulk gets hurt, Jackson can step in to replace him on your fantasy team just as he'll do for the Rams.

Fantasy owners who handcuffed DeShaun Foster to Stephen Davis, for example, were rewarded in week 2 when Foster rushed for 174 yards and a touchdown.

But handcuffing a player to his backup doesn't always make sense. Fantasy owners who lost Ricky Williams aren't getting much help from a Travis Minor handcuff (or Sammy Morris, or Lamar Gordon . . .).

For a handcuff to be worthwhile, the backup must be capable of stepping in and being productive if the starter goes down. This means that the backup has to have talent in his own right, or that the system and surrounding personnel are good enough to plug anybody in with success - or preferably both.

During this past offseason, many fantasy owners were trying to figure out - for potential handcuff purposes - whether Jesse Chatman or Michael Turner would be the backup to LaDainian Tomlinson. A common response was that it didn't really matter because, either way, Tomlinson's backup should have little value. The Chargers' offensive line was (expected to be) bad enough that Tomlinson may be the only RB in the league who could run behind it and put up big numbers.

That response now looks miscalculated. The Chargers' offensive line - a completely refurbished unit that had five new opening-day starters - has been opening substantial holes in the running game. Moreover, they've generally been adequate in pass protection as well, allowing the Chargers to sustain drives much better than they did last year. The result is that the Chargers are currently the second-leading team this year in total points scored.

As Jesse Chatman proved last week when he rushed for over 100 yards against the Jaguars, Tomlinson is not the only RB in the league capable of running behind the Chargers' offensive line. While Tomlinson was resting in the second half of the game, the line was opening huge holes for Chatman, and Chatman was taking full advantage of them.

Chatman is a short, sturdy, RB built very much like Tomlinson. He lacks Tomlinson's speed and explosiveness, but he is a tough runner with good vision and the power to break arm tackles. He has always looked good running the ball during the preseason, but has seen extremely limited playing time during the regular season due to Tomlinson's durability.

Tomlinson has yet to miss a game in his career; but nobody is completely invulnerable to injury. If Tomlinson does miss time, it appears that Chatman is capable of filling in and putting up some pretty good stats in the Chargers' revamped offense.

Tomlinson owners should be looking to pick him up as insurance.