Underdogs! NFL Players You Should Root For

Everybody loves an underdog, especially when it to comes a league like the NFL, where the average career lasts only three years, parity reigns supreme, and it seems there is always one or two undrafted rookies that make their way into a position of impact on a contending team. At one point, Tom Brady, Marques Colston, Tony Romo, and Kurt Warner were all unheralded late round picks or not picked altogether.

The following players may not be the next stars of tomorrow, but they are young players without the first round pedigree who will get an opportunity to make a big difference on their teams this year. I'm rooting for them, and you should be too.

Gary Guyton - ILB - Patriots: Guyton, signed as an undrafted free agent out of Georgia Tech in 2008, is the man charged with replacing recent retiree and possible Hall of Fame backer Tedy Bruschi, but he also appears to be part of the reason Bruschi chose retirement. Guyton's performance last year on special teams was enough to endear him to the coaching staff and place him for a full-time starting position this season. As camp drew to a close, rumor had it he had actually wrested Bruschi's starting spot from him after starting two games in his place last year when Bruschi was out with an injury. Guyton had the fastest 40 time of any linebacker in his class coming out of college, and his acumen for making plays in the backfield caught Belichick's eye, who later admitted they should've drafted him rather than signing him after the fact. How he teams with Jerod Mayo on the inside could go a long way toward dictating how the Patriots' defense shapes up.

Owen Schmitt - FB - Seahawks: College football fans may recognize Schmitt from his days at West Virginia when he was the hard-nosed lead blocker for much more heralded teammates Steve Slaton and Pat White. If being drafted in the fifth round of the 2008 draft wasn't enough of an underdog pedigree, Schmitt had to walk on to WVU after a stellar freshman year at Wisconsin-River Falls, a Division III program. Within a couple of months of arriving in Morgantown, Schmitt had become the starter and contributed two touchdowns on 380 rushing yards as a sophomore and followed that with a seven-touchdown performance to go along with a staggering 106 knockdown blocks and 17 blocks that resulted in a touchdown. Now in line to start for the Seahawks in his second year, he finds himself in a backfield with an established QB in Matt Hasselbeck, an improved and finally healthy group of receivers in T.J. Houshmandzadeh, Deion Branch, and Nate Burleson, and (perhaps most importantly to Schmitt's individual success) an uninspiring running back tandem of Julius Jones and Edgerrin James. Back in the '90s, a similar hard-nosed fullback named Mike Alstott became a star for the Bucs and one of my favorite players. Once voted by ESPN as college football's "top work out freak," Schmitt has the work ethic and now the opportunity to put someone like Alstott in my football life again.

Clifton Ryan - DT - Rams: Ryan, a fifth round pick by the Rams in the 2007 draft from Michigan State, enters this season having started 12 games last year on an abysmal Rams defense looking to bounce back under new coach Steve Spagnuolo. A hero in his hometown of Saginaw, Michigan, where he hosts a free football clinic with the Steelers' LaMarr Woodley and a celebrity golf outing that has raised over $100,000 for Saginaw youths, Ryan has exceptional athleticism for a 300-pound defensive tackle. He entered Michigan State as a linebacker before bulking up and moving to the D line as an upperclassman, and now finds himself in a position to start again for the Rams in the wake of the underwhelming Adam Carriker's most recent injury. Spagnuolo has resolved to make this year's Rams much more physical than last year's, and the talent around Ryan has improved both in the form of fellow maturing talent (DE Chris Long and LB Will Witherspoon) and the healthy return/addition of veterans (DE Leonard Little and LB Chris Draft). If the Rams defense makes a marked improvement this year, it is a healthy bet that Ryan will have significantly added onto his 96 career tackles and two career sacks.

Gibran Hamdan - QB - Bills: AKA perhaps the greatest underdog in the league with a legit shot. Quick, who is the backup quarterback to the injury prone Trent Edwards in Buffalo? It's Hamdan, who is on his sixth NFL team since being drafted in the seventh round of the 2003 draft. Hamdan's family was on vacation in the United States when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1993 and destroyed the family's home and possessions. They stayed in the U.S., and Hamdan's mother took a job cutting hair to help keep the family afloat. After being a three-sport star in high school, he attended University of Indiana to play football and basketball and threw for 2,115 yards and nine TDs as a senior, including a 310-yard, four-TD performance in an upset win over Wisconsin. Hamdan's NFL career to this point has been nomadic. He impressed the team that drafted him, the Redskins, but was ultimately let go, and has spent brief periods of time with Miami, San Francisco, two stints in Seattle, and now Buffalo. In the middle of all this traveling, he found time to win the NFL Europe MVP award in 2006 where he still holds the record for passer rating in a season. Look, the odds are still stacked against Hamdan, who is now 28. The Bills, even with Trent Edwards, are picked by most to finish third or fourth in the AFC East. But if Edwards goes down, as he has for parts of the past two seasons, and Hamdan steps in surrounded by Marshawn Lynch, Terrell Owens, and Lee Evans, you never know what could happen. And it's the "you never know" part that always keeps us watching.

*photo courtesy of Michael Rosa