Andre Who?

When a relatively unknown 6-foot-4, 210 pound wide receiver has a career-day on the Thanksgiving Day stage, dynasty owners need to take note.

Dynasty world, meet Andre Holmes.

Holmes came into yesterday’s game touting a career line of just five receptions for 66 yards. Against the Cowboys, just one of his former teams, he caught seven balls for 136 yards and was just short of hauling in his first career touchdown pass.

Cowboy’s owner, Jerry Jones, hyped the 2011 undrafted free agent rookie last summer as someone who could takeover Laurent Robinson’s role. After failing a physical and never living up to said hype when he needed to, Jones and the Cowboys decided to part ways. After last night’s game, Jones had this to say about Holmes per SportsDay DFW:

“That was the practice squad Andre we were counting on the following year,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said about Holmes’ performance Thursday. “We’ve seen him do that and have seen it a lot and a matter of fact, Tony [Romo] was talking about, ‘Man, we’ve got a receiver who is just outstanding and he’s probably going to be one who can help us.’ But when we got him out there and got him in the group, we didn’t see that. I guess we were just a little impatient, but he sure could get it.”

I know, it’s shocking Jones admits being impatient with Holmes, but no one saw this coming. If you did, can you please be my new fantasy consultant?

So who is Andre Holmes?

At Hillsdale, Holmes’ completed his collegiate career with 181 catches, 2,444 yards and 17 touchdowns – school record for receiving yards. During his senior season, he set single-season school records with 104 receptions and over 1,300 receiving yards. He also had 11 touchdowns. In addition to his prototypical size and wingspan, Holmes won the GLIAC outdoor long jump championship in 2007. Dude is athletic and possesses 4.45 speed.

As mentioned before, Holmes was an undrafted free agent out of Hillsdale College before signing with the Minnesota Vikings. He was released after their first preseason cuts and signed by the Cowboys. After the 2012 season, Holmes was waived before a brief stint with the New England Patriots. Holmes looks to have finally found a home in Oakland, but even that got off to a rough start as he was suspended for the first four games this season for violating the NFL policy on performance-enhancing substances.

What can we expect from Holmes moving forward is the million dollar question.

Last night’s game probably would not have happened if Denarius Moore was active. Rod Streater isn’t going anywhere as he’s proved himself to have NFL level talent. What we do know is the Raider front office has to have confidence in him as they kept him through his suspension and quotes from Tony Romo and Dez Bryant make me think this kid can be something special someday.

As of right now, there’s absolutely no reason Holmes can’t find a spot on your fantasy bench until proven otherwise – depending on your league’s roster size. Personally, I think he should be owned in most 12-team leagues based on upside alone.

This is the perfect time of year to swoop on someone like Holmes when the waiver wire is lacking any real talent. If he doesn’t pan out, you’ve taken little risk. If he does, you’ve just hit late-season waiver wire gold, friends.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and good luck to you this weekend!

Follow Chad on Twitter at @Chad_Scott13