Fantasy-Football-First

Archive for August, 2009

You think you have what it takes to pick 1 winner each week?  If so, then the SURVIVOR ELIMINATION game is just for you.  Each week you need to pick one winner.  It’s that simple.  No point spreads to worry about.  You can’t pick the same team twice so be careful who you select.

SURVIVOR ELIMINATION Pools are  fun and to keep it affordable for as many as we can the entry fee is only $10.00.  That’s right, for just 10.00 you can participate in a winner take all SURVIVOR ELIMINATION Game. That’s right, winner take all !

Please see my SURVIVOR Game page in the Links section for more details.  Tell your friends and let’s have some fun !

You can enroll in our SURVIVOR ELIMINATION Game by clicking here.   Use the paypal button on that page to pay the entry fee, then login and Good Luck!

A couple years ago I participated in a fantasy football league at work. I normally don’t like work leagues as there are too many things that can go wrong to ruin the experience. People leave the company,  abandon their team, your boss makes an unfair trade offer and you feel compelled to just accept, someone doesn’t pay the league fee, etc. It’s good to keep your worlds apart as George Costanza would say. But I got pulled in and they needed another person so someone suggested the new girl who just moved from New England.

Excuse me? A girl in our fantasy football draft? Whoa.

I started getting nervous like we had just invited the Russians into our defense strategy meeting. How dare a female come into our male dominated world of fantasy football.

At the draft she took Tom Brady in the 1st round( ha ha, she took a QB in the 1st round ) because he was cute. In the 2nd round she took Randy Moss ( ha ha, she took a clubhouse cancer ) because so many people in New England were talking about Moss. Later on she took Chris Cooley and Adam Vinatieri not because of their tremendous upside but because of their tremendous backsides ( not my words).

An unusual draft strategy for sure and we know how it turned out. Brady put up incredible numbers worthy of the top overall pick by throwing many of those td’s to Moss. Cooley, Vinatieri and company did just enough, she won the league and spent the winnings on a very nice spa day.

The moral of the story is anyone can win in fantasy football. You need to have some luck on your side and avoid those injuries. Let’s open this weeks Notebook to see who is banged up  and what it means from a fantasy football prospective.

The Notebook:

• I am liking Pierre Thomas more and more each day especially now that Reggie Bush is still battling injuries.  Move Bush down on draft boards and Thomas’s  stock is increasing to a very high # 2 running back.
• Marc Bulger is trying hard to be ready for week 1 but Kyle Boller is impressing with St. Louis.  Bulger is a #3 QB at best but should he miss a start, get ready to claim Boller.
• Matt Cassel looks to be out 2-4 weeks with a leg injury.  The concern I have with this is that Cassel might rush a return based on inexperience rehabbing as well as the pressure to be a starter.  Move Cassel down to a late round flyer or if you have already drafted him, look to pick up a QB that has an easy first month schedule like David Garrard or Matt Schaub.
• Reports from here in Atlanta is that the injury to Jerious Norwood is not that serious.  I saw that play live and it looked serious to me.  I am not sure if we are getting the full story on this, we’ll see.  This actually helps Michael Turner as the Falcons will continue to give Turner the majority of carries if Norwood is less than 100%. 

Finally, I was saddened to hear tonight that Teddy Bruschi is retiring from the Patriots.  We all remember how he came back from a stroke that could have killed him to not only return to work but to return to work as a NFL player.  I have many pictures  of Bruschi hanging in my office including my favorite one of him throwing snow up in the air in front of the crowd who was loving it.  Whether you like the Patriots or not, we should all raise our glasses one last time for Teddy Bruuuuuuschi.

Busy upcoming week for us here at Fantasy-Football-First.  We will continue to update our cheat sheets as things develop.  We also will be having our special 1 hour Draft Strategy podcast ( click on the BlogtalkRadio button to the right).  We will also be starting a SURVIVOR Pool so keep checking back.

Somewhere out there in this great big world might be my Permanent Record.  I have never seen it, just heard about it.  It is supposed to contain  things from my childhood such as the time I got looking at my friend’s paper in 8th grade French class as well as the time I got caught ditching school in 11th grade to go to the dog track.  The Permanent Record was often mentioned to me as a child.  It was a scary thing.  I guess we don’t give our kids second chances like we do so often with athletes these days.  One little mess up and it’s on your Permanent Record.  Take that kid.

As I continued to grow older,  I never saw a potential employer or girlfriend pull out this Permanent Record to question me about the time I got caught by local police pool hopping with a group of girls when I was 15.  Maybe it’s a myth like Santa Claus, hassle free shopping, the Do Not Call registry, and the Unsubscribe link on spam emails. 

The closest thing we have to the Permanent Record is the  Internet.  Once I click the publish button, my ramblings are out there for all to see and  judge.  I am OK with that now but let’s see if I still feel the same way in December.

Over the last few days, I predicted the outcome of every NFL game this season.  You will see the results below and I am sorry if your team didn’t make it to the end.  Let the games begin.

AFC EAST

1. New England   12-4
2. Buffalo   8-8
3. Miami     7-9
4. NY Jets  5-11

AFC NORTH

1. Pittsburgh   14-2
2. Baltimore    10-6
3. Cincinnati    3-13
4. Cleveland     2-14

AFC SOUTH

1. Indianapolis  13-3
2. Tennesee         11-5
3. Jacksonville   10-6
4. Houston           6-10

AFC WEST

1. San Diego    11-5
2. Denver         6-10
3. Oakland       6-10
4. Kansas City 2-14

PLAYOFFS

New England over Jacksonville and San Diego over Tennessee in the first round.  Pittsburgh beats San Diego and New England beats Indianapolis.  AFC title game has New England over Pittsburgh.

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 NFC EAST

1. NY Giants  12-4
2. Dallas           11-5
3. Philadelphia  9-7
4. Washington  9-7

NFC NORTH

1. Chicago 13-3
2. Green Bay 12-4
3. Minnesota 8-8
4. Detroit   2-14

NFC SOUTH

1. New Orleans  10-6
2. Atlanta     8-8
3. Carolina   8-8
4. Tampa Bay 2-14

NFC WEST

1. Arizona   10-6
2. Seattle     9-7
3. San Francisco 2-14
4. St. Louis  2-14

PLAYOFFS

New Orleans over Dallas and Green Bay over Arizona in the first round.  Green Bay beats Chicago and NY Giants beats New Orleans.  NY Giants over Green Bay in the NFC title game.

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 SUPER BOWL

New England edges NY Giants in another thriller.

Go ahead, put this on my Permanent Record.

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Well it’s that time of year when all the fantasy football websites roll out their “Do’s and Don’ts” columns for draft strategy.  You know the ones where they tell you to not  draft a kicker before the last round, bring a cheat sheet, and don’t draft two quarterbacks with the same bye week.

Gee, thanks.

Here at Fantasy-Football-First, we put the “ First”  in our name because that’s where we want you to finish this year.  No excuses.  This is going to be your year if you stick with us.  No one goes undefeated in fantasy football so we know there will be ups and downs.  We know there will be that one week we will lose on a meaningless touchdown at the end of the Monday night game.  We know there will be that one week we start someone in the 4pm game who doesn’t play.  We know we will go up against a team that starts their 4th string wide receiver who goes for 3 td’s.  Those are all heartbreaks that we will have to deal with.  On the other hand, we know we are going to win our league and that’s more than going to make up for all those bumps in the road.

We do this for fun and the fun starts on Draft Day.

I love live drafts.  Sometimes I do participate in an online draft but there’s always something missing.  It’s kind of like poker.  Yes, you can be good at online poker but you never know how good you really are until you play face to face.  The following is a list of Do’s and Don’ts for live drafts based on my 15 years of experience. 

DO – know your league rules.

Sounds simple but you need to know what your league rules are especially regarding roster size, waiver wire pickups and injured players.  You would be surprised how many people I see asking these questions after the draft.

DO- try to get your league to do the draft order a day or two before the draft.

If you have a top 3 pick or a bottom 3 pick or one in the middle is something that would be nice to know before the draft.  Pulling out numbers 5 minutes before the draft does nobody any favors.

DO – get there early.

I’m not exactly sure why getting there early is important.  All I know is the drafts I got there late or was rushing ended up going badly. 

DON’T – Drink.

I know.  It’s a party.  Everyone is going to be drinking.  Every draft I consumed beers at I ended up with Benjamin Watson as my tight end.  Every year I didn’t, it was Antonio Gates or Tony Gonzalez.  You get the point.

DO – encourage others to drink responsibly.

DO – encourage your league to increase the roster limits.

Some leagues draft 12 players, some 14, some even 20.  Lobby for more players.  Since I know I am going to be more prepared than the other owners, I want to be able to draft more players at the end of the draft when you can still find good players.  The less players on the rosters, the more in the waiver wire pool where they will end up on the worse teams first.

DON’T – tank the first week to get the best waiver claims.

I actually know someone who does this every year.  Makes no sense. Play to win.

DO – find out who your owners root for and praise that teams players you don’t want.

If you know you have a bunch of Steeler fans in your league, talk up how good Willie Parker was in practice the other day and watch him fly off the board in the 2nd  round. 

DO – find out who you can email trade offers to  at work.

Nothing worse than making trade offers to the guy who never checks his email.

DON’T - draft with your heart.

If you are a Dallas fan and your team has Tony Romo, Roy Williams and Marion Barber then you didn’t do your homework.

DO – make sure your running back cheat sheet goes 50 deep.

You don’t want to be that guy flipping through the magazine with a few rounds to go. 

And finally, don’t forget to bring a cheat sheet, draft your kicker in the last round and don’t take two quarterbacks with the same bye week.

I am numbers guy. I love numbers and not just the important ones like 36, 24, 36. Running this website for the past 100+ days has taught me to look at a whole new group of numbers each day. Now I can’t tell you what the numbers mean, those would be STATS, and as I said before I am a numbers guy.

 The most popular page on this website, by far, is the Running Back Cheat Sheet. That’s where I rank the top 50 running backs. Unfortunately the least popular page is the DONATE page ( can a blogger get a dime? ).  I can tell this by the larger number next to Running Back Cheat Sheet and that little number next to the DONATE page on the stat page.

Actually, none of this should come as a surprise. Fantasy Football is running backs. You need 3 quality ones to even have a shot of winning. If you have been unsuccessful in winning your leagues, look back at your running backs. You can never have enough quality running back depth.

I like Michael Turner for #1 this year. If healthy for the entire season I think Steven Jackson could be a fantasy MVP but that is unlikely. LaDanian Tomlinson should be better. I am high on Ryan Grant and low on Brian Westbrook. Pierre Thomas should provide good value while you should avoid Reggie Bush. Larry Johnson isn’t done yet but all New England running backs could be.

 Enjoy the top 50 on the Running Back Cheat Sheet above and feel free to check out the DONATE page as well.

Studs are your must starts each week. They are the players that you don’t care about the weather conditions or the opposing defense.  Except for the bye week, they are pencilled into your lineup no matter what. Studs are nice to have. Makes your job easier.

Unfortunately there are only 25 studs in fantasy football this year. The Top 5 at Quarterback, Running Back and Tight End and the top 10 at Wide Receiver.

That’s right. 10 Studs at the wide receiver position.

What this means in the world of drafting this season is that because there are so many talented wide receivers that most of your league will get a wide receiver Stud. So the question you need to ask yourself is whether or not you want 2 Studs at Wide Receiver or a higher quality QB or RB. Because the talent pool at Wide Receiver is so deep I would advise you to make sure you get a top 10 Wide Receiver by trying to wait as long as you can and then look to add depth in the middle to late rounds of the draft.

Top 50 Wide Receivers Cheat Sheet is updated above.

If you scroll back through the archives here at Fantasy-Football-First, you will see that a few months ago I had some concerns about Tom Brady this season.  In the first release of the QB Rankings Cheat Sheet, I had him # 7.  I didn’t think New England would give us any information on him.  But the Patriots have surprised us and we actually have 4 quarters of preseason tape on Brady and are able to form some conclusions.  Brady is back, almost.  He looked good in the first game and not so good in the second.  He appears healthy but a bit on the rusty side.  His timing is off a bit but that’s why the Patriots are playing him.  He’ll only get better.

So Brady moves up from #7 to #4.  This is probably a bit lower than your average cheat sheet but I am ok with that.  I usually avoid drafting the top QB’s on my teams because I am busy grabbing running backs when they are taken.  Some players I am targeting are Phillip Rivers, Matt Ryan and Matt Hasselback.  Players I am looking to avoid are Donovan McNabb, Kurt Warner and Ben Roethlisberger. 

Check out our updated QB Rankings Cheat Sheet above and stay tuned all weekend for more to come.

There is a lot going on in the world these days. Makes a man lose sleep. No, I am not talking about rising unemployment, declining  home values and a confusing national health plan. Those topics will have to wait until another day. What’s weighing on my mind is Tom Brady’s knee, Terrell Owen’s toe, Chris Wells’s ankle and Marc Bulger’s pinkie finger and how that changes my cheat sheets.

It’s just about go time in the fantasy football world. Drafts are taking place this week and next and it’s time to get serious. Preparation is the key to fantasy football and I am here for you. I am burning the midnight oil this week updating my cheat sheets. Next week I’ll do it again and then again the following week. After that, it’ll be time to replace the cheat sheets for weekly rankings, waiver wire pickups, point spread picks and survivor pool selections.

Tonight, I have updated the cheat sheets for Defenses, Kickers and Tight Ends. By Sunday night at midnight, I’ll have Quarterbacks, Wide Receivers and every one’s favorite,  Running Backs completely updated.

Enjoy.

46,154 is the new magic number for the Minnesota Vikings.  At $260.00 a pop, the Vikings would need just 81% of the capacity of the Metrodome to line up to buy a Brett Favre jersey to recoup the 12 million they are paying him this year.  That’s 46,154.  Forget about year number 2 of the contract, this is going to be a 1 hit wonder for the fans of Minnesota. 

Wasn’t it just 19 days ago that Favre said no to the Vikings and coach Brad Childress stood up in front of the mighty ESPN cameras and said he was done with Favre?  Childress said he was going to let Sage Rosenfels and Tavaris Jackson battle it out for the starting QB position and the team was going to be better for it?  So what happened?

If you believe the story they are dishing out, Childress picked up his phone yesterday as if he was Regis Philbin and asked Favre if that was his final answer.  24 hours later Favre is on the practice field and 260.00 jerseys are on the website.

As a fantasy football fan, none of this should bother me as Favre has very little fantasy value at a deep position (check out updated QB rankings page ).  I ranked him #22 and that puts him into a bye week replacement category if he has a favorable match up.   I am disappointed that Sage Rosenfels won’t get to start as I felt he had a strong sleeper potential.  Adrian Peterson is still a stud at Running Back but I do think this will have a slight negative impact as he should end up with a few less carries per game.  The Vikings aren’t paying Favre 12 million to hand off.

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Vikings fans, not so fast on the Super Bowl talk.  Ask a battered Jets fan what Favre did to their playoff hopes last year ( not to mention Patriots fans that missed out on the playoffs with a 11-5 record as a result of Favre’s stinker in the last game of the season ).   I don’t see Favre as being better than Rosenfels at this point and why the Vikings shelled out so much cash for Favre shows exactly what this was all about.  They are hoping those 260.00 Favre jerseys sell better than the Rosenfels one’s that ironically are not even on their website for sale.

And now to go off target:

The other day I am driving through my neighborhood and see a young boy selling lemonade in front of his house.  He is standing there at the table by himself and I pull up and say “one please”.  He hands it to me and I feel good seeing the boy making an honest effort trying to make a buck, maybe he is saving up for a bike or something.  He then says “that’ll be 5 dollars please”.  I laugh until I see that he is serious and there is a little sign on the table saying “5 dollar lemonade” amongst the dixie cups .  I handed it back to him and said “no thank you”. 

I was torn as I drove away.  Did I do the right thing?  I don’t blame the kid, he was probably around 7 years old.   I do blame his parents who must have known and approved of their child selling 50 cent cups for 5 bucks.   As a parent in a neighborhood, we frequently buy products from each others kids for sports teams, schools, etc.  We buy raffle tickets and sponsor walk-a-thons for our neighborhood youth.  But this wasn’t that.  This was just price gouging.   I had to say no  and the experience left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, not from the lemonade mind you, but from the parents allowing something like that to happen.

I was reminded of that tonight when I saw this whole Favre thing unfold.  Whether it’s 5 dollar cups of lemonade or 260 dollar jerseys, good people are getting gouged.  It’s up to us to not participate.  Just say “No” Vikings fans to the Favre jerseys and if the parents of the kid lower it to a more reasonable price of a  dollar, I’ll buy 2.

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It’s one of my favorite moments of a fantasy football draft.  You are watching an owner who is on the clock agonize over  his upcoming selection.  He is squirming in his seat, rubbing his forehead, starting to sweat.  He starts checking his cheat sheets, opening up his magazine and then staring off into space.  He takes a deep breath and you know what he is about to do.  He opens his mouth and says the name quietly.

He just drafted someone he didn’t really want.

You can look at any cheat sheet and see a ton of players that you want on your team.  You can also see a bunch that you don’t want for a wide variety of reasons such as they are injury prone, in a timeshare, character issues, etc.  Usually, most of these players have talent and have shown flashes of excellence but you know that it could go either way.  It could be a hit or a miss. 

Here is a group of players that are going to get drafted rather high in your draft but you might want to stock up on the Pepto-Bismol because it’s not going to be easy. 

The All Pepto-Bismol Team:

Quarterbacks:

Kurt Warner- His 30 td’s and 287 yards per game make him a top 5 QB.  He also played 20 games last season.  This year he is 38 and what are the chances he will make it 36 games in a row?

Matt Cassel  – On this day last year, he was on the verge of getting cut.  This year he is going in the top 10 for quarterbacks.  Is he the real deal?

Tony Romo – 26 td’s and 265 yards a game last year are very nice numbers.  This year he just doesn’t seem to carry the same swagger.  Is it just me?

Running Backs:

DeAngelo Williams – I almost fell off the bowl this week when I read that SI ranked him #2 overall in their fantasy football preview issue.  His numbers last year where great but will he follow up this year with something similiar?  Are you going to take a running back in the first round who shares carries with Jonathan Stewart?

Steven Jackson / Brian Westbrook – injury concerns.

Brandon Jacobs – Watch him live and you will think he is on his way to Canton or you can read about him on Friday’s injury report.

Joseph Addai – Why did the Colts draft a running back in the first round?

Kevin Smith – How many carries will Smith get when the Lions are down 21 at the half?

Wide Receivers:

Brandon Marshall – Tons of talent but he doesn’t seem to be too happy in Denver and that situation could get ugly this year.

Braylon Edwards – 16 td’s two years ago and 4 last year.  He gets open and drops the ball at least once a game.

Donnie Avery – I started seeing his name on many sleeper lists until he got hurt this week.  What percentage will he be at this season?

Tight Ends:

Chris Cooley- Cooley is showing up as a top 5 tight end on some boards.  Yes, the same Cooley that had 1 td last year.

Kevin Boss – His 6 td’s last season was nice.  He also had 33 receptions which average to about 2 catches a week. 

All players will be drafted in your league this year.  Some will put up great numbers, others not so much.  But one thing is certain, it’s not going to be easy so stock up on that Pepto-Bismol.  Might as well make it the Max.