Fantasy Football Season - Case Study

Throughout the 2007 fantasy football season, I will be taking your through my week-to-week process in running one of my fantasy football teams. This is not one of the many teams in an "expert" league we participate in at FantasyDraftEdge.com, but rather a league with my buddies, a league over 12 years old. We're all serious about and all pretty good players. It's no expert league but probably not too far from the league most people are in.

Hope you enjoy it.

I'll start tonight with a quick look at my team and a few comments.

The draft...I picked 11th in a 12 team league. Tough start, but it can certainly be done.

Round 1...Rudi Johnson, best RB available

Round 2...Travis Henry, if Denver really does go to Henry as THE guy as it seems they might, he's a solid 2nd round pick.

Round 3...Marshawn Lynch, now solid at RB (we start 2, I've got 3 good ones now)

Round 4...Marques Colston, very nice WR to grab in round 4

In no particular order, my teams rounds out like this:

Ben Rothlisberger - got him very late in the draft, happy for a late round QB
Braylon Edwards - wish Clev had a better QB
Darrell Jackson - SF could have a solid offense, and with some time in the offense DJ will be part of it
Olindo Mare - drafted a dome kicker in the last round
Panthers D - waited very late, still got a solid defense
Jake Delhomme - nice #2 QB in the late rounds, they play a weak D in the Steelers bye week
Warrick Dunn - drafted him late, he'll be healthy and back eventually, could be nice insurance/trade bait
Drew Bennett - they love him in St. Louis and Holt is hurting, getting older
DJ Hackett - sleeper.....
Dwayne Jarrett - Looks to be the #3 guy, and Carolina should be much better this season

Overall not a bad team, if Lynch is solid and Henry is in fact the #1 guy I feel pretty about this team.

I'll be back next week to talk about my lineup and my thoughts for my week 1 chances.....

LJ is in camp

We aren't surprised, we expected this to happen. Most people did. LJ got paid and now he's in camp. But will this be another case of a player losing some of his energy and effort after the big contract? It could very well be with Larry Johnson. Add that to the Chiefs offensive line woes and little to respect from the QB spot for defenses and LJ will come nowhere close to his past numbers, thus he remains lower on our cheat sheets than most where he's been all season long. The season is getting closer....we can't wait!

Mock Drafts

Running a fantasy football site, one of the best things about the job is participating in drafts. Our owners participate in several each off season - sometimes the only drawback is that we must do these drafts very early in the summer as they are often part of print publications in which we provide our comments and insight to the draft. But still, during August we stay busy with drafts as well. We've posted a few mock drafts at the site for your review. A lot of the drafts we're in our fantasy football expert leagues. Other website owners, magazine publishers, and writers participate. So theoretically these drafts are very good barometers of player rankings and draft expectations. But......no offense to my colleagues, I am consistently amazed how often I see things that surprise me. This is not entirely unexpected when you're playing with your buddies in a casual league, but when it is people in the industry I can't help but scratch my head sometimes. Just today for example in an 8 team league both a defense and kicker were gone before the 8th round....I was stunned. This is early in a 10 or 12 team league, but in an 8 team league there is a lot of talent left on the board to be taking defenses and kickers. I've said it many times, if your fantasy football team is counting on a defense or kicker for success - you don't have a very good fantasy football team. Sure, there are times when a kicker has a crazy good game or a defense goes nuts with a shutdown and 2 TDs and you think you're a genius. But with a kicker it's rather random where it's going to happen and nearly any D in the top half of rankings can have that kind of game. But I promise you that in the long run depth at RB or WR - even QB will payoff week after week much more so than getting that #1 kicker or defense.....

Kenny Irons out for the season

No sooner do I post an article about not hitting the panic button when a player is carted off the field do we get the news that rookie RB Kenny Irons is out for the season with a knee injury. Perhaps the exception to prove the rule....

We were high on Irons as a potential star in this league, the injury doesn't change that - just delays it.

Obviously, don't draft Kenny Irons in 2007. But this take any potential pressure off Rudi Johnson who will now have even more carries most likely.

Carted Off the Field

Seems we hear it everyday in the pre-season anymore. Don't panic. At least not yet. Obviously, it would be better if a player walked off the field after an injury but being over cautious is the norm in the NFL now. So certainly pay attention to the news that follows in the coming days but a player carted off the field is no longer automatically out for an extended period.

One pre-season game down - did we learn anything?

We watch a lot of pre-season football games and certainly pay close attention to as many players as possible. But it's rare for us to make any significant changes based on one or one performance. In a nutshell what we learned in the Saints v Steelers game was that the Saints D is still not very good and the Steelers offense is likely to pass more this season. Both things we already knew. But we will certainly continue to watch Big Ben and the Steelers offense as it adapts to a new coaching staff.

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