Fantasy Football is Won on Tuesdays

For those who follow this blog you know FFIWOT (click here for WTF is FFIWOT) does not put a lot of stock in the preseason. Who cares what what star players do for one quarter against a bunch of third stringers looking to make the team or guys who know they have made the team and just don’t want to get hurt.

In fact, FFIWOT doesn’t even follow the preseason. What’s the point? It’s a distraction. Better to study what happened in the offseason (coming in a later post). The preseason is filled with hype and BS. While yes, the preseason can give valuable insights it more often offers up false hopes and misleading data. The preseason is a time for trades based on the hype. We’ll talk about that in a later post.

The preseason is also filled with rookie hype. Good lord, can we ever hear enough rookie hype from these guys who worship at the alter of college football? FFIWOT does not follow the JV. Again, why bother? Despite the fact that over the past 25 years you can count on one hand the number of rookie QBs who have come in and put up big numbers in their first year, we hears what seems like millions of hours spent debating the merits of each year’s new crops.

From a fantasy perspective, who the hell cares! FFIWOT Rule: Never keep a rookie QB on your roster. Sorry Mr. Flacco (QB Bal) and Mr. Ryan (QB Atl) but you will not even ride the pine on my team. For that matter, another FFIWOT Rule: Never keep a first year starting QB on your roster. Sorry Mr. J.T. O’Sullivan (QB SF). Let the fool coaches on the other teams in your fantasy league try and find the next Peyton Manning (QB Ind) or Dan Marino (QB Mia ret.) because for every one of them there are 25 Cade McNown’s (QB Chi). Look at Trent Edwards (QB Buf), who had a very respectable rookie season for a QB but I still wouldn’t have wanted him as my starting Fantasy QB or even my bye week QB. I will keep an eye on him this year but I not ready to commit if you know what I mean.

As far as rookies go, running back is usually the only position where an impact can be made by a rookie (Adrian Petersen, Min) with any degree of predictability and even then it’s rare to have a guy who you know has the talent and is on a team with blocking and where they will be the featured back.This year it looks like a couple prospects to watch include Matt Forte (RB Chi), Rashard Mendenhall (RB Pit), Jonathan Stewart (RB Car), and Kevin Smith (RB Det). My personal favorite is Mendenhall. I have always thought Willie Parker was not smashmouth enough for Pittsburgh but with a Bettis (RB Pit ret.) like north south back, a successful RBBC (Running Back By Committee) favoring Mendenhall. Look for box scores like this:

Parker 13 for 66 yds

Mendenhall 8 for 41 yds 1 TD

And Every third week or so count on Parker breaking a long one adding 45 yards and a TD to the above stats. You may ask where is Darren McFadden (RB Oak)? My answer would be, “He is in Oakland, that’s where he is”

You could argue that there are usually some rookie Wide Receivers that have good fantasy years but we could counter back that while that is true, it’s usually not the rookies that were predicted to do well during the preseason. Calvin Johnson (WR Det) would be an exception but for every Calvin Johnson there are several Charles Rogers (WR FA).

As for other positions, we’ll see. John Carlson (TE Sea) is getting the start in Seattle but even if he has a great rookie year that would probably place him in the mediocre middle of the pack of tight end where one is just as good as the other.

Finally a word about Drafts. We don’t offer ranking sheets and we don’t offer predictions. Personally I do auto-drafts and play with whatever the football gods decide to give me. FFIWOT is all about building on the team you have after the draft so look to one of the many other fantasy football sites for draft information but come back to us after the draft.

Good luck to all and lets get ready for some football!

-Chris

Welcome back! FFIWOT got a late start due to some technical issues but we hope to get caught up with a flurry of posts. We still have to do some technical tweaks over the weekend like upgrading our database but we hope this goes smoothly and everything will be good to go.
New look and feel for the site but the same strategy applied in detail to the coming season.

Please subscribe, bookmark, favorite, digg, and let us know what you think. We look forward to a fun and successful fantasy season.

-Chris

I’m still in panic mode. I watched part of the Chicago - Indy game last night as background noise. I try and stay away from preseason games as they poison the mind of Fantasy owners. They poison your mind because you end up seeing a young guy perform a heroic catch and convince yourself you have just discovered the next Jerry Rice. Well, this is preseason and the fourth safety on the depth chart was covering him and ….. you get the picture.

Preseason wipes away your memory of last season and that too is a bad thing. I’m more concerned about how c played at crunch time last year than what he did against a second string defense. Wait… bad example since in this case he performed about the same.

Note to self: A) Look for early season QB controversy in Chicago B) Take Grossman out of my draft list C) Pickup Griese IF I have a spot to kill and there are absolutely no good QB on the FA list. There is a decent chance that when he gets a starting job that he will put up consistently acceptable numbers for my starters bye week.

I digress. Back to Preseason and Fantasy Football. I think many people would argue that this is a showcase for the up and comers and rookies. I say blah-blah-blah. If you, up and come, during the pre-season it means nothing. Show us something in week 1 if you want a spot on my roster. As for rookies, that’s a separate post.

The value of Preseason for the Fantasy Football owner is to serve as a reminder to sign up for your leagues, change your ring tones and start blocking off the calendar for Sundays, Mondays and the occasional Thursday. Watch too closely or take it too seriously can only lead to trouble. Find out who is playing for who this year by searching the web, not by watching the epic battle between Jared Lorenz and Kyle Boller (no offense …. ha an unintentional pun).

-Chris

Holy crap the 2007 Fantasy Football season is almost here! Shear excitement in one moment and panic in the next. Panic because, as in every year, I am woefully under prepared at this stage of the game and the season has crept up on me. I don’t know about you but outside of football season I have a life so there is a barrier I cross over at this time of the year and there is no going back.

First thing first, a Todo list:

1) Who am I?

2) What the hell does FFIWOT mean?

3) What to expect

4) Interpret the off-season

-Chris