The Fantasy Football Geek Blog

Updates from August, 2010

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  Ask the Geeks - Week 8: Boo!

  Brandon 1:35 pm on 10/31/2009 | 6 Permalink Reply
  Tags: ask the geeks (38)

  Here are the rest of the Ask the Geek questions for the week. With the organization of a Halloween party in the works, I most likely won’t be getting to any more questions today (maybe Matt will), so in advance I wish everyone the best of luck! Anyways, let’s get to your inquiries…

  AO asks…

  I can start 2 recievers in addition to Andre Johnson and to pick from I have:

  Sidney Rice
  Mario Manningham
  Micheal Crabtree
  Devin Hester

  I am feeling Hester against the Browns and Sidney Rice as a more consistent producer with the long ball likely. Thoughts?

  (More …)

   

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  Matt 8:40 am on 10/30/2009 | 7 Permalink Reply
  Tags: detroit lions (3), St Louis Rams (4)

  One more defense to consider this week: Detroit vs. St. Louis. The Rams have scored just 60 points all season, worst in the league. They’re also sixth from the bottom in passing yards, tied for second-worst in fumbles, and have given up touchdowns to opposing defenses five times this season – no other team has allowed more than three. I’m actually considering starting them over Denver in one of my leagues, even though the little voice in the back of my head is telling me that this is one of those too-clever-by-half ideas I end up beating myself up over on a regular basis.

   
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  Hits & Misses - Week 8: Happy Halloween!

  Brandon 11:07 am on 10/29/2009 | 39 Permalink Reply
  Tags: adrian peterson (32), alex smith (12), andre johnson (19), brandon marshall (36), brett favre (34), david garrard (13), deangelo williams (17), derrick mason (8), devin hester (11), donovan mcnabb (26), jeremy shockey (7), Matt Forte (25), matt ryan (19), michael crabtree (9), mike sims-walker (12), ryan grant (21), steve slaton (18), steven jackson (13), tony gonzalez (13), tony romo (26)

  With Halloween right around the corner, hopefully your fantasy teams are in for more treats than tricks! While there is no game on Sunday night due to the World Series, I’m excited for the treat we’ll all get on Monday night when we actually get to see a good football game (Falcons @ Saints), instead of what we were forced to witness last week. Make sure to set your rosters early on Saturday so that you don’t forget while you’re nursing that post-party hangover on Sunday!

  Anyways, here are our “Hits” and “Misses” for week eight, listing players you want to make sure are in your lineup, as well as those you might consider shelving for the week (or at least lowering your expectations!) We start it off with a few big name running backs that you may be concerned about… (More …)

   
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  Week 8 Defenses to Consider

  Brandon 7:14 pm on 10/27/2009 | 37 Permalink Reply
  

  Here’s a quick list of teams that are playing some of the lesser offenses in the league this week and who could be available in your league in case you were looking for a plug-in (with the percent owned in parenthesis):

  • Indianapolis (87%) vs San Francisco
  • San Diego (74%) vs Oakland
  • Chicago (74%) vs Cleveland
  • Arizona (44%) vs Carolina
  • Miami (29%) @ New York Jets
  • Houston (13%) @ Buffalo
   
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  The Wire - Week 8: What Can Greene Do for You?

  Brandon 9:00 am on 10/27/2009 | 42 Permalink Reply
  Tags: alex smith (12), antonio bryant (18), beanie wells (5), brian hartline, chad henne (4), chad simpson (2), correll buckhalter (8), daunte culpepper (6), david clowney, earl bennett (6), gary barnidge, hakeem nicks (6), jamaal charles (7), jamal lewis (21), jeremy maclin (5), justin vargas, kyle orton (24), lance moore (9), laveranues coles (9), lee evans (8), lesean mccoy (5), michael crabtree (9), mike bell (9), mike thomas (2), mike wallace (6), mohamed massaquoi (5), ryan fitzpatrick (5), sam aiken (3), shonn greene (5), todd heap (4), tony scheffler (7), torry holt (6), zach miller (10)

  Here are our waiver wire candidates for week eight. As usual, you’ll find players who are either [Startable], a [Stopgap] to get you past a BYE or injury, [Worth a look] and spot on your bench, or [One-week-wonder]s who don’t warrant a roster spot, so you make your roster moves accordingly. You’ll also see the percent owned in parenthesis (and if you see an asterisk by the players name, it means they’re on a BYE this week.)

  We’re finally starting to narrow down the list, with only a few new additions this week and a bunch taken off. The biggest additions by far will be Jets running back Shonn Greene, who is replacing the injured Leon Washington as the backup to Thomas Jones, along with the newly anointed 49ers quarterback, Alex Smith. If you counted on Leon Washington or Shaun Hill (probably less people counting on him), you better take a shot at the waiver wire and see what you can do. Anyways, let’s get to The Wire for this coming week…
  (More …)

   
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  Matt 9:00 pm on 10/26/2009 | 3 Permalink Reply
  Tags: brian westbrook (13)

  Yikes – Westbrook’s down and it doesn’t look particularly good. Nasty knee to the helmet collision.

   
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  Brandon 1:51 pm on 10/26/2009 | 2 Permalink Reply
  Tags: lee evans (8), terrell owens (21)

  More bad news for those who have Terrell Owens on their fantasy teams. Not only is he complaining that he “banged his knee a little bit” in the game this past weekend, but Ryan Fitzpatrick, who has stated, “Lee (Evan)’s been my guy when I’ve been in there,” will be the quarterback again this weekend when the team plays the Texans.

   
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  Team of the Week - Week 7: Not Your Ordinary Bengals

  Brandon 9:21 am on 10/26/2009 | 0 Permalink Reply
  

  Here is the fantasy football “Team of the Week” for week seven, listing the players that scored the most points (using standard scoring) for the current week. In our innagural post last week, it was the New England Patriots that dominated the list, but this week it was definitely the Cincinnatti Bengals time to shine. (Oh yeah, in case I forgot to mention, Miles Austin is for real!)

  Pos.	Player	Stats
  QB	Carson Palmer (CIN)	233 passing yards, 5 TD
  RB	Shonn Greene (NYJ)	144 rushing yards, 2 TD
  RB	Cedric Benson (CIN)	189 rushing yards, 1 TD
  WR	Miles Austin (DAL)	171 receiving yards, 2 TD
  WR	Chad Ochocinco (CIN)	118 receiving yards, 2 TD
  WR	Vincent Jackson (SD)	142 receiving yards, 1 TD
  TE	Vernon Davis (SF)	93 receiving yards, 3 TD
  K	Nick Folk (DAL)	Kicks – 20-29 (0), 30-39 (2), 40-49 (1), PAT (4)
  DEF	San Diego	7 points allowed, 5 sacks, 3 inteceptions, 1 TD, 1 Blocked Kick

   
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  Brandon 8:55 am on 10/26/2009 | 8 Permalink Reply
  Tags: leon washington (7), new york jets (6), shonn greene (5)

  If your league doesn’t use a waiver system, you should be picking up Jets running back Shonn Greene this morning. It looks like Leon Washington will be out the rest of the year with a broken fibula and Greene will now be splitting carries with Thomas Jones. Given the opportunity this weekend against the Raiders, all he did was rush 19 times for 144 yards and two touchdowns…

   
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  Ask the Geeks - Week 7: Game-time edition!

  Brandon 8:32 am on 10/25/2009 | 33 Permalink Reply
  Tags: ask the geeks (38)

  Here are the rest of the Ask the Geek questions for the week. As we’re approaching fantasy football’s mid-season, it’s getting more and more important to make the right decisions regarding your starting line-up each week and hopefully we can provide some help (or at least some peace of mind!) Remember, if you have any more line-up questions before game-time, leave them as comments on our posts and we’ll try to answer them all the way up until the games start…after that it’s up to the fantasy football gods. Good luck!

  Erin asks…

  Is it ok to play 3 players from the same team? (Laurence Maroney RB, Randy Moss WR, Stephen Gostkowski K)

  My only available bench is Larry Johnson RB

  my RB that I am playing (are) Leon Washington, Donald Brown, Laurence Maroney

  (More …)

   
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  While there is already a ton of web sites out there to get your NFL news, you ca...

  Brandon 4:35 pm on 10/24/2009 | 2 Permalink Reply
  Tags: chad ochocinco (8), twitter (7)

  While there are already a ton of web sites out there to get your NFL news, you can add one more to that list soon, as Bengals outspoken receiver Chad Ochocinco plans to start his own “social news network” on Twitter. Apparently he will use his connections with other players in the NFL to break news faster than the mainstream media currently does it. His slogan:
  

  If I break it, you might as well believe it.

   
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  Matt 10:50 am on 10/24/2009 | 2 Permalink Reply
  Tags: basketball, beer, depression, methadone, winter

  Fantasy basketball draft today – hooray? Fantasy basketball is like methadone – once the fantasy football needle is yanked from my vein, I’ll be much better off if I have something else to obsess over, even if it’s a sorry substitute for the real thing.

  Update – since many of you might be in the same boat today, I might as well share the fantasy basketball cheat sheets and other resources I’ve been digging up…

  • Fantasy Cafe’s got a great chart for nine-cat leagues. They even offer a Google Docs version. Nice.
  • I’m also liking About.com’s cheat sheets, with notes for every player – very helpful for a casual NBA fan like me. Just updated yesterday too. Assumes eight-cat scoring.
  • Funston’s Big Board is always worth a look in any fantasy sport.
  • ESPN’s player projections are great. With this much information about each player, though, you have to wonder when these were last updated. Wish they told you when each blurb was written.
  • If you’re looking for something to print out and bring to a live draft, CBS Sports offers a PDF draft kit. You need a free account with their site to download it.
   
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  Matt 2:29 pm on 10/23/2009 | 1 Permalink Reply
  Tags: deangelo williams (17)

  DeAngelo Williams is likely to have an absolute monster of a game this week against the Bills, who are without both starting safeties. Whenever he breaks into the secondary, Buffalo’s going to have a hard time stopping him. The guys over at BuffaLowdown are already cringing:

  After a week in which the Bills allowed essentially two backs to have hundred-yard games, the fact that they will square off against an athlete like DeAngelo Williams is downright scary.

   
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  Brandon 3:20 pm on 10/22/2009 | 8 Permalink Reply
  Tags: deadspin

  For your reading pleasure, here’s a funny post from Deadspin.com about the death of the workhorse running back. I’ve been thinking about this a lot this season, as we get more and more Ask the Geek questions regarding running backs. The answer to many of these questions has become less and less clear, because you never even know which running back on a single team is going to score more points, never mind across the entire league!

   
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  Ask the Geeks - Week 7: Start Michael Crabtree?

  Brandon 2:26 pm on 10/22/2009 | 64 Permalink Reply
  Tags: ask the geeks (38), michael crabtree (9)

  Here is our first round of Ask the Geek questions for week seven. Remember, you can ask the geeks here or simply leave your questions as comments on our posts and we’ll try our best to respond to them as soon as possible.

  Greg asks…

  I have a huge conflict here. I know this should be an easy choice. I have to choose between Sidney Rice & Micheal Crabtree? Rice had a couple great games lately….I would assume they are gonna work Crabtree alot. Who do I start?

  (More …)

   
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  Hits & Misses - Week 7: New England heads to Old England

  Brandon 12:02 pm on 10/22/2009 | 20 Permalink Reply
  Tags: adrian peterson (32), brandon jacobs (20), brett favre (34), chad henne (4), deangelo williams (17), heath miller (7), jamal lewis (21), jay cutler (32), ladainian tomlinson (31), Laurence Maroney (9), mark sanchez (11), matt ryan (19), philip rivers (17), Randy Moss (21), roddy white (22), roy williams (9), santana moss (12), terrell owens (21), vernon davis (4), vincent jackson (11), wes welker (7)

  Here are our “Hits” and “Misses” for week seven, listing players you want to make sure are in your lineup, as well as those you might consider shelving for the week (or at least lowering your expectations!) This week I’ve again tried to leave off the most obvious picks, such as Peyton Manning’s dream match-up against the Rams, so that the list only includes players you may have been scratching your head about starting this week. Also, not to get too far off topic, but the Patriots head to London this week to play the Buccaneers, which got me thinking…is the team name “New England Patriots” offensive to the British? I mean, they ARE the nation that we were being patriots against in the first place! Anyways, I guess we’ll let some of our readers from the U.K. comment on that, so let’s get into the hits and misses for the week… (More …)

   
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  Matt 12:46 pm on 10/21/2009 | 1 Permalink Reply
  Tags: links (5)

  Thought I’d mention this since it’s something I refer to frequently as I’m writing posts for this blog: FFtoday’s fantasy football statistics section is a truly awesome resource. I don’t know of anything else that allows you to break it down by position and week – so, for example, if you want to know who the top wide receiver in week 5, 2007 was, the answer’s there.

   
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  Week 7 Defenses to Consider

  Brandon 12:01 pm on 10/21/2009 | 3 Permalink Reply
  Tags: team defense (5)

  Here’s a quick list of teams that are playing some of the lesser offenses in the league this week and who could be available in your league in case you were looking for a plug-in (with the percent owned in parenthesis):

  • New England (88%) @ Tampa Bay (in London!)
  • Indianapolis (77%) vs St. Louis
  • San Diego (54%) @ Kansas City
  • Carolina (48%) vs Buffalo
  • Oakland (9%) vs New York Jets
   
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  Attention all ye 0-6 and 1-5 teams: Drop the dead weight

  Matt 5:07 pm on 10/20/2009 | 52 Permalink Reply
  Tags: anquan boldin (15), anthony gonzalez (5), beanie wells (5), michael crabtree (9), sammy morris (8)

  It always amazes me how quickly the fantasy football season flies by. Given that most leagues’ playoffs start in week 14, next week’s games will mark the midway point of the regular season.

  If your fantasy team is at the bottom of the standings right now, you no longer have the luxury of waiting for high-ceiling players to pan out. Painful as it may be, it’s time to plug the holes in your lineup by trading your prized prospects for players you can start right away. From this point forward, treat every week like it’s your last – because realistically, if you lose, it probably is.

  Here are a few examples of high-potential players you might be hoarding on your bench, along with some potential trades you could offer for less-exciting players who could help you right away. (More …)

   
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  The Wire - Week 7: Shiancoe on the Move

  Brandon 12:01 pm on 10/20/2009 | 34 Permalink Reply
  Tags: the wire (12)

  Here are our waiver wire candidates for week seven. As usual, you’ll find players who are either [Startable], a [Stopgap] to get you past a BYE or injury, [Worth a look] and spot on your bench, or [One-week-wonder]s who don’t warrant a roster spot, so you make your roster moves accordingly. You’ll also see the percent owned in parenthesis (and if you see an asterisk by the players name, it means they’re on a BYE this week.)

  This week there are again a ton of receivers on the list, with many of them not worth a roster spot at the moment (but you’ll still want to keep an eye on them.) At the other positions though, you can see that the talent is getting pretty thin, so keep that in mind when putting in your waiver claims. We start with one of Brett Favre’s favorite red-zone targets…
  (More …)