Fantasy Football Librarian

Greetings and welcome to Week 4. This week the start/bench projections analysis will be done on the websites listed below, based on their calls on QB. Many of them don't have live links yet but as soon as they are posted I will update them. NFLFreaks Start-Bench List Fantasy Football Cafe Ask the Commish Sit or Start FootballDocs Bench-Start SI Start 'em Sit 'em NFL.com Start 'em Sit 'em CBS Sportsline Start 'em & Sit 'em FantasySharks Start/Bench List Fantasy Football Advice Start 'em Sit 'em Recommendations CoachBox Start/Bench Yahoo/KFFL Who to Start, Who to Bench Also, on an IDP note - don't forget to check out ProFantasySports.com's IDP Report .

...like it is in two of my leagues. I'm talking waiver wire. In a classic waiver wire/news monger style way, one guy in my league picked up Maurice Morris in 2 of the leagues we're in together and another guy picked up Michael Robinson in those same 2 leagues. So like vultures at the feasting table, those guys went in for the kill on some of week 3's latest injuries (though Conway, you might've been a little pessimistic about my boy Gore [photo by ESPN]). Hopefully you can take advantage of some of the hot deals of the week. Read on for advice. Fantasy Sharks Week 4 Waiver Wire Advice Fanball's Hot Pickups FF Toolbox Week 4 Waiver Wire Bargains

As noted in my previous blog Tight End Predictions , I am comparing the weekly sit/start calls made by several websites to help determine which one has the best predictions week after week. This week the results from 6 different websites with free projections are as follows: 1. NFL Start 'em Sit 'em by Fabiano Suggested starters average ranking for the week: 16.14 Suggested starters average fantasy points for the week: 11.06 Suggested benchers average ranking for the week: 31 Suggested benchers average fantasy points for the week: 6.69 For the 2nd week in a row, the nfl.com/Fabiano did a great job at selecting which players you should start and which you should bench. This one was a close battle though with Ask the Commish, listed below, making similar projections. Fabiano suggested starting 3 of the top 10 RBs and all but one of his starters were in the top 25. With the exception of Ahman Green, he chose benchers who had pretty subpar or mediocre performances at best. 2. Ask ...

When I started this blog I intended to try and leave my own weekly performance woes (or delights) out of the blog as much as possible. Yet I knew it was inevitable that I would post on here some Monday morning (or will it be every Monday morning?) with my hangup of the week. So here's my concern of the week... I'm pretty sure one of the unofficial rules of fantasy football is to avoid having the same guy in all of your leagues - a little diversification is good for lineups. I however did not follow that advice, nor another unofficial rule that says you should never count on a rookie to perform in week 3 as he has in weeks 1 and 2. In an overwhelming Marques lovefest, I picked him up in all 3 of my leagues and am now on the edge of either winning or losing in all 3 of those games. So here I am, sweating bullets over Marques Colston's big Monday Night performance tonight. Marques, my record depends on you.

For those of you who have procrastinated in getting your lineup set for the week - or those of you who want as much advice as you can get - here are a few articles for last minute counsel: 1. SI's Ten Fantasy Tips - advice ranging from Portis to Plummer to the Pep 2. FantasySharks The Prognosticator - includes a chart forecasting the rushing and passing status for each matchup as well as a couple paragraphs on key players in each game 3. Sportingnews.com's Sportingblogs with tips on your lineup from some "experts"

For week 3 I will be analyzing the start/bench calls made on running backs from the sites listed below. Check out each of the links for advice on your lineup but remember to check back on Tuesday to see which site actually gave the best advice. NFLFreaks Start-Bench List Fantasy Football Cafe Ask the Commish Sit or Start FootballDocs Bench-Start SI Start 'em Sit 'em NFL.com Start 'em Sit 'em

Fantasysharks.com has a great article each week on IDPs called The Hive - the studs, strong plays, gut checks, and stay aways are noted for each matchup with a sentence or two of analysis. Highly recommended.

As noted a few days ago, one of my goals with this site is to be able to provide ongoing stats on which websites out there really give the best advice on who to start and who to sit. So this week I focused on tight ends. I randomly chose 5 sites and compared results by looking at each noted player's ranking for the week among all the tight ends in the league as well as their total points for the week awarded by my yahoo league. Then by comparing the averages between those that a site picked to start and bench, you can get a good idea of how well their predictions turned out. If you happen to like numbers and would like to see the excel spreadsheet/formulas, let me know. I can work on posting that up here. Results below: 1. NFL.com Start 'em, Sit 'em by Michael Fabiano Suggested starters average ranking for the week: 18.29 Suggested starters average fantasy points for the week: 4.81 Suggested benchers average ranking for the week: 27.29 Suggested benchers average fantasy poi...

Welcome to the first bye week. Personally, I have a handful of holes to fill and feel that it's time to check out the waiver wires and see who is out there. One of my personal favorites has got to be Marques Colston (photo by Elsa/Getty Images) - this rookie NO Saint can be your WR or TE and has TD notches on his belt for both week 1 and week 2. Colston came from Hofstra so give a little love to the 1-AA - I've learned the hard way that not all 1-AA teams should be so underrated. At least I'm in good company this fall though...go Buffs . Need some advice? Check these out: 1. FantasySharks.com - an overview of some good pickups off the waiver wire 2. Fanball.com - already about a week old and you've always gotta be quick with that waiver wire, but there's definitely a solid chance that some of these guys are still around and available. 3. cbssportsline - a little repetitive of the fantasysharks overview mentioned above...what that really says to me is that the nu...

I don't really want to jinx myself but I'm pretty sure I'm going to go 2-1 this week...maybe even 3-0 if Heath Miller has another great game tonight. Based on my performance last weekend, this is pretty spectacular news and it's mostly thanks to some of my outstanding IDPs. In fact, I think Julius Peppers might have singlehandedly helped me dominate my buddy Ethan this week - so Ethan, this blog's for you. I took another look at my individual defensive players (IDPs) last week since I was frustrated with how poorly many of my drafted set of IDPs had played and I made some changes. Originally I had based my draft picks off of a pre-draft ranking based largely on predicted sacks for the year. Foolishly I overlooked the need for guys who can really tackle consistently - so I found new sources and compared options. My best addition for the week was Adalius Thomas who gave me 19.90 points and in my league (7 tackles, 2 sacks, 1 interception, a safety, and 1 pass defense...

I don't particularly care for change. So this year when one of my leagues switched from yahoo to cbssportsline.com as the league host, I got pretty grumpy about some of the new - or missing - features of sportsline. During the draft I'm pretty sure that most players in our league experienced a moment of panic when they realized that they hadn't actually read the rules on sportsline and that there are only 5 total slots alloted to RBs and WRs during the draft. In fact you are forced to take two team defenses, which I found to be especially egregious. This was a particularly hard lesson to learn with only 20 or so seconds remaining in my alloted minute-and-a-half during a late round in the draft...and not enough research conducted on my backup D. However, with a little time I have grown to enjoy certain aspects of sportsline far more than I anticipated. Following is a list of my pros and cons: CONS: --stingy draft rules in regards to position drafting as noted above --there...

What if all you're looking for are sites that will provide player news? Read on... NFL.com - One of the things I like about this news portion of nfl.com is that you can click on weekly headlines and get a review of all the headlines separated out by day. Along this same vein, they keep their news archives up going back to 2001. Want to look back and see who the top rookies were a year ago or just how many years in a row a certain player has gotten injured - check out the archives. Also linked off this site is the Injury Report - always helpful in making those sit or start decisions. What is it missing? A web feed. ( What is a web feed? ) Rotoworld.com - The Player News is frequently updated and offers a line or two of commentary to go with each piece of news. Call it the girl in me, but I like having the player's name listed in a heading that depicts their team's colors and logo. Nice. Also of benefit is the ability to sort by team, position, or go directly to a specifi...

One of my goals with this site is to do a statistical analysis of a lot of the "start 'em, bench 'em" sites that give you advice on which players to start each week. Everyone is hoping to find that gold nugget of information to give them an extra edge - but which sites give the most accurate advice? I will be compiling this information and will post the percentages weekly so you will know where - and where not - to go. If you have any sites that you would like included in this analysis, let me know.

Well, we're into Week 2 of the 2006 season and I keep trying to remind myself that this is a marathon not a sprint. After an 0-3 start from the three leagues that I am in, I feel less confident about starting up this blog. But then again it seems like just the right time to create what I hope to be the ultimate resource for fantasy football. I don't intend to give advice on who to bench, who to start - but advice on how to find the most promising information out there. As a librarian, information is my business; but football is my passion. More coming soon!