Fantasy Football Librarian

Greetings. Welcome to the start of college football. I'm psyched for the battle between Northwestern (my alma mater) and Northeastern tomorrow - I'm sure everyone is, right? It's the battle of the North***terns. I need to focus my energy on finding a sports bar with the Big Ten Network by 10 am mountain time tomorrow... But first to the NFL. This Sunday I'm drafting my 4th team - this one is an IDP league. So I've been doing a little IDP research and thought I'd include some of those links here. I also wanted to get some links to tier rankings up as well - scroll down a little further for those. IDP Info Check out FFToday's updated rankings for DLs , DBs , and LBs . I know I've linked to these before but it's nice to have a site with rankings that are actually updated with some frequency and thought it might be worth posting them again. You can adjust the rankings based on several different scoring systems, too. There's also some helpful icon usa...

Last night was my quick draft to build onto my dynasty team and I am quite pleased with the players I got. I was drafting 3rd in 2 rounds of a non-serpentine draft (yes, that means my team performed unacceptably last season) and picked up Calvin Johnson and Greg Olsen. I am quite pleased with that outcome. I was tempted to pick up Brian Leonard, the backup RB in St. Louis but went with Olsen instead. There's always time to pick up Leonard later in the season if he still looks promising. Onto the fantasy smörgåsbord for the week (Blogger just provided me with those awesome diacritics for smörgåsbord - love it): KFFL's ADP (average draft position) rankings - you can also select the ADP by PPR (points per reception) or IDP (individual defensive players) if your league rolls that way. I have an draft including IDPs coming up this weekend so I was interested to note they have the first defender, Shawne Merriman, with an ADP of 77.90. KFFL also has two pretty interesting articles,...

I'm not sure I've ever devoted an entire post to one website but I have to say I can't believe it has taken me this long to really peruse The NFL Minute and all of its fantasy golden nuggets, thus this post pimping The NFL Minute. I'm in a football bloggers fantasy league this year with Tom from The NFL Minute but didn't have a chance to check out his site until recently. I am a big fan - it's full of solid commentary and thought-provoking posts. Not really rankings, cheatsheets, or projections but just some really helpful posts that get you thinking about your season. Just what sort of awesomeness does The NFL Minute provide us with, you ask? Complete Fantasy Football Guide 2007 Bold claims that perhaps LT is not going to be the #1 RB this season and that he'll be dethroned by Steven Jackson What kind of impact will Denver's offseason have on your fantasy team? Just How Good is Joseph Addai? Ted Ginn Jr may land starting role this season in Miami Gree...

Tomorrow night I will be partaking in 2 rounds of a 4-round draft in my keeper/dynasty league. I have been trying to scrounge up some rookie rankings and figure out who exactly I want to be targeting. So here's some keeper info, mostly geared towards those who are only adding rookies now: KeeperFantasyLeagues.com has a substantial list of rankings in their archives - you can find rookie rankings, keeper rankings, or general player rankings. Personally, I'm focusing on the RB rookies and WR rookies . Here's a link to a Rotoworld forum where a fellow drafter ranked his top rookies and others chimed in with their opinions. FFToolbox has an article on 10 players NOT to hang onto in keeper leagues ...not sure I think you should drop them all like hotcakes, considering there's some substantial talent in this group of 10. But perhaps this is a list to revisit at the end of the season - or just to keep in mind when your keeper draft occurs. Fantasy Football Xtreme's 2007...

Kudos to my brother-in-law, Brian, for forwarding me this link of Predicted NFL Standings in 2007 a la Star Wars characters or as Brian called it, Football Preview This Is. Now being born in 1979 into a family of girls, I have to say a good chunk of the Star Wars references are way past me. I was too busy watching ET, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and The Princess Bride in my youth (but yes, I have seen all the Star Wars movies once, for those who are suddenly all up in arms about that). However, regardless of my Star Wars naivete, I'm happy to report that I still find this highly entertaining and think you likely will too. More soon on actual fantasy football info and advice.

Hi fantasy info seekers - notice the new poll over there on the right side? I'm hoping to get a better feel for the kind of information fantasy football fans are looking for. If you have a second, I'd appreciate your vote, or if there's something else entirely that I haven't included in the vote options, leave a comment. I had my second draft this morning and after scrambling through all of my rankings and draft kits, I decided I might post a few more player rankings and cheatsheets here to try and consolidate some of my posts a little more. Remember, you can always check out my previous post that averaged 12 Top 100 rankings out there . But here are the latest rankings from some of my favorites or old standbys: Overall Rankings Fantasy Football Xtreme Top 200 Yahoo's Big(ger) Board 100 Fantasy Football Summary Top 100 ProFantasySports.com's Top 200 SI's Top 200 (also links to positional rankings) Ask The Commish's Top 150 (again, also links to positio...

CBS Sportsline has a nice article on 2nd year QBs Cutler, Leinart, Young, and Jackson (when does Tarvaris Jackson ever get mentioned in the same breath with those other guys?). They include projections for 2007 for these guys as well as some historical stats of how other QBs like Peyton, McNabb, Leftwich, Big Ben, etc performed in their sophomore year. Need some help with those later rounds of the draft? Bruno Boys has you covered with their The Bruno Boys 2007 Fantasy Football Draft: Rounds 11-16 article as well as the rest of the draft in Rounds 6-10 and Rounds 1-5 . Each pick has a sentence of commentary, too, which adds a little something. Check em out. Worried about Donald Driver and where his foot injury might put him in the rankings? Well you're going to have to wait until Monday to find out any further details - not what most who are drafting this weekend wanted to hear, I'm sure. For the latest info, check out SI's Doctors Encouraged by Driver . [photo: packersne...

One of my fantasy leagues is a keeper league and I need to decide in the next 36 hours which players I should keep and which I should ditch for our 4 round draft next week. I can cut up to 4 players or none at all. Our league requires that I keep my 4 IDPs to keep the FA pool rich with offensive talent...so I need to keep my IDPs listed at the end. Here's my team: QB Marc Bulger QB Jay Cutler RB Rudi Johnson RB Willis McGahee RB Maurice Jones-Drew WR Javon Walker WR Donald Driver WR Marques Colston WR Terry Glenn WR Bernard Berrian WR Matt Jones TE Tony Gonzalez TE Tony Scheffler K Robbie Gould DL Julius Peppers (Car) DB Antonie Winfield (Min) DL Bart Scott (Bal) DL Cato June (TB) It's a 10-team, 6 points for Pa or Ru TD, 0.1 points/reception, 0.2 points/completion, 1 point per 15 yards rushing, 1 point per 12 yards receiving, and 1 point per 37 yards passing. Our starting lineup is 1 QB, 3 WRs, 2 RBs, 1 TE, 1 K, 2 Ds, 2 DLs - and 6 bench spots. I'm thinking of dropping Mat...

There's lots of fantasy news and info to catch up on...so let's just have at it: 1. Chris requested some info on auction drafts; I have not participated in an auction draft/league before so I have yet to dig up any research. So here's my first stab. Hope this helps: FFToolbox (these guys have everything) provide a nice top 200 ranking of 2007 Fantasy Football Auction Values based on a $200 budget. Note that it was last updated on August 3 so it still has Vick on there for $3.27 - and as always be sure to check out the rules it's based upon. CBS Sportsline incorporates their auction values into their general 2007 Player Rankings (for their top 200, without auction values, click here ). These are based on a $100 budget. For more analysis rather than rankings, see Fox Sports.com's Auction Draft Tips: Stars and Scrubs (based on a $200 budget). Need a detailed plan? Look no further than FantasyGuru's step-by-step plan to help expertly guide you through the auction...

My first draft happened yesterday and as I've mentioned, a friend drafted on my behalf since I was on an airplane. The draft turned out pretty well - I'm posting my team below in order of drafting (I've put the overall draft number in parentheses; it's a 12-team league and I was drafting 9th). I'm feeling pretty good about it as long as Tony Scheffler is in good shape and playing like the great TE I know he can be. I'm still on vacation right now but when I return later this week, I'll have some posts chock full of the latest in fantasy news for those with drafts still to come...like me; I still have 4 more drafts - though one is for my brother-in-law and one is just a 4-round keeper league. So without further ado, here's my first 2007 FF team - any feedback? 1. Laurence Maroney (9) 2. Cedric Benson (16) 3. Marc Bulger (33) 4. Marques Colston (40) 5. Baltimore (57) 6. Darrell Jackson (64) 7. Julius Jones (81) 8. Jerricho Cotchery (88) 9. Ben Roethlisberg...

My first draft of the season is coming up this Sunday. Unfortunately I will be on an airplane during the draft and a friend is going to draft on my behalf. I trust this guy immensely but have furiously been creating an overall ranking and positional rankings for my buddy to refer to during the draft. I'm thinking that I will probably post those rankings sometime next week after I am back in town. So if you're interested, keep your eyes peeled for those rankings in about a week. Until then I give you FFToolbox's updated rankings for both offense, team defenses, and individual defensive players. It's the whole kit and caboodle, my friends. The Huddle also just updated their draft kit yesterday and while some of their content isn't free, a good chunk of it is. The Huddle also has an interesting article that provides some draft strategy insight called Drafting from the Basement for those of us who end up without one of the top picks. In other fantasy news, check out...

A little something for everyone in today's Fantasy Smorgasbord: 1. Ahh, to see Al Michaels and John Madden on air again. It was like an early autumn delight. Or at least amusing and of course fun to watch football on Sunday night again. And what happens tonight, you ask? Monday night football with the Broncos and 49ers, baby. Go Broncos...yes, even in the pre-season. But back to last night - Gregg Rosenthal blogged all night long about various players and happenings during the Seattle/SD game. Check out his blog, Pancake Blocks , to get the scoop - or just check out his summary blog post, Things We Learned . Or you can check out TINO Sports Page for basically one-sentence long summaries of several of the games. Or take a look at Football Outsiders' Every Play Doesn't Count for roundtable commentary of some of the games. 2. More player updates for you: Warrick Dunn returned to practice today , Thomas Jones injured his leg during Sunday's practice (severity doesn't...

In just over a week, a football bloggers league will be drafting for the 2007 season. Care to join us? We have 11 of 12 teams ready to go but are looking for another blogger to be part of the league. For more info about the bloggers involved, see this post from TINO Sports Page . If you're interested, leave a comment and let us know.

That's right, Noah Herron. There's a little love for my fellow Northwestern alum in an article today from CBS Sportsline, Overlooked Herron could play more prominent role with Packers . I think we're all well aware that Northwestern is hardly a football powerhouse so I'm always really pleased to see my NU guys performing well in the NFL. Who else is from Northwestern, you ask? Luis Castillo, Napoleon Harris, and a handful of other talented, mostly defense-oriented guys. [photo: Rusty Kennedy, AP] A Fanball.com blog post, NFL projections are meaningless , zeroes in on the fact that perhaps any stat projections for the 2007 season should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm curious as to how many people rely upon stat projections versus general cheat sheets/rankings? Personally, I'm way more inclined to look at cheat sheets than straight up stat projections but maybe that's just me? And in case you wanted another free draft kit, look no further than Ask The Com...

I've read a lot of interesting stuff lately about Larry Johnson and what's going on with the Chiefs. FanProphet has created an interesting set of posts called Making the Correct Decision where he pits two players up against each other who might be drafted around the same time. One of his latest Making the Correct Decisions was between Larry Johnson and Ronnie Brown . FanProphet suggests that LJ is more of a middle of the second round kind of pick - check out his blog to see why. I also found some intriguing comments buried deep in Peter King's Monday Morning QB article from this week - here's a quote: "I think the three most impressive backs I saw in the last week, in order, have been Jamal Lewis, Cleveland; Marshawn Lynch, Buffalo; and Kolby Smith, Kansas City. That's right, Kolby Smith. You wonder why you don't hear the panicked bleatings of Chiefs worried about Larry Johnson's holdout? Here's why: running backs are among the most replaceable qua...

A great question was brought up by Aaron in a recent comment about my Average Ranking Positions post. Aaron asked if I had any of the Top 100 lists from this same group of experts from 2006 and if so, how accurate the rankings were - so I've created a new spreadsheet, a 2006 Predicted Rankings vs Actual Fantasy Results spreadsheet . To find all of these 2006 rankings, I'm using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine , a website that has archived much of the Internet. Type in the website address you're interested and voila, a dynamic November 2005 version of that page is at your fingertips (or whatever other date you're looking for). Pretty cool, huh? So I found ten of the same rankings I used this year for 2006 - of the ones I couldn't find, FF Toolbox had only the top 60 for 2006 so I had to throw it out; NFL.com didn't provide an 2006 overall ranking, just positional; and Fantasy Football Xtreme's 2006 version was not free. Otherwise, a ranking from each of ...

Fantasy football draft kits and cheat sheets are exploding all over the web. I just printed out my 48-page Bruno Boys Pre -Draft Webazine and am looking forward to reviewing it. Stat. And then recycling the small tree of paper - this thing is beefy. Over dinner last night, my husband and I were discussing the merits of drafting Daunte Culpepper in the very late rounds. I'll spare you our conversation as it probably wasn't nearly as concise or enlightening as the nice review of Daunte Culpepper done byTJI Fantasy Sports. TJI (short for This Just In) also has somewhat lengthy blogs on where to draft Reggie Bush and GB's Brandon Jackson . I like the attention to individual players that TJI provides - it's nice to see a few paragraphs about a player you could potentially draft for the season rather than just a few sentences. Take a look at this week's NBC Sports Fantasy Fix video for a review of which round to draft some interesting players like Cadillac Will...

Happy Hall of Fame Game Day. So the regular season is still several weeks away, yes. But today, my friends, is the first football game of the season. I know this is not a big game for most of us but it signifies the start of football season. I'm sitting here watching the Ravens and Redskins scrimmage on the NFL Network (and Brian Billick who is wearing a ridiculous straw hat) and feeling that familiar thrill of watching football again. It has been a long 6 months without football so for now, scrimmages and HOF games will do just fine, thank you. So onto fantasy info: I've been following DR U Fantasy Football GURU's player profiles for quite some time now and am pleased to see their Top 100 Fantasy Football Players Cheat Sheets post . I will be adding this to my spreadsheet of average ranking positions soon. Second, Fantasy Football Goat alerted me to Donovan McNabb's blog - I'd love to know of any other NFL players with blogs. McNabb's blog is on Yardbarker ...

As I mentioned in my post earlier today, I've pulled together an Average Ranking Position spreadsheet that is based on 12 Top 100 rankings that I retrieved from a variety of sources (listed below). ADP is great but I'm also interested in where "experts" on average place players in their rankings. I tried to ensure that each ranking I looked at used the same scoring system, though many of them didn't mention the scoring that they based their ranking on, so I assumed they used a standard scoring system. I'm also banking on the fact that some of the slight but important differences (4 vs 6 points for TDs thrown; 1 point per 20 vs 25 yards receiving) may even out across the averaging. So I recommend using this as a supplemental drafting tool if you're in need. And who isn't looking for more info, really? For the full spreadsheet of the Top 120 players, click here . I've divided it up into the various steps I took to average each ranking and have also ...

Don't you just love the start of football season? Training camp news is coming in from all over. Daunte Culpepper has signed with the Raiders , Brady Quinn is pissing off Clevelanders , Terry Glenn has knee surgery , and my husband and I just re-upped our Sports Tier package with Comcast to get the NFL Network. We had it last fall and canceled for the offseason. But with the HOF game on the NFL Network only, we're a couple of suckers willing to pay Comcast a little extra for access. In other news, later today I will be posting my very own average ranking position spreadsheet. While I do think that ADP (Average Draft Position) has a great value ( see this article from FF Toolbox for more info ), I also think crazy things happen in mock drafts. Sometimes a mock draft is completely skewed because one dude started an early QB run and panicked everyone else. So as great as ADP is, I also think there's a lot of value in looking at the average ranking position of a player. Rankin...