Fantasy Football Librarian

Greetings and happy Friday. It's a beautiful day in Colorado and I have a very strong desire to spend the entire day outside. Luckily for you, a tiny thing called a job means that I am attached to my computer for the day. So let's talk football. A few days ago I linked to some info on top fantasy defenses - now it's time to take a look at some offense analysis - check out Althon/Grogan's Fantasy Football's Finger On The Pulse: NFL's Most Improved Offenses as well as Gregg Rosenthal's Five Emerging Offenses . I know many of you are looking for IDP information (thanks to that handy poll to your right), so try reading Fantasy Football Starter's On the rise or past there prime? that looks specifically at veteran IDPers. Something else to think about as you prepare for FF season - what kind of draft strategies do you employ? Fantasy Football Fools has a nice summary article, Fantasy Draft Strategy: Tiering Your Player Rankings and Cheat Sheets , on drafting...

Take a look at the poll over on the right side - if you've got a minute, let me know what kind of information you're looking for as you prepare for your fantasy football draft(s) this summer. This list isn't exhaustive of the kind of information I'll make available over the next few months, but I sure would like to actually provide you all with helpful information. And if I've overlooked something important to you, tell me . So vote, let me know what you'd like to read about the most...and I'll see what I can do!

Three-day weekends are like a blessing and a curse all wrapped up in one - yeah it was awesome to relax and have an extra day of fun, but it's a reminder to me that I'd love to have a three-day weekend every weekend. That's always a bit of a bummer. But my weekend included scoring some amazing seats at a Rockies v Mets game on Friday night (thanks again Bart!), cruising around the Boulder Creek Festival , getting some good runs in, and baking a successful angel food cake at high altitude (harder than it sounds, thank you). It also, sadly, included the canceling of the extra sports tier in our cable package...and thus, no more NFL Network for us. I think we've changed our subscription to the sports tier about 4 or 5 times over the past year depending on how much we're using it (uh, not much at all right now) and I'm sure, come fall, I'll be re-upping it again... So onto football: Rotoworld welcomes summer with their first Mock Draft writeup of the season in N...

I have somehow avoided ever watching more than about 2 seconds of American Idol. It just doesn't appeal to me whatsoever - though I do support entertainment that celebrates real talent rather than just bizarre reality tv, which must be why I can't stop myself from actually watching American Gladiators, right? Ha. But that's a whole separate discussion topic...anyway, I have sadly somehow become a Fox news watcher and by default can't avoid American Idol news. I can't believe I'm admitting that I watch Fox as my news source, but it all comes down to the fact that the local morning Fox news station has a dog that rides around in the traffic helicopter and there are all sorts of dog shots and dog stories from the 'copter. Starts the day off right. But the local Fox station in Denver actually sent a reporter to L.A. for the final American Idol episode as though the winner of American Idol was real news. I was feeling pretty self-important for awhile this morning...

Fantasy Football Xtreme brings us a beautiful thing: Week 1 projections for the 2008 season. These guys aren't messing around - it may only be mid-May but there are actually projections up for the first week. And thank you FFXtreme for the Tony Scheffler love I see - nicely done. Maybe I should start to tone down my lovefest for Scheff so that none of my competitors know my weaknesses come draft day. Read on for other excellent football insights for the week... If you can't get down with Week 1 projections quite yet, how about season-long projections? FFXtreme has those, too: QB , RB , WR , TE . Those of you in IDP (individual defensive player) leagues might be interested in reading up on Rotoworld's IDP Breakouts series - check out the Defensive Backs and Linebackers info with Defensive Linemen still to come later this week. Remember these are breakout players - those who might make big leaps in performance for 2008. Pigskin Addiction has the first installment ...

Greetings and happy Friday. Let's not mess around with my thoughts on Colorado's bizarre weather (yes, I have an insatiable interest in the weather), or how I'm eagerly hoping for a job offer (basically just a tenure-track version of my current library job), or how excited I am for the weekend to arrive (it has been a long week involving the aforementioned job interview)...let's just get right to football: The fantasy football cheat sheet season has begun - the FF Goat has made it his mission to track down cheat sheets far and wide this season. So stayed tuned to the Goat if you're big into cheat sheets. More cheat sheets have also been posted by FFToolbox - check out their QB , RB , WR , TE , K and DEF cheat sheets, all of which will be updated throughout the preseason. Note this cheat sheet includes project fantasy points and there's a Top 100 list available for your viewing pleasure as well. The Saints will no longer be pursuing Shockey , so he's all...

Yesterday I was thinking that perhaps the summer is finally upon us - students here at the university of Colorado have finished up for the semester, it was in the low 80s, and people were sunbathing in surprisingly little clothing on the quad outside the library - seems like summer, right? Yup, then it snowed last night. But my mind still thinks it's the start of summer and that means minicamp time. So, football thoughts for a Tuesday are as follows... In a keeper or dynasty league? Then you'll want to check out Fabiano's thoughts in NFL.com's Fantasy keepers: Running backs . He looks at which players' value has risen, fallen or been steady since last season. And while you're at it, read more of his keeper analysis on QBs , WRs and TEs . Injuries. The deep dark hole that every fantasy player attempts to avoid. For some early injury analysis, read Rotoworld's The Walking Wounded . With minicamps starting and the 2008 season beginning to pick up some steam, t...

Some of my favorite fantasy football analysis revolves around the components beyond the actual individual player: like schedules (how many top ranked run or pass Ds will your player be facing during the season?) and offensive line rankings (will my RB be lined up behind a power o-line?). NFL.com has posted their Schedules: New England, Buffalo have favorable run slates article today, which is certainly worth a long look. Plus, now my love for Laurence Maroney is feeling a little more validated. But poor Frank Gore, who as Fabiano notes in this article, "will have 10 starts against teams that ranked 13th or better against the run last season." Another interesting link for the day - The Huddle's NFL Draft: Sneaky Helpful Fantasy Drafts . These are those NFL Draft moves that are subtle and are going to up the value of that team's draftable players. Read on for quality insight. All for today; more to come later this week!

With my library conferences behind me (for a few weeks at least), I can now concentrate on fantasy football again. If you happen to be a librarian and are interested in how my co-presenter and I tied together fantasy football and information literacy, check out my co-presenter’s blog . Though I imagine most of you would much rather catch up on the following football news and thoughts for the week: I remain a bit dazed and confused by my certainty last summer that Cedric Benson was going to rock my RB2 world in 2007. Didn’t happen and now he’s moved onto ankle surgery, alleged intoxication and resisting arrest on boats. Awesome. You can practically taste Matt Forte’s value skyrocketing here. In fact, wondering about rookie RBs in general? Well then check out FF Xtreme’s The Day After: Ranking the Rookie Running Backs . I love reading articles or stats that challenge my preconceived notions – The Fifth Down’s Chad the Completion Percentage Machine does just that. No offense to thos...