On Wednesday I will be flying to Las Vegas to present on fantasy football in libraries at a library conference at UNLV. I did this in early May, too, and soon my fantasy football in libraries presentation circuit will come to an end...but if I am kind of quiet on the blog later this week, don't be surprised. So let's see what's new in the football world. It is June and that means it's time to get serious about fantasy football.
- First, the Broncos have released RB Travis Henry - that's big news in my book so read up on the latest. Selvin Young is now the starter with Michael Pittman and rookie Ryan Torain backing him up.
- Looking for some sleepers for 2008, eh? Check out Fantasy Sharks's Fantasy Gold: Lost, Forgotten, and Undiscovered Treasures? for some thoughts on potential sleepers or forgotten players that might make a splash in 2008.
- If that did not fulfill your desire for sleeper info, try Fabiano's Draft Preview: Gonzalez, Olsen headline fantasy sleepers on NFL.com.
- And speaking of NFL.com, they have their 2008 Draft Kit up (with a rather familiar tag line of "everything you need to know to dominate your fantasy football league" - check out the FFLibrarian blog's tag line above - sound familiar? Thought so...). But the Draft Kit is full of gems like the sleepers article mentioned above, 10 breakout candidates for 2008, and my personal favorite - Offensive line breakdowns of all 32 teams.
- Later this week I will be turning 29 (and yes, celebrating by presenting at the aforementioned conference), so I am of course drawn to the idea of FFToolbox looking at RBs who will be 29+ come opening day. Frankly, I can't believe that LT, Brian Westbrook, the Edge and I are roughly the same age. They are, um, far more accomplished that I am at this point in my life. I think there are plenty of guys on this list though that have a lot more gas in the tank regardless of their now "old" status (by RB standards only of course...). For more age-related analysis of RBs, check out Age could affect value of James, Taylor from NFL.com.
Comments
A couple of months ago you did some posting on the “Fifth Down” that generated some buzz about how good certain sites did with rankings. You were going to update your spreadsheets and make them available. I sort of lost track of that in the office season (working on two different certifications – one completed the other one I hope to complete before my FF drafts). Could you bring me up to speed on it?
If you get a chance, check out www.footballguys.com . They have a couple of tools that help project points that I came across last week. I have been developing my own projections (aka fun with excel). Their presentation is better and offers much more flexibility (using one prognosticator or weighting several or using the prior season’s data) then what I was doing with just prior seasons data and anticipated player changes. Once you do the projections, you can then use the projections to import into their draft tool that does a VBD. I haven’t played with that much and my basic opinion on that is that it has merit but needs the drafter’s judgment (not emotions) to make it work.
Congrats on your birthday later this week – mine is today & I’m >29. Enjoy Vegas!
Tones
Oh, and guess who will be sitting 23 rows off the field on Monday night, October 20?