Fantasy Football Librarian

As you all can imagine, I was really interested in the outcome of the Bears v Broncos game last night. I wasn't necessarily pulling for a bad game for Cutler but I really wanted the Broncos to shine. There were a few moments when I thought the Broncos D had their act together (hey, it's all relative) but it was a downer of a game for us Broncos fans. Sigh. Keep an eye on Orton's finger . In other less than awesome news, apparently the updated average ranking position spreadsheet I was working on this weekend has disappeared into a deep, dark hole within my laptop. It's gone, no amount of searching every nook and cranny of the computer has forced it up out of its hiding spot. The silver lining here is that as I gather new rankings today, they will be even more updated than the ones I pulled on Friday. I've got my fingers crossed that I'll have a new version ready by this afternoon and will let you all know when it's ready to go. But today is a great day since...

In an effort to be a bit more hip to the scene in my nabe (that's NY-speak for neighborhood; used anywhere else? Am I just that out of it?), my husband and I took to the streets last night to find some fun sports bars in our neighborhood. Turns out this city loves baseball. In one bar all 7 screens were turned to baseball (including two different views of the CHW v BOS game) and we had to ask for one to show the football game on Fox. In the other bar, the football game was indeed on, but the 14 other screens all showed baseball - or horse racing. I realize it's still the preseason so I won't give up on these places yet but I was surprised. I guarantee sports bars in Boulder would have had way more football going on...am I going to be a football girl in a baseball town?! So let's get to today's linkage: FootballOutsiders led me to the updated news on Roy Williams on PFT - at this time it appears that he did not break his clavicle. But I've got to wonder, doe...

As promised, I've got more analysis on the average rankings position spreadsheet front for you all. So I started thinking about the aggregate Top 100 rankings that I've pulled together over the past few years and wondered (as I always seem to do...) how accurate and successful those rankings were. I'll be saving the big "ranking of the rankings" analysis on specific expert sites for the end of the 2009 season of course but I was curious about what happens to that overall average from all the sites I looked at...for example, how many of those players in the top 20 end up performing well enough that season to nab a spot in the following year's top 20 ranking? I went back through the FFLibrarian archives and found the average rankings for 2007, 2008, and of course 2009. From 2007 rankings there are 9 of the top 20 players that made a repeat performance in the 2008 top 20 rankings. And from the 2008 rankings, 11 of the top 20 are in this year's top 20 rankin...

It's a deliciously cool morning here in New York City and I'm truly looking forward to autumn in the city...but first, a little football tonight! I hope you all are loving the constant schedule of football as much as I am. In the meantime I've been all over twitter this morning enjoying the tweets; I had no idea I'd find twitter quite so appealing. I'd chalked it up as being a bit more voyeuristic than I wanted (says the woman who thoroughly enjoys reading her friends facebook status updates while rarely posting her own...) but honestly, twitter as a news feed is tremendous. Why didn't you guys push me in this direction before?! Onto the links of the day: FantasyFootballCalculator takes a look at where Derrick Ward has been drafted this summer - that is, until the dreaded major committee pronouncement from Tampa Bay. See what they say in Were you counting on Derrick Ward this year? to learn where you should be targeting Ward now. Find out which Seattle player...

I caved. I joined twitter. Fear not, I won't be an uber frequent tweeter but feel free to follow along with the occasional FF-related tweets - or just check out the latest tweets on the right side of the blog. I also wanted to get a link up to my latest Bruno Boys column - Riskiest Picks from the Top 100 . I came up with this list based off of the standard deviations I ran on the Average Rankings Position I posted last week. Those players with the highest standard deviation were the ones whom experts had the least amount of consensus on in their rankings. In some ways that makes them not only the risky picks of the Top 100 but also potentially the best values...so take a look!

I'm surrounded by a pile of really exciting paperwork right now - seriously, such a thing does exist. It's our settlement documents for our upcoming closing on our condo in Boulder. And I'm psyched. I'm off to seek out a notary here in NYC so that I can zip those documents back to Boulder. Exciting times, my football friends! Other exciting things are happening - just take a look at the links below for the latest on the football scene: The Hazean has created a list of Top 11 Touchdown Vultures for the 2009 - dudes you'll want to keep an eye on as you draft. Lots of rankings out there - take a look at Fantasy Football Oasis and their positional rankings . This link will take you to their standard re-draft rankings but they also have PPR rankings , dynasty rankings , and IDP rankings ...and every possible combination of those types of rankings. More rankings from the Fantasy Football Cafe - positional rankings only. And I know I've linked to these rankings bef...

It's that time of the week, friends. Time to announce the Preseason Week 2 contest winner...last week I asked for guesses at the receiver with the most receiving yards during the preseason week 2 games. And we've got a winner: Larry Dalton (aka RapidBucFan of Conference 2 in the FFLibrarian League). Congrats on targeting the right wide receiver for this week's contest, Larry! Larry suggested that Troy Williamson would bring in 98 yards this past week and while he underestimated Williamson ever so slightly, Williamson was the lead receiver this week with 147 yards. Larry's prize is a season-long subscription to FFXtreme and all its many tools and wiley ways to keep you at the top of your league. For the preseason week 3 games, I'm looking for guesses at the quarterback with the most passing yards - if you're interested in winning your own FFXtreme subscription, e-mail me with your QB guess and the number of passing yards you think he'll have. I'm on...

I knew that pulling off a 96-team league would be tough, that at times it would feel like herding cats, and that all sorts of fun personalities would emerge. Oh so true. The e-mail-style draft started yesterday morning and we're still dealing with a handful of absentee owners - so if you e-mailed me about taking that last open spot a few weeks ago and I let you know the spot was taken, well, you might be hearing from me again. As for the draft itself, I'm pretty pleased to have snagged Matt Forte in the 1.06 spot and Wes Welker with the 2.11 pick - I'm looking forward to what happens next! Speaking of drafts I'm participating in, follow along with another one I'm doing with the Bruno Boys Expert League Draft Results: Round 1 Recap . Onto the rest of today's links: Now that the 2 nd week of the preseason is in the books, see what the Bruno Boys have targeted as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Preseason QBs (Week 2) . Ahh , I love Football Outsiders. They kee...

Good morning, fantasy footballers. Well I've bragged about him before and I'll brag about him again now: Eric Bruntlett of the Phillies , my sister's friend's husband (yes, I'm diverging from football for a brief moment except not entirely since I've chatted Eric up about fantasy football). Bruntlett's unassisted triple play yesterday to end the Phillies v Mets game was just the 15 th unassisted triple play in league history - I can only imagine how great he felt waking up this morning. Awesome, nice work Eric! Also, this morning marks the start of the FFLibrarian monster league. Good times, there's already a good level of chaos with mis -drafts and absentee owners. You can follow along with the draft going on in each of the 6 conferences here . My next update is on the Average Ranking Position spreadsheet that I pulled together last week. I've updated it, not with new sites (not yet!), but with rankings within position - and I also ran the st...

I survived my meeting with a personal trainer - I was dead on with the presumption that I'd get my butt kicked for my poor posture (and man, are my shoulder blades ever paying for it today!) but at least I was complimented on my squats form. Anyway, one of my goals is to run faster, better, longer - all that good stuff. It's possible that my plan to run like Usain Bolt though might be in peril (the dude keeps breaking his own record!), but I'm trying to get inspired by having the World Track & Field Championships on in the background this morning (I guarantee my husband and brother-in-law are both quite jealous of my morning). Whether or not this will translate into speed at the gym is to be determined... But back to focusing on football! I love this tidbit from FootballOutsiders on Chad Ochocino kicking not only an extra point in last night's game but also a 61-yard opening kick to start the 2 nd half. Heads up Peyton Manning naysayers - he had a great night la...

Later this morning I'm meeting with a personal trainer for the first time in my life. When I joined a gym here in NY last week, along with the membership came the chance to meet with a trainer - who could say no to that? Looking forward to it except I'm sure to get a lesson on my poor posture. Truly I'm living the life of riley here - working on fantasy football, meeting with trainers, exploring NYC - gotta fit it all in I guess before I find myself a new library gig, right? Onto today's links... Wondering what to do if LaDainian Tomlinson falls to you in this year's draft? I recently did a RapidDraft and grabbed him at the 7 th overall spot but if you'd like to hear both sides of the LT argument, take a look at CBSSport . com's How to handle L.T. on Draft Day . Tony Holm has his Prognosticator column up on FantasySharks .com with his 2009 Draft Plan - I'm intrigued by his statement that this is the strangest draft year he has ever seen. All the ...

We have a winner. A round of applause for Aaron Burgos who came closest to guessing the running back with the most rushing yards during the Week 1 preseason games - and therefore won a season-long subscription to FantasyFootballXtreme . Aaron went with Glen Coffee and 105 yards and while Coffee came in at 67 yards, Aaron was the only one to wager a guess on Coffee. For the record, Samkon Gado (STL) came in 1st for the week with 93 yards and Tyrell Sutton (GB) of Northwestern fame (go Cats!) had 91 yards. Seeing as I've watched Sutton play in many, many games since I'm a Northwestern alum, I'm quite pleased to see him topping the preseason charts here. Not that I'm surprised at all. The guy is awesome. I don't want to get carried away with my homer love here but Sutton is possibly worth a late round pick in my book...very late round. But still! With the 2nd week of preseason starting up pretty soon here, let's get going on the next contest for a FFXtreme subscri...

I was walking down a beautiful tree-lined street in a nearby Brooklyn neighborhood yesterday afternoon (in search of a new coffee shop; it's now clear to me that nothing gets me exploring like a good cup of coffee) when it happened: I smelled fall. Some of the leaves must have been giving off that wonderful fall-is-here scent and I was reminded yet again that I adore fall. I'm one of those nerds that actually looked forward to going back to school every year, and the scent of late summer grass always makes me think of the fall sports I played. And of course, my football friends, fall means football! I've heard from so many of you about the average ranking position spreadsheet I posted about yesterday - I'll be adding to it and pulling out positional rankings. Hopefully I'll have the updated sheet up by the end of the weekend. I've put up the first page of the spreadsheet (with the averages) on google docs now in addition to Scribd (or you're still welcome ...

It's time for the 2009 average ranking position spreadsheet ! As I mentioned yesterday, I pulled Top 100 overall rankings from 10 fantasy football experts and averaged them together to create one monster average ranking. There are a few things to keep in mind: I tried to ensure that the experts all used the same scoring system (non-PPR by the way) but many sites didn't actually note their system at all. I pulled all of these rankings within the span of a few hours so that they represent rankings from the same time period/news/injury updates, etc. As in the past several years, I assigned a ranking of 125 to any player that wasn't ranked by a site. For example, several sites did not rank Donnie Avery within their Top 100 players, so I gave Avery a ranking of 125 from those sites to try and represent that missing rank. The top 30 overall players are as follows: Adrian Peterson 1.10 Michael Turner 2.90 Maurice Jones-Drew 3.20 Matt Forte ...

I'm amazed at how quickly the day passes when I'm not at work - I had this impression that without a job I'd be lolling around, bored and without a purpose, but turns out that beyond the whole "get to know the amazing city of New York" thing, I can actually find quite a few things to occupy my time. We'll see how long this lasts...especially as I sit in an un - airconditioned 85.1 degree apartment. We thought we could just wait out the rest of the summer without putting in a window unit but WOW it is hot and humid here. Onto today's links... We've got players returning to practice - Brandon Marshall and Chris Wells - which always makes fantasy owners happy. A search for WR fantasy sleepers from Rotoworld - I can't help but believe that when Rotoworld calls you a sleeper, you immediately become the player that everyone thinks they have the inside scope on, but in reality has just become a bit overblown and is suddenly drafted about a round too...

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this but I'm in heaven right now - we finally have wireless (and cable) and my life has just taken a serious turn for the better. At the risk of sounding like a future shut-in in the making, I couldn't be happier to be able to sit on my couch and write this post. Sure, I miss out on some of the crazies at the local coffee shop but I think I'm about to be so much more productive. So on that note, let's dive right in to today's headlines! FFToday takes a pretty solid stab at some Below the Radar - Sleepers . I feel like each of us might have our own take on what "sleeper" really means but this article does a pretty good job of locating later round players that could be real gems. Looking for team defense rankings? See what the Bruno Boys have to say in 2009 Fantasy Football Defensive Rankings . For those of you who are in the mood to take a quiz and test your FF knowledge, try Athlon/Grogan's 2009 Fantasy Quiz to se...

Today is a wonderful day: one of my dearest friends is at the hospital, gearing up to give birth to an amazing baby boy or girl and I, for one, am thrilled. Welcome to the world little one, can't wait to meet you. Another reason to love today? It's the start of the 2009 preseason - hurrah for football! And with the start of football is a FFLibrarian / FantasyFootballXtreme contest. Those who came by the site last year will remember that I gave away free season-long subscriptions to FFXtreme in some weekly preseason contests - and we're doing it again this year! So if you'd like to win a subscription to FFXtreme , e-mail me the name and rushing yards for the RB that you think will have the most rushing yards in this week's preseason games. It's a way to keep the preseason games a little more interesting - and thank you all for being loyal readers! As seems par for the course this time of year, let's hit up the big injury and roster news for the day. First...

Progress...I'm finally feeling a little bit more settled in New York. Funny how a bed, couch and real utensils can make a significant difference. I'm still anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Internet in our apartment since I'm basically a Starbucks lurker now - not my favorite way to spend a morning, though certainly could be far worse. I've heard from several of you about the annual average rankings that I pull together each August - don't worry, it's en route! That whole moving and lack of Internet thing has put a real cramp in my style but I'll be going out to a bunch of the best expert sites out there and pulling together their rankings to create one central average ranking. I should have that up about a week from now but if you're super eager for that info, take a look at the FFNerd who does something very similar. Something else to keep an eye on - I'll be doing another column for the Bruno Boys this season and I'm hoping to have my fir...

This might be a quick post since our furniture is set to be delivered in roughly one hour so my Internet time at the local Starbucks is a bit tight. I'll do what I can to get some of the best links up! Sadly I feel like there's a ton of injury news to update you on... Steve Smith injured his shoulder yesterday - looks like he'll miss a minimum of two weeks; hopefully this won't be a big deal but perhaps Muhammad and Jarrett should be on our radar a bit more now. Antonio Bryant will have his knee scoped and will likely miss 3-4 weeks . Seems to me like this bumps up Winslow's value early in the season as Bryant gets back in the swing of things - and suggests more of an emphasis on the running game perhaps? Felix Jones's toe injury might be flaring up - he was held out of practice for at least part of the day yesterday. Moving on from injuries, FFToolbox alerts us to the fact that Dwayne Bowe is practicing with the second and third stringers... hmm , not what ...

At long last I have arrived in NYC and have so many things I could say right now about the process of moving out here; some good, some bad. We're still not fully moved in yet - our furniture is all being delivered tomorrow so we've been going with the air mattress and eating out a lot route so far. Frankly I can't wait to have something other than the floor to sit on... Another quirk in our moving process is that we won't have Internet access in our apartment until this weekend (beyond our iPhones, which singlehandedly made our move 10x better by the way). Serious bummer for someone like me who relies on being able to wake up and get on her computer stat. But like the good librarian that I am, I'm kicking it at my local Brooklyn Public Library, enjoying the free wifi . So I have to admit I missed the big Hall of Fame game last night (New Yorkers might give me a pass - I was at the famous Grimaldi's Pizzeria with friends) but I've been catching up on the ga...

Welcome to the first ever guest post on FFLibrarian . I've been mulling over how to fill some of the void here this week since I've been trapped in a car all day long, moving to NYC and the perfect opportunity fell into my lap: the UltimateNYG offered to share his thoughts on the Giants players' fantasy value. Now here's the catch...he's not a fantasy football guy at all. He just knows a TON about the Giants. I think that almost makes him more valuable since he understands the gist of fantasy football and can share what he knows about the Giants as an avid fan, and turn that into helpful FF advice. So needless to say there are some things that I don't entirely agree with him on, but I think it's great to get his ideas out there. Do you all agree or disagree with his calls? Without further ado... Ultimatenyg knows very little about Fantasy Football but enough about the Giants to discuss 1/32 nd of the FF drafting stock. Let's go through each position o...

Well we're in Ohio visiting with family for a few days before rolling on in to NYC. My Internet access is not good so this will be brief but I've got the first ever guest post that will go up later this afternoon, so stay tuned. But in the meantime I thought I'd link back to the analysis I did this past year that looked at expert preseason rankings and determined which expert was the most accurate. See the results at: http://www.fflibrarian.com/2009/02/accuracy-analysis-for-2008.html I'll be back with my normal links next week!

Greetings from Omaha. As I've probably made abundantly clear, I'm en route from Colorado to NYC this week - and thank you all for your well wishes with the move. Today we have a very manageable trip from Omaha to Chicago where we'll stay with my college roommate. Should be a fun time. Fortunately that means I've got a little time for a post... Is Eli Manning about to become the highest-paid player in the NFL? See what the Fifth Down has to say about the deal that's in the works that will send $35 million guaranteed to Eli. RapidDraft's Schedule helps Hasselbeck , hurts Orton and Cassel takes a look at strength-of-schedule rankings for pass offenses. As Schauf notes, this obviously isn't going to dictate who you draft but is another bit of info to keep in mind as you draft. Looking for some breakout candidates? Look no further than FantasySharks . com's suggestions in Give me a breakout candidate . On the flip side, Ultimate Fantasy Football Strategy...

Dare I curse myself? I'd like to report there might be a real estate miracle happening in Boulder right now. At our condo to be exact. The condo has been on the market for a few months and really wasn't selling (despite its awesomeness) until perhaps now. It's basically the 11 th hour...and we think we have found a buyer. This is something you should all be cheering for since well not only would I really appreciate it, but it would delay my job search desperation (in a move to avoid poverty in NYC of course) and would ultimately mean more time spent on the blog. Anyway, I'm sitting in our living room waiting for the movers to arrive so here are a handful of quick links... A few quick injury notes - looks like Brandon Marshall injured his hamstring during Sunday's camp and Beanie Wells sprained his right ankle . I guarantee there will be more to come on both of those fronts so stay tuned. In fact, speaking of staying hip to news from training camp, remember to scop...