akareckas

I'm in a 4 man keeper that is a little more yardage heavy than the standard scoring. It's 14 teams with 3WR, 1Rb, 1OFlex, 1TE 1QB, 1K 1D and a pretty short bench. So far I'm keeping Peyton Manning, Steve Slaton and Roddy White. THe last spot would go to Lynch for sure if it weren't for the suspension... I've also got Witten and Eddie Royal to choose from. Since the pool is deep and I have to start a TE, I'm stuck on Witten or Lynch. What do you think?!?

The only question is Jackson vs Smith. It's a pretty tough call in that jackson is basically free based on the pick you are giving up whereas Smith costs you a 5th which shoudl still offer you a decent player. Personally I'm not a Kevin Smith fan and hate the lions so I'd do Jackson but I can see why you'd go the other way. RBs are hard to come by. In the end I would look at what the other guys are probably going to keep and hang onto whichever commodity is more scarce (Smith or a 5th rounder).

This is a terrible deal. Cutler is better than Rodgers and Barber is worth more than a rookie pick. Face it, if your rookie performed at Barber's level you'd be over the moon...so just keep Barber!

I'd keep Roddy White in pretty much any format over Wes Welker. White is the top WR on Atlanta and Welker is a (very good) second banana. I love me some Wes Welker, but White is a notch better and has more 'boom' potential.

Tailbacks are harder to come by. Keep Barber and take advantage of the deep pool or WRs.

Slaton in a keeper league by a mile.

Regardless of where Vick signs he is undraftable due to his status as a 'maybe' for up to 6 weeks. As for his impact on the team he signs with, I'd go ahead and ignore his presence altogether. If he goes to a team to start (Minnesota? Carolina?) it doesn't matter because you didn't draft one of their terrible QBs to begin with. If he goes to a team as the presumptive wildcat option then his presence on the field might slightly enhance the value of the other weapons as opposing Defences are forced to pay attention to another threat. The most likely scenario is that he has zero fantasy impact on any player on his new team save the quarterback he is trying to replace (whom you wouldn't have touched with a 10' pole anyway).

I'm pretty high on both of these guys because they are the unquestioned feature backs on their team....a rarity these days. Having said that, I'd make the move for Gore. San Francisco plays a slightly easier (but quite similar) schedule to the Redskins and has the all important week 16 matchup vs Detroit. I also think Gore is less risky due to his status as the feature offensive weapon on a run-first team. It's a close call and they are both in the bottom half of my top 10 but in the end I'd go with Gore.

I agree with this. The holdout, more than his talent, the playbook or the QB will determine his 2009 success. Long holdouts traditionally are absolutely horrible. More generally, I just avoid rookie WRs in redraft leagues unless I'm taking a flier in the last few rounds. They are far too unpredictable and there is always some tool who drafts the most hyped rook WR about 5 rounds too early. It's safer to just follow a strategy of not drafting rookie WRs at all. take them right off the cheatsheet.

MacGregor found this site: www.btfsports.com Offers a device that connects to hand held devices for auction bidding and interacts with software usable over hte internet. Pretty cool. If it's not an auction, I'd go with the Draft Buddy via laptop hooked up to an In Focus projector and MSN Messenger for the stragglers. Surely one of you has a laptop and a job that allows you access to a projector. This is way easier than some manual draft board.

Literally every league I am in (4 football, one each in hockey baseball and basketball) involves some people in person and others on MSN Messenger. Basically one person at the live draft who is not already recording the picks acts as the messenger person and IMs the picks as they are made, then tells the live group what the remote owners are picking. Very simple.

I agree with the first guy......D will be worse due to the ends having left. Also, the quote is from their quarterback. Who cares what Brees says about their d?

Holmes on the way up and Ward on the way down is the right way to read this. This year I see them being about the same, with one of them very close to 1000 yards (on the high or low end). I see Holmes peaking between 2010 and 2012 with a 1100 and 8 season but never hitting elite status at any point in his career. Limas Sweed will probably rise up around the time Ward is used up so there will never be a Holmes-as-focal-point season. My 2009 Projections: Holmes - 65 - 860 - 5 Ward - 75 - 920 - 6 You cuold really swap those numbers and I'd be just as happy with them.

I'm in two of each and the two auctions are dynasties with multi year contracts, a rookie draft, holdouts, restricted free agency, franchise tags, IDP. We tried to make these two as complex as possible to put a group of active owners into a year round format that is tough to win. It's a ton of fun but I definitely appreciate my redraft and my keeper draft pools as well. Having done plenty of both, I do consider the auctions to be the 'big leagues' because they tend to attract the more seasoned, active owners.

Personally I think you keep the draft order as is. The worst teams will probably have the worst keepers anyway. If you insist on doing a lottery (which I do for the rookie draft in my dynasty football, hockey, baseball and basketball pools) you need to assign random numbers. For 12 teams it looks like this: 1st Place Team: 1 2nd Place Team: 2-3 3rd Place Team: 4-6 4th 7-10 5th 11-15 6th 16-22 7th 23-29 8th 30-37 9th 38-46 10th 46-55 11th 56-66 12th 67-78 Then go to a website that will generate a random number. Get the site to generate a number from 1-78 inclusive about 25 times. The first number determines the first pick, 2nd determines 2nd pick etc. Drop the repeats. Having said all that, you can just put names in a hat. As long as the last guy has his name down 12 times and the first guy has his name down once, you've got a weigthed lottery.

I agree with these two guys. Maybe 1000 and 8 if things go well. The overlooked item in this thread is that the #1 corners in the Beast are better than those in the NFC North. I think Williams will have solid but unspectacular numbers. In my auction leagues I think someone will like him MUCH more than I do. In my drafts, I figure some bozo will take him in the 4th round.

It's a bit of a wierd prediction...there are too many names below him for sure. As far as reasons for optimism, there are a few: 1. He should get more looks this year due to changes at his position. 2. As a younger player, his career is on the way up. 3. Rams did a few things to get the O Line under control. He had a little success last year as a 3rd option with a terrible O Line in his rookie year....to an extent, all of those factors have been improved as they relate to his potential.

With Fantasy Auctioneer down for the count til 2010 I'm at a loss. I use myfantasyleague.com and can't find a site to run the auction. With my entire league scattered across a couple of different cities we're contemplating a marathon MSN Messenger session......which is about as appealing as chlamydia. Anybody know of a site that can handle this??

I've never used RT Sports but I'm in two Auction IDP leagues on MFL and they have been great so far.

This is year 5 in the league and we've always done the auction off line. Don't think we can do it through the site but if you're feeling charitable and want to explain how, I'd really appreciate it. Email to akareckas@hotmail.com so I don't hijack the board would be great.

THat's the right mix for me too. 1 full point PR puts WElker and Bush to far up and kills off guys like Barber.

This looks about right to me at first blush. I would get rid of Maroney and Graham in favour of Selvin Young and Reggie Bush (yes even in non-ppr). Here's my 11-20 11 Grant 12 Turner 13 White 14 Lewis 15 McFadden 16 Jones-Drew 17 Jones 18 Edge 19 Bush 20 Young I'm a bigger believer in Turner and White than most for sure and I agree with 9-Route that McFadden will be a top 15 back. I think the guys at 16-20 are pretty interchangeable.

Addai, Jackson, Westy > Gore. In non-ppr I like Portis more too. Don't get me wrong, I think Gore is a lock for the first round in most formats but his status as the best player in a horrible offence limits his value for me.

The Eagles are notoriously a poor WR team for FF so I'm not thinking this does much for any of the backups. Reid will probably revert to his natural tendency of spreading the ball around. The one exception could be Jackson who has hte playmaking ability to turn in a big game or two. Of course rookies rarely pull it off but if I were gambling I'd go with him over Baskett or Lewis who are journeyman NFLers and garbage in FF. As for the guy who lost Curtis...get a grip. You have 6 good WRs and you will find a lot of people who would have started Calvin Johnson and maybe Santana Moss over Curtis anyway. Vincent Jackson on the other hand sucks. He's a faker.

I'm going to pile on this one too. Lewis is in a much better position than McGahee at this point in time. When they were healthy I saw them a lot closer together than most people so the injury to McGahee basically bounced him off my board. There is a place for him on my team but not as early as I would have to draft him. Lewis on the other hand remains solid, predictable value.