Evil Genius

While we are in the mood to do stupredictions.. 1) VJax leads the league in RecTDs with 17. 2) Steve Slaton re-emerges into Fantasy relevance. Not sure how, but he does, all the while being haunted by the ghost of Old Domanick Davis 3) Lions make the playoffs with a Wildcard birth and win a playoff game. 4) DeMarco Murray rushes for 1050 RuYds and 10 TDs, and catches 30 balls for 300 5) The Pack repeats as SuperBowl champs

In reply: 1. Yes. They do. Not so much in football as in, like, life. Ben is the opposite of a good human being. And, dull to watch. Pump fake. Pump fake again. Look, another pump fake. He is pump faking my soul. No wait - his own. 2. In no context is this true. Not even for one minute of one pre-season game is it legitimate. But it makes me giggle to think it. 3. IS he? or WILL he be? He isn't, but...he might. I would cheer for it, actually. If he is, Lions go 9-7. Fak, 10-6. 4. There is obviously something about Quinn we don't know.

I was looking through Pre-season game #1 and I don't think he got a touch. Teaching him to block? Was he in the game at all? - I did not see it.

One of two fates for the Eagles this year: alpha) Vick gets hurt, and none of this matters. bravo) Vick stays healthy and the Eagles lose to the Pack in the NFC championship game. Dream season indeed.

Parrish or Nelson. Parrish is currently hurt. That's not new for him. I like Nelson to do a little something this year.

The perk is total and utter CONTROL. Bwah hahahahahahahaha ! But seriously - I get to host these dweebs at my house and have them drink my beer, and then throw them two parties throughout the year, and have them drink my beer and I make ribs...and then, when something doesn't go their way they complain. I love this job.

In Fantasy Football, I have drafted out of the hole twice, and 11th another. Once second place finish and two championships. In Fantasy Baseball, I have drafted out of the hole, and 11th position, twice. Two championships, one second place finish. In 20+ Drafts, across all sports, the hole is where I seem to have my luck. I guess I just like the hole.

I am the Commish of a 5-Keeper Keeper League. For one thing, the Commish approves all trades - I am only policing for bullcrap and collusion. This weeds out any nonsense. Second, our Keep rules that you must forsake a 1st round pick for your first keeper, 2nd round pick for your 2nd keeper etc. To keep someone in the second round, you must keep someone in the 1st round, etc. There are a handfull of round-specific keeps (like you can keep a D/ST in Round 10 - never happens), but Keepers are not relative to where you drafted them last year. Keepers are due on June 1st. During NFL playoffs, even after the SuperBowl leading up to June 1st, there are many trades involving Fantasy Draft picks. There are no rules limiting these. You could conceivably trade away your 1st round pick, but it would be suicide - you could not keep anyone you got in return and would destroy your subsequent draft. 95% of trades involving picks are for 6th round picks or lower (just below the Keep threshold). For example, I had 'too many Keepers' on my team this year, mostly because I had Arian Foster come out of nowhere on my team. So, after the Fantasy season was over, I traded him for a 6th and an 8th round pick. This might seem like not a lot, but actually it is tons. It means the other Owner gets Foster, and declares him as a Keeper, but he gives up several crucial pieces of his Draft position to do so. In the off-season, there are always picks being thrown around as guys try to solidify their keepers, with 6th to 9th round picks being thrown around frequently. A couple extra rules: - you are not obligated to Keep anyone, even after trading players for picks or vice versa, in any combination - after the June 1st declaration, you may still trade away players and picks, until 24hrs before the draft, but if you acquire a player at this point, he must be kept. - you may trade players and/or picks during the Draft itself - if you traded away picks such that you are short, your Draft finishes short and you must fill using FA/WW - if you have extra picks, you may use a two player practice squad to carry the extra player(s) up to and including Week 5 of the season There is a huge advantage to having extra picks, and getting to carry the PS. A typical season looks like this: Draft in late June. Trading and Free Agency are then opened, once rosters are loaded. Around Week 7 or 8, some teams are suffering, while others are doing well. Losing teams begin to offer middle-ground players and underachievers for Draft picks to the contenders. The contenders part with picks to shore up their line-ups for the playoff run. Week 10: trade deadline. The fire-sales are on. Yet,really top end guys don't move because regardless of how poor you are doing, you cannot sell away your true Keepers - you would be killing your future to part with your top four guys. Week 17 and onward: Teams with 6 or more solid Keepers 'sell' the Keepers to other teams, getting middle-round picks in return. Last year I got a 7th rounder for Bowe and a 9th rounder for Blount. Better to get that than throw them back in and get nothing. The guy who gives me the pick analyzes the potential Draft Board and realizes the odds of having said player fall to them in the 6th round or beyond, and makes the sacrifice to make sure they get. We Draft worst to first, for the 1st nine rounds, and serpentine after that. It works great. The team who finishes last generally throws everyone back in and drafts alone in Rounds 1-3, maybe 4 and 5 too, getting top choice of everyone thrown back in. The low finishers grab at the young RBs, potential break-outs and rookies, trying to catch the next big thing. If you draft well from the head position, it is never more than a two-year turn around into contention. This year, the lead man drafted Ingram, Bradford, Freeman, Wallace and Daniel Thomas in Rounds 1-5 by himself. He's then traded Freeman, Bradford and Wallace for Gates and Brees, and his team looks like it could win this year. If your league has too-few Keepers, none of these dynamics can work. One-keeper? Why bother? The point of a Keeper league is to reward good team management, and drag some success from one year to the next, half way between a Dynasty and a Redraft. If you don't make the Keepers deep enough to do so, you're making a mess of it, and asking for trouble. For one thing, the non-Keepers being thrown around in a 1-player keep are HUGE - players that can make or break your season. With Keepers in the 4-8 range, the players and picks that get thrown around are less likely to individually king-make another squad, provided that keepers are contingent on sacrificing the first picks of the Draft. Trying to get 5 keepers that together, have more production than what I could Draft from a given position, is key to success. Case in point: If I have a solid team, and I get Colston at the trade deadline, it makes me better, sure - but not so much that everyone is quivering. Conversely, if I have All-Day, and I manipulate the Keeper rules to get Foster in the first round of drafting, then I am a force to be reckoned with - and everyone wants to kill the trading thing. Better design = less monkey business and more trading fun.

The above is: #22 Don't be afraid to reach for a player if you are confident. Adding further to the list: #23 For the Draft and beyond, try to scour multiple information sources. If you are on CBS, especially, it's easy to get lazy and accept their player-information as current and accurate. It often isn't. Develop a consensus-type opinion from various sources. Then, go with your gut. #24 Play in a league with the right kind of stakes for your pocketbook and mentality. Too little at stake, you will not care. Too much at stake, you will second guess yourself. Play for the right amount. #25 Get in a league where you trust the Commish, if not every Owner. The right guys, whether experienced or green, cut-throat or for laughs - you will know when you feel right about it. There are way too many leagues out there to be wasting your time playing with dishonourable a-holes.

Andre Roberts appears to be the #2 WR in Cardinal-ville, according to recently released depth charts. If the Cards sign Lee Evans, however, both Roberts and Doucet are likely not as interesting. Both were un-Owned in my Dynasty leagues after the Rookie Draft.

I am looking to start a thread about sneaky Dynasty plays. As camps roll and the pre-season comes upon us, I think this is where we could put up names of players just below the Dynasty radar. These are young players that could develop into something meaningful that might get you an edge, maybe, on your Dynasty chums. Right now there are a couple of guys who might not be on 25-man Dynasty rosters, already gathering a bit of attention on the Board. Denarius Moore is making waves in camp, and might not have been picked up in rookie drafts. Please feel free to add yours here, and assessments of why they might hit.

Holy crapola. I didn't see that. Well, he got A.J. 'cause of the Hilliard pick, but other than that, he weaved and bobbed into some Kung Fu awesomeness.

If this is a PPR league, I think we just found our winner. Heck, even if it's not...this guy is going in the 7th round of some mocks I've seen. At 4.11 in the Rookie draft? What?

Dezmon Briscoe (who?) seems to be making the most of his time in camp, according to CBS Sports. With the WR sitch there being what it is, Briscoe has an outside chance to win some playing time in an up-and-coming offense. 25-man or deeper rosters, add him to the Radar. As of Today, the 10th, he is the WR #3 on the depth chart, according to Rotoworld.

Julius Thomas seems to be making some large-ish waves in camp. He was undrafted in my 12-Team Dynasty rookie draft. Scoop. Per Rotoworld, he is listed as top of the depth chart for Aug 10th.

Based almost entirely on your crazed, feverish recommendations, I took a flyer on Thomas in my Dynasty league, where he was undrafted in a 48-pick rookie draft. I even took a flyer in my Keeper League, throwing him onto my practice squad, dropping Ben Tate. I hope he does 30% of what my imagination hopes he does.

if you are the Commish, #18 Commish tip i)...have the Draft not at your house but at a bar or restaurant. Less to clean up, before and after. Nobody drinks your booze, eats your grub, annoys your wife or riles up your dog. Try to find a place with a private area or room. #19 - Commish tip ii) get a cute sticker/Draft Board girl with an assertive personality. Have her call 'time' on guys, instead of you. Since she's cute, and obviously female, no one will say ### to her when she lays down the law. Tell her to call 'time' whenever there is a significant pause, and give one minute after that. Things will go smoothly and quickly. Have everyone chip in $2 to buy her a little something, and she'll likely do it again next year. #20 - Commish tip iii) have all Owners fill out Draft cards - recipe index cards work great - and have them put all possible contact information on them. Cell phones, e-mail. These cards are a good double check against the Board, and you can keep these handy for the season at your computer desk. #21 - Commish tip iv) if they refuse to pay up at the Draft, but you are going to cut them slack anyway, simply inform them that they cannot Add/Drop or Trade until such time as their fees are square. They will pay.

You would be correct sir.

#13 - Drink marginally less beer than the average Owner at the Draft. #14 - Don't let others borrow or work off your (highly marked and notated) cheat sheets #15 - Sneak in a little trash about the late round picks you actually hope to snatch up, and when you snag them, say "well, I guess somebody has to take X...I will endure the pain".

Another inside scoop. Recently, all the Wide Outs in St. Louis got together for a barbeque. Danny Amendola was absent however as he was attending a support meeting for caucasion receivers. Concerned as to the sheer numbers at the BBQ, the police went to bust it up, thinking it was an unauthorized revamp of the Million Man March. When the police approached the group, and the men explained they were the Wide Receivers from the Rams, the cops let them go unmolested, considering the entire group harmless and irrelevant. Still, Mardy Gilyard was undaunted by this act of apathy from law enforcement, and spontaneously broke out in song, belting the main theme from 'Man of La Mancha' in B-Flat: The Impossible Dream.

I love Ray Rice this year, to be all that, plus plus...but even he should come with an insurance policy. With Willis finally gone, who, if anyone, is his handcuff? Jalen Parmele? Or someone else?

With the non-even spread of high-end Keepers, the method I selected looks even better. The Expansion teams will be instantly competitive. The guy who has Vick should sacrifice only his 1st rounder, keep only Vick, and draft with the expansion teams in round two !

I really only skimmed this thread, so excuse me if I missed something. But here's what you do: For the purposes of the expansion draft, each Keeper is worth a 1st, then second round pick, for the 10 existing teams. If you already do it this way, fine. If the rounds you sacrifice for Keepers is different, too bad - you have to do it this way for the purposes of expansion - and to get the new teams in on ground level. If this causes someone to suck-hole out and go home, replace their sorry asses at the same time. This should not be a problem for a solid, well-designed money league. Then, in every other year going forward, you can go back to the alternate method of Keeper selection vs. loss of picks. Next, map out the existing Keepers onto the Draft Board, and simultaneously factor in where the new guys will Draft. This means that your draft board looks like this, hypothetically that the new guys end with say, positions #3 and # 8. Owners: Team TDs, Yippie, Expansion #1, Beer,SWAG, Texas, Expansion #2, Click, N Dalton, Pruitt, Cleavage, Let me. Round 1: Rodgers, Foster, XX CJ, AP, Peyton, LeSean, XX, Charles, Fitz, Vick, Mendy Round 2: Wayne, AJ, XX, Jennings, Forte, Nicks, SJax, XX, Rice, Brees, noone, White I have picked the Keepers, for fun. Then, you have your Serpentine Draft as normal, with the Expansion teams picking alone in Rounds #1 and #2. Yes, they are at a slight disadvantage for the Expansion year, but this will not matter the year thereafter, as the values will fluxuate enough to make two Keepers viable for them, assuming they are not complete dolts. Notice that they could pick up Wallace, Brees, Brady, Mendy, Turner, or some other viable keepers right away, and if they draft young, players like Thomas, Ingram or other up- and comers will be there for 2012. Bob's your mother's brother.

In recent developments, Derek Anderson was recently seen washing vehicles at a male topless car wash in Carolina. It was speculated he got the job as an income security measure. Interestingly, his first customer was Tony Pike. More wanting of a clean car than an eyefull of beefcafe, Tony was outside having a smoke when Derek appeared in the parking lot to playfully toss Tony a sponge. Sadly, the sponge sailed wide of the target, only to be caught by a passing stray dog, who ran the sponge into an adjacent competitor's establishment. As a result, Derek received a nasty letter from his boss. And though he remains employed, it is rumoured Derek may be transfered to another facility.

With Breaston out the door, do either of these dudes pick up the slack in Arizona, opposite Fitz, and the ball from Kolb? Does either warrant consideration in Fantasy, with #3 WR possibilities? 50rec, 600 ReYds, 5TDs...?