And Now, a Moment of Sanity

The last few days have featured a lot of noise (here and elsewhere) about the mad dash to fill and/or remake rosters since the NFL owners and players decided they wanted to keep making money after all. And there will be plenty more noise over the next few weeks as free agents, backups, unhappy campers and innocent draft picks get shuffled like chips at the World Series of Poker.
Very little has been said so far about the implications for those of us playing fantasy football. For those of you with the fantasy bug, we at the People's Pigskin have some simple, easy-to-follow advice.
Take a deep breath.
Feel better? Good. Now calm down.
It's not that there won't be players who come out of nowhere to take the fantasy world by storm. (Kevin Kolb seems like an early candidate for breakout status.) It's just that a lot of the players finding or looking for new homes would be backups in most fantasy leagues.
For example, let's look at the quarterbacks. Looking at ESPN's list of top-scoring fantasy QBs from last season, the top performer who won't be in the same spot this year is Carson Palmer, who ranked only 13th with 212 points. If you claim that Palmer doesn't count until the Cincinnati Bengals come to their senses and trade him, the top performer who moved is Donovan McNabb, who was traded to the Minnesota Vikings. (Perhaps you heard about it.) And he ranked 21st with 165 points.
Let's move on to the running backs. Ahmad Bradshaw nearly tanked this column idea by leaving the Giants. Thankfully, he didn't. Instead, the top mover for this position is Ronnie Brown, who went to the Philadelphia Eagles. He scored a grand total of 112 fantasy points last season, tying him for 30th place among rushers with Brandon Jackson.
The biggest impact may come from wide receiver, and that's because several players who made contributions to fantasy teams last season are still looking for work as of this writing. The three top maybe-they'll-prove-to-be-movers:

• Terrell Owens (15th among WRs last season, 147 points).
• Braylon Edwards (22nd, 124).
• Derrick Mason (tied-24th, 117).

At tight end, someone might actually have to adjust the starting lineup. That's because Zach Miller, who just joined the Seattle Seahawks, ranked 9th last season at his position with 90 fantasy points. Other than that, the people who started most games in fantasy leagues last season are in the exact same place they were at this point last year.
(And before you ask, no, we're not going to discuss kickers here.)
Now that you're all calm again, we'll be back with a look at the NASCAR season.