The Trouble with a Lockout...

... is that it makes writing a blog about fantasy football so difficult.
As this post hits the Internet, the National Football League and its players are still fighting each other over a boatload of money. However, by the time you read this, the owners and players may or may not have voted to settle their differences and get back to doing the things that generate said money. I imagine it's a little like a pregnant woman being days away from her due date and not being able to plan a lot of things because she could go into labor at any minute.
And speaking of painful things, the lockout complicates every injury-related issue in the football world. Take Peyton Manning, who has a pain in his neck (instead of being one for many people). How seriously should the Indianapolis Colts take his pain if they don't know when the season, or even the preseason, is going to start? And how are we as fantasy players supposed to gauge the relative value of a less-than-100% Manning if we don't know how many games everyone else is going to miss because of the lockout?
Then you have all the fantasy football magazines that hit the newsstands this summer, even though so many of the typical off-season questions have been put on hold. How can you take a fantasy football magazine seriously if it can't tell you where Kevin Kolb will be playing this fall? Surely, if there had not been a lockout, the Philadelphia Eagles would have resolved that matter long ago.
Multiply that question by about a hundred, even if most of the questions would be shrugged off in the fantasy sphere (Carson Palmer? No, thanks.), and you have the recipe for massive amounts of uncertainty -- the worst enemy of a fantasy football players.
Meanwhile, we, like the folks in the opening scene of "Casablanca," sit and wait for a CBA.
And wait.
And wait.
And wait.

Reviewing the Previews (Again)

By now, every fantasy football player is looking back at the season and wondering how everything went so wrong (or, in cases like the Fighting Amish, so right). One popular question: Did I get my advice from a bad source?
In this post, we look back at the predictions offered by four preseason fantasy preview magazines and consider whether they did any better than you would have fared picking your team this way.
QUARTERBACKS
Top 10 (in standard ESPN leagues): Michael Vick, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Drew Brees, Josh Freeman, Matt Schaub, Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco.
How the previews fared: There was amazing fidelity among the magazines at this position; nine quarterbacks appeared in all four previews' top 10 lists. ESPN and Fantasy League Football had Flacco in the top 10 and got seven players right. USA Today and the Sporting News substituted Eli Manning for Flacco and got six players right.
What happened: All the magazines thought that Tony Romo would stay healthy and that Mike Martz would at least try to keep Jay Cutler upright all season. And at this point, the less said about Brett Favre, the better.
RUNNING BACKS
Top 10 (actually, 11, because two players tied for 10th): Arian Foster, Adrian Peterson, Peyton Hillis, Darren McFadden, Jamaal Charles, LeSean McCoy, Chris Johnson, Michael Turner, Ray Rice, Maurice Jones-Drew, Rashard Mendenhall.
How the previews fared: It's as if they called each other before their printer deadline to exchange notes. The ESPN, Sporting News and Fantasy League Football previews got the same six players right (Johnson, Peterson, Jones-Drew, Rice, Turner and Mendenhall). USA Today missed on Mendenhall but had the other five players.
What happened: All four magazines showed too much faith in the bones and sinew of DeAngelo Williams and Frank Gore, and they all thought the St. Louis Rams would continue to ride on Steven Jackson's shoulders.
WIDE RECEIVERS
Top 10: Dwayne Bowe, Brandon Lloyd, Greg Jennings, Calvin Johnson, Roddy White, Mike Wallace, Hakeem Nicks, Andre Johnson, DeSean Jackson, Steve Johnson.
How the previews fared: Not well. USA Today got two players right (White and Andre Johnson). Fantasy League Football got those two plus DeSean Jackson. The other two previews got those three players plus Calvin Johnson.
What happened: Let's see ... Randy Moss was traded AND cut by different teams. Miles Austin and Larry Fitzgerald played on teams that tanked. Sidney Rice had migraines. And Reggie Wayne -- who, to be fair, missed the top 10 by two points -- lost a boatload of teammates to injury.
TIGHT ENDS
Top 10 (again, we go to 11 because of a tie): Jason Witten, Antonio Gates, Vernon Davis, Marcedes Lewis, Kellen Winslow, Chris Cooley, Rob Gronkowski, Dustin Keller, Aaron Hernandez, Zach Miller, Brandon Pettigrew.
How the previews fared: More fidelity. The Sporting News and Fantasy League Football got the same four players right (Gates, Davis, Witten and Winslow). USA Today got those four and added Miller. ESPN got those four and added Cooley.
What happened: Everyone in the Western world expected Dallas Clark to be the top tight end again. All four previews also expected stellar performances from Brent Celek and Tony Gonzalez. (Remember: You don't have to be a top-performing tight end to make the Pro Bowl.)
KICKERS
Top 10: Sebastian Janikowski, David Akers, Matt Bryant, Josh Brown, Dan Carpenter, Adam Vinatieri, Neil Rackers, David Buehler, Nick Folk, Jay Feely.
How the previews fared: Each preview got two players right. No preview picked Vinatieri, which is understandable, since it's not like he's ever made a big kick or anything.
What happened: Predicting kickers is always a crapshoot, but all four previews swung and missed on Nate Kaeding, Stephen Gostkowski, Ryan Longwell, Rob Bironas, Mason Crosby and Garrett Hartley.
DEFENSE/SPECIAL TEAMS
Top 10: Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, Arizona Cardinals, New York Jets, Atlanta Falcons, Tennessee Titans, Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns.
How the previews fared: All four previews hit on the Jets, Packers, Ravens and Steelers. Fantasy League Football made it five right with the Patriots. The Sporting News made it six right with the Bears and Titans.
What happened: Too much confidence in teams that either fired the head coach in midseason (Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers, Minnesota Vikings) or let the coach's contract expire at the end of the season (Cincinnati Bengals).
We'll be back with some news about postseason fantasy football.

They Predicted WHAT?

Thanks to those of you who voted in our Matt Forte poll. You voted to leave him in the lineup, so he'll start for the People's Pigskin when his Chicago Bears take on the San Francisco 49ers tonight.

If you've read this far, then there's a good chance you invested some money this past summer in a fantasy football magazine or two (or five). All of them are filled with statistics and predictions about how everyone will fare in the upcoming NFL season. Well, the season is halfway over for most of the teams in the National Football League. (And for the Houston Texans and the New York Giants, it's more than halfway over.) Now is as good a time as any to see how those predictions are turning out.

In the first half of the 2009 season, the top-scoring quarterback in fantasy football, at least according to ESPN rules, is (drum roll, please): Aaron Rodgers, with 167 points. By the way, he's also the top-scoring player in fantasy football. In its fantasy preview, Sports Illustrated ranked him 2nd among quarterbacks. ESPN ranked him 5th.

The top-scoring running back is Maurice Jones-Drew. Sports Illustrated ranked him 3rd among running backs. So did ESPN.

So far, not bad, right? The top-scoring wide receiver is Vincent Jackson. Sports Illustrated ranked him 26th among wideouts and said "He's definitely worth a fourth- or fifth-round pick." ESPN ranked him 18th, despite calling him "the primary option in San Diego."

The top-scoring tight end is Vernon Davis. Sports Illustrated ranked him 14th among tight ends and called him "a gamble." That's kind compared with ESPN, which ranked him 22nd and said "We have a creeping sense that the main problem with Davis is the space between his ears."

The top-scoring kicker is Lawrence Tynes, who was ranked 5th by Sports Illustrated and 15th by ESPN. (Yes, he has the advantage of an extra game, so if you want to disqualify him, the No. 2 kicker is David Akers, who was ranked 3rd in both publications.)

The top-scoring defense/special teams is the New Orleans Saints. Sports Illustrated ranked them 22nd. ESPN ranked them 27th and said the Saints free agent acquisitions on defense "smacked of desperation." Oops.

Who did the magazines think would be No. 1? At quarterback, both picked Drew Brees (currently 5th). At running back, both picked Adrian Peterson (currently 3rd). At wide receiver, both picked Larry Fitzgerald (currently 3rd). At tight end, Sports Illustrated picked Tony Gonzalez (currently 6th), while ESPN picked Jason Witten (currently 15th). At kicker, Sports Illustrated picked Jason Elam (currently 24th), while ESPN picked Stephen Gostkowski (currently tied for 3rd). At defense, both picked the Pittsburgh Steelers (currently 6th).

None of this is meant to disparage the fine work of ESPN, Sports Illustrated, or anyone else. It's merely a reminder that these magazines should not be treated like Scripture.

Enjoy tonight's game. We'll be back tomorrow with our weekly Landshark Maniacs predictions. Here are the results of the Forte poll.

[polldaddy poll=2231829]

Are you for real? It's so hard to tell (from just a magazine)

Like lots of fantasy football fans, I buy a handful of magazines and read many Web sites every year. Each magazine and site has its quirks, but all of them have a surprising number of things in common.

One of many examples: Every single fantasy football source, informed or not, will tell you (in their best Charlton Heston voice)

THOU SHALT NOT PICK A KICKER BEFORE THE LAST ROUND!

They say it as if you're violating the First Commandment if you pick a kicker early.

However, in every single mock draft I see, even those stacked with "experts," there is at least one person who drafts a kicker before the last round. In this particular one, only one person did this, but in others you get as many as half the drafters doing it.

If you can't convince your own colleagues how to draft, how do you expect to convince the rest of us?