Freaks And Follies: A Fantasy Affair

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It sounds more like The Last Naked Warrior laughing and pointing outside a certain brighton bar than a fantasy preview, but I'll do my best to put my latest obsessions into coherent thoughts that are guaransheed to make you jump for joy at your fantasy draft.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am coming off my worst fantasy football season of all time. Not because I had a bad draft, or even finished that poorly (4 out of 12 would have makhtar creaming his pants at this point) in my main league, but rather I made quite possibly the worst roster transaction of all time.

After snagging veritable studs in the late rounds like Jay Cutler (10th) Pierre Thomas (14th) and DeAngelo Williams (7th) I decided

that I needed to bolster my WRs since I wasn't feeling confident in my 6th round pick of Sharod White. OOOOOPS After four weeks I had only started him once, but my team was rolling and was 4-0 and scoring boatloads of points thanks to Jay Cutler, Reggie Bush, and the newly returned Brandon Marshall from suspension. Feeling like The Fegonomist eager to try out the poopocalypse opener, I shopped Roddy White and DeAngelo Williams for a top wideout. In principle it made sense since I had some RB depth. Right? Right!!? The trade went down like this:

WR Vincent "Vincente" Jackson

WR Sharod "Rowdy Roddy" White

RB DeAngelo Williams

for

WR Braylon Edwards (At the time was struggling. Oh wait, he was always struggling)

RB Rasta Ricky Williams

"Make it hurt so good"

In the end, The 7-11 Big Gulps limped into the playoffs after highway robbery on the part of Chad's Nads. I lot 5 of my last 9 games following the trade including a pathetic 68 point effort in week 5 due to of course a lack of WRs. Basically the trade killed my season, and left the door wide open for Coach Coolbaugh and his high flying Southeast Jerome to compete with Patriot Pride and Chad's Nads for the championship.

So there it is, I traded away a top 10 WR, the top overall RB and player and a WR who was better than both players I received for two pieces of crap who didn't even deserve PT on their own NFL teams.

With that preface, I'm gonna lecture you on the Freaks and Follies of this year's upcoming fantasy season. And I'm not gonna tell you the team or position or when to draft them. So figure it out.

Freak 1: Visanthe Shiancoe (NSFW)

The guy has a snake cock. Great. He also was a former NY Giant, which is apparently the promised land of TEs. Get ready for Darcy Johnson. Shiancoe is fast, is on a team that runs the ball, and is on a team with former Texans QB Sage Rosenfels most likely to start at QB. Rosenfels made Owen Daniels a regular target last season when he played, and Shiancoe really started to come on down the stretch for the Vikes. They don't have any great WRs, and their good(ish) WR Mr. Weekend at Bernie's and their young WR Percy Harvin are both too fast for Sage's Top Ramen-esque arm. Rosenfels is gonna feed Shiancoe after the vikes defense gets them in trouble and they have to pass the ball to stay in it. 8 TDs. 3 vs the packers since they can't cover a TE. Too bad Butters will read this and beat out Chan for him in the 3rd round.

Freak 2: Fred Jackson

Any of you who saw the Pats game in week 17 saw what Fred Jackson can do. Guy will be definitely worth a start as a flex back in the first 3 weeks, and probably has some value beyond that also. TO, Trent Edwards, Lee Evans will probably look pretty good these first few weeks, but with Lynch out, Jackson will bust out some long runs and screen passes in the way Ladell Betts used to when Portis had his injuries. He'll go for 100 yards in each of the first three games.

Freak 3: Torry Holt

Probably the most controversial player of these three, but allow me to make my case. Holt is no doubt one of the best to come out of the Mike Martz crackpot offense, but he finally had a poor year after 5 consecutive pro bowls. Nobody wants him this year. He's not going to catch a ton of long balls like he used to, but he'll at least have a QB playing this year who isn't made of glass and he won't be playing behind the worst line in football. He's got Maurice(a) Jones-Drew to take most of the pressure, and it'll be Garrard's first year with an NFL wideout. Garrard I'm not worried about at all. If he can make Reggie Williams and a coked up Matt Jones catch anything, he has my vote of confidence. Torry Will catch 90 balls and go for 1000 as he harnesses his inner Rod Smith.

Sure there's a ton of other guys I could mention, but why tip my hand. On to the follies...

You weren't gonna draft Mr. Rosencrantz were you?

Folly 1: Jerricho Cotchery

Oh what could have been. Through no fault of his own, the walls of Jerricho will come tumblin' down. Guy is good, no doubt. Rookie QB, good TEs, and two good backs will give the Jets all the reason they need to ignore Cotchery except in desperate situations. Jets go thunder and lightning with Jones/washington and think they're the new Falcons and probably lose more games than they should because Jones isn't Turner Burner and Dirty Sanchez isn't the Matty Ice of '08. Speaking of the Turner Burner...

Folly 2 (Two Times Tuesday) : Michael Turner/Matt Ryan

Honestly I can't come up with a good reason why Turner will actually suck, so this is more of a "he's gonna go way too high for what he does this year" folly than a guy who actually tanks. It was a magical season last year for Atlanta. Like it was for New Orleans the year before that. But there is no way Matt Ryan plays as well, and he'll get more passing plays to boot which leaves Turner on the back burner. Also Norwood is just as good as Turner and you'll see more 60-40 split than last year in an effort to keep both "fresh" for the playoffs they won't be attending.

Folly 3 (Threepeat): Those NYG RBs EarthWind and Fire

The giants put on a clinic in run blocking last season. They probably blocked 4 yards on most running plays and then the RBs picked up the remaining 1 after contact.

It's stupid how little these guys do on more than half of these plays. They follow their blocks then run away from people and gain maybe 3 yards of value added offense. A muppet drunk could run behind that line.

Derrick Ward who actually had a little wiggle to him gets to compete with Earnest goes to the endzone and a potentially healthy Cadillac Williams. At least there are people concerned with his sex life because he is going to a wasteland of an offense that's already overcrowded with decent RBs. Better luck next year.

Jacobs will score his TDs but Bradshaw will take away just enough to keep Jacobs from being the top guy he could be. I doubt he scores 15 tds, the giants won't be as good of an offense or as good of a line. Obviously Jacobs has value, just not as a slam-dunk No. 1 guy that people might see him as. He doesn't catch any passes. At all. Bradshaw and Ward are role players with no future. Stick to former giants RB Ryan Grant if you want a true number one guy.

That's that and I'll add the disclaimer that I probably don't know anything about anything anyways. I'm just really excited that football is coming back. So excited that I'm excited about the TO show because I might see some clips of football. And some pseudo hot azn real estate agents.

Good luck drafting cause y'all are gonna need it.