2010 Draft Special

Here's the fresh meat the NFL draft brought fantasy players for 2010. Don't forget: you have the special opportunity to tune into our thoughts as they happen by following @The_Roundtable on twitter.

St Louis
#1 Sam Bradford, QB
#99 Mardy Gilyard, WR
#132 Michael Hoomanawanui, TE
What the Local Guys Say
Surprisingly not that excited about Bradford (Stltoday.com) & (St Louis Post-Dispatch)
Fantasy Impact
Expect Bradford to duplicate Mark Sanchez 2008 numbers at best. Steven Jackson can take some pressure off, but don't expect much help from the Rams WR's or O-line. Bradford’s a keeper league option but a bottom of the barrel back-up in seasonal leagues.
Mardy Gilyard should participate this season as the Rams WR corps is below average, but don’t worry about him on fantasy draft day.
Just wanted to type Hoomanawanui.

Buffalo
#9 C.J. Spiller, RB
#107 Marcus Easley, WR
What the Local Guys Say
Thoughts on Spiller range from “make a positive impact” (Greenville News) to “savior” (Buffalo News)
What the Local Guys Say
Figure at worst Spiller’s the thirty-five half of a 65/35 RB platoon with Fred Jackson (gotta figure Marshawn Lynch is on the next bus otta town). 700 total yards, 4-5 TDs worth a late round fantasy pick.
Marcus Easley is best described as a raw talent; wasn’t on scholarship and didn’t really play until his senior year at UConn. Best case would to make the team at all and not anybody you need to worry about in fantasy.

San Diego
#12 Ryan Mathews, RB
What the Local Guys Say Local media are quick to tell you not to make comparisons to LaDainian Tomlinson; but go on to mention LT eight times in this article (San Diego Union-Tribune)
Fantasy Impact
We don’t think you can count on more than 10 carries a game out of Darren Sproles, leaving Mathews with 65% of the RB platoon. Norv Turner sayz Matthews will get 250 rushes and 40 receptions. If so, look for 1400 total yards, 6-8 TDs; a bottom #1/top #2 fantasy running back.

Cincinnati
#21 Jermaine Gresham, TE
#84 Jordan Shipley, WR
What the Local Guys Say
Gresham's a “good fit” filling an offensive need (Cincinnati Enquirer)
Fantasy Impact
The Gresham pick is a real head scratcher. Since Bob Bratkowski took over as offensive coordinator in 2001, no Bengal TE has more than 31 receptions in a season. From a fantasy perspective this is a wasted pick. Jordan Shipley is compared to Wes Welker, and could get a shot as a slot receiver.

Dallas
#24 Dez Bryant, WR
What the Local Guys Say
Miles Austin and Roy Williams are still your starters. (Dallas Morning News)
Fantasy Impact
Even if Bryant passes Roy Williams on the depth chart; he’ll be fourth receiving option after Witten, Austin and whatever RB comes out of the backfield. Might have a little extra value if he’s taking back kicks and you get points for that in your league; otherwise leave him on the board on draft day.

Denver
#22 Demaryius Thomas, WR
#25 Tim Tebow, QB
#87 Eric Decker, WR
What the Local Guys Say
Not much local opinion on Thomas as the Denver Post was all about T-bow; “a smile you could pour on pancakes”; “biggest sports name in Colorado”. Blech.
Fantasy Impact
Demaryius Thomas should have the opportunity to get some playing time as the Broncos post-Marshall receiving corps is more-or-less a bunch of journeymen. Thomas should be there late in your fantasy draft and might be worth a flyer. We think Timmy’s going to bust out of the league; his game is suited for the spread in college.

Detroit
#30 Jahvid Best, RB
What the Local Guys Say
Em sayz it’s “the most promising draft since the early ‘90s.” (Detroit Free Press)
Fantasy Impact
The big story is Suh, who will be a bad mother. If any other team had traded up for Best, you’d figure him for at least 35% of the RB action. But he was picked by the Lions, the worst organization in the history of organizations. So grab your grain of salt and consider a back up kicker before Best.

Kansas City
#36 Dexter McCluster, RB
#93 Tony Moeaki, TE
Fantasy Impact
Interesting as KC has Charles who was pretty much the same guy. McCluster is too light and too slow to make an impact; skip him on draft day as there will be much better options.
Moeaki’s not going to mean much to your fantasy team, Weis won’t use TE’s much in his offense.

Tampa Bay
#39 Arrelious Benn, WR
#101 Mike Williams, WR
What the Local Guys Say
Benn is a “mixed bag” (St Petersburg Times). Mike Williams is “high risk/high reward” pick (St Pete Times)
Fantasy Impact
Benn's a first rounder on your all first name team but didn’t play his senior year; isn’t super tall at 6’1” and isn’t all that fast. That said, after letting Bryant go, the Bucs have nothing at WR. Benn will get the opportunity to impress in the run up to week 1. We’ll have our eyes on him.

New England
#42 Rob Gronkowski, TE
#90 Tayor Price, WR
#113 Aaron Hernandez, TE
#205 Zoltan Mesko, P
What the Local Guys Say
Hernandez only failed one drug test. (Boston Globe)
Fantasy Impact
Not much here from the fantasy perspective; Rob Gronkowski will be a back-up TE on fantasy squads of his immediate family, waiver wire everywhere else.
We watched Zoltan grow up at Michigan, and feel compelled to mention him here; as always, shoot us a note if your league’s figured out how to weave in punters.

Carolina
#48 Jimmy Clausen, QB
#78 Brandon LaFell, WR
#89 Armanti Edwards, WR
#204 Tony Pike, QB
What the Local Guys Say
Picking Clausen put a halt... ”to any suggestion that Mike Moore will be the team’s quarterback of the future” (Charlotte Observer)
Fantasy Impact
Keeper league-rs take note. Jimi might not be worth much for 2010; but he’s got the ideal developmental situation. 1) A head coach that earned patience from the front office. 2) A starter in front of him that’s passable but not spectacular; Moore will step aside once Clausen earns his play-book merit badge; could be week 2, could be week 2, 2011. Either way, Clausen will start for Carolina but it doesn’t have to be the man week 1.
Receivers LaFell and Edwards should make the squad, but can’t be much of a fantasy factor this year. Pike was philler as the Panther’s fourth sixth round pick.

Minnesota
#51 Toby Gerhart, RB
#199 Joe Webb, WR
What the Local Guys Say
The Vikes figure Farve will be back this year and were more pressed to fill Chester Taylor’s shoes than Farve’s (Star-Tribune)
Fantasy Impact
Give Gerhart Chester Taylor’s 2009 numbers and he’s a useless fantasy RB unless you own (and need to back up) Adrian Peterson.

Houston
#58 Ben Tate, RB
#118 Garrett Graham, TE
What the Local Guys Say
Two thumbs up tm (Houston Chronicle)
Fantasy Impact
I’ll simplify this as much as I can. The guys that do all that Moneyball stuff for baseball have a calculation for rookie running backs based on their weight and 40 time. According to this, Ben Tate is more or less Michael Turner; we’ll take it, especially in the eighth fantasy round or later.

Cleveland
#59 Montatio Hardesty, RB
#85 Colt McCoy, QB
What the Local Guys Say
NFL.com says Hardsety “ … may struggle to bring the same kind of production to the next level. He is not quite big enough to be a power back and lacks the all out speed and explosion to be a game breaker.” “… lacks a second gear to pull away once he gets to the next level.” So, um, good luck with that. Mike Holmgren says Colt McCoy “…will not play this year. I repeat. He will not play this year.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
Fantasy Impact
Jerome Harrison was a top five fantasy back the last three weeks of 2009; but with an average of 35 carries a game, the Browns rediscovered ground attack needs a second weapon. Hardesty should be the second guy in the RB platoon and at least get the opportunity to put up fantasy roster worthy numbers Apparently you can’t count on McCoy playing this year. As for a keeper league; might want to hold off until next year if you need the roster space.

Seattle
#60 Golden Tate, WR
What the Local Guys Say
This dude lists Tate as a likely starter (Seattle Times)
Fantasy Impact
Good college receiver, unfortunately we think the Seahawks will be a mess in Pete Carroll’s first season. Late-Late-Late fantasy rounder.

Arizona
#88 Andre Roberts, WR
What the Local Guys Say Fourth receiver at best, could get mixed up in the single wing Wildcat (Arizona Republic)
Fantasy Impact
Not somebody you’ll need to worry about on draft day.

Baltimore
#70 Ed Dickson, TE
#114 Dennis Pitta, TE
#156 David Reed, WR
Fantasy Impact
Whatever (Charm City Current)

Jets
#112 Joe McKnight, RB
#139 John Connor, FB
What the Local Guys Say
McKnight showed up at mini-camp out of shape, puked. (New York Daily News)
Fantasy Impact
The Jets traded Leon Washington for this guy, not looking like a good deal so far.

Pittsburgh
#82 Emmanuel Sanders, WR
#195 Antonio Brown, WR
What the Local Guys Say Sanders is a possible replacement for Santonio Holmes (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Fantasy Impact
Limus Sweed is done, Mike Wallace will get the opportunity to be the main guy alongside Hines Ward. The third WR in Pittsburgh’s offense historically sees about 500 yards; just barely enough for Sanders to hang onto to last WR spot on your fantasy roster.

Tennessee
#77 Damian Williams, WR
#176 Rusty Smith, QB
#222 Marc Mariani, WR
What the Local Guys Say
Sounds like Williams will be used mainly as a return guy (Tennessean)
Fantasy Impact
Little of any of the above as the Titans draft focused on defensive needs.

6/6/2010

The Roundtable was in attendance at the Armando Galarraga perfect game. We’ve heard the rest of the media’s take; Galarraga and Joyce’s class, the need for expanded instant replay in baseball, etc. Whether this has anything to do with fantasy football or not, we figured we step in and discuss what we learned from sitting in the stands that night.

1 – At 1 hour 44 minutes, this was the shortest MLB game in five years. They shut off beer sales at Comerica Park after the seventh inning, which left our party scrambling to the concession stand at around 8pm. How about an either/or, stop selling at the end of the seventh or 9pm whichever comes second. Galarraga’s (and Indian pitcher Fausto Carmona’s) efficiency on the mound cost the Tigers thousands of dollars in beer revenue.
2 – They didn’t show the replay on the scoreboard. Half the park got on their cell phones and had the knowledge the call was blown before the next batter came to the plate. We should have seen the play; Detroit fans have mellowed over the years, it’s not like the 17,738 in attendance would have flipped over police cars.
3 - The ball Grudzielanek hit to lead off the ninth would have been a home run in most other parks. Comerica’s generous dimensions allowed Austin Jackson to make one of the greatest catches we ever saw. Not that it was the most acrobatic, but like the Willie Mays over the head catch in the 1954 World Series (also against Cleveland), what made the catch great was the amount of ground Jackson covered to get to the ball. Look for this catch to make top ten lists at the end of the year. PS, thanks for that trade Yankees.
4 – Official perfect game or not, one bad call will not kill the experience of seeing 28 up and 28 down. We’ll take the memory of this game to the grave.

8/18/2009

If you’ve heard of the Curse of the 370, you know it’s a theory that if a running back gets 370 or more carries in a season he (or she, technically) is due for diminished fantasy numbers the following season. Michael Turner was the only RB with more than 370 carries in 2008. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is hip and apparently so are the Falcons. There are dudes out there that aren’t the biggest believers; but there’s got to be something to it.  There’s a similar statistic among Baseball Sabermetricians called Pitcher Abuse Points which says that dudes (chicks?) shouldn’t throw more that 105-115 pitches in a game. Surely more sophisticated sites than this have done more detailed analysis but here’s the fate of the last three dudes to get 370 carries…

Larry Johnson: 2006, 410 carries.  2007 IR with a bad foot after 8 games
Shaun Alexander: 2005, 370 carries. 2006, broke foot in week 3 but also was on the cover of Madden 07
Curtis Martin: 2004, 371 carries. 2005, went on IR week 13 and never played again

2/14/2009

We got a lot of questions during the offseason. Here are some answers.

What is the Roundtable and why is it here?
Fantasy Football Roundtable was born in the summer of 2008. The mission is to provide three services to the fantasy football playa…

1) Draft Preparation
The Roundtable provides rankings, news and opinion to help you get your team ready and dominate your draft. We update darn near daily during the pre-season with takes on who to draft, reviews of pre-season games and some basic draft strategy.

2) News updates and interpretation and laughs
During the season, you’ll see darn near daily updates on the news of fantasy football and football goings on in general. The aim is to be an alternate source of information pulling stories from local papers. The local flavor gets missed often in the national media. Local writers can be a day or two ahead of a story which can make the difference in your league.

The Roundtable will also cover the lighter side of things; we broke the Kansas City rookies dancing with seniors story last year and uncovered that DeAngelo Williams is really into paintball. Fantasy Football is played for completion & profit but mainly for fun and we never lose sight of that.

3) Who should you start?
Start 'Em Sit ‘Em is the most popular page on the site and this becomes the Roundtable’s main focus in during the season.

The general guide lines are that we don’t recommend “Start” on anyone that starts for 70-75% of owners and don’t recommend “Sit” for dudes that start on less than 35% of squads. We’ll break that rule from time to time if conditions warrant, but we’ll call that out.

Big difference between the Roundtable and other sites is that we grade the previous week’s Start ‘Em Sit ‘Em performance and post it the following week for all to see. We also update a yearly scorecard. Pulled a C+ on the starts & a C on the sits in 2008. We’ll take it, better than our college grades.

We also publish weekly player rankings. The rankings are generated with a secret computer formula that is pretty accurate in picking up a player’s relative value to other dudes. Don’t know whether to start Vincent Jackson or Hines Ward. You’ll find the answers in the player rankings.

Why does the Roundtable look like it was put together by a third grader?
Most of the other homemade blogs use Wordpress or other blog software. We keeps it real at the Roundtable and use this simple design to set ourselves apart and focus on the writing and the opinion.

What the hell do you know about fantasy football anyway?
Yours truly has been playing fantasy football since the pre-internet era; back when you had to add stats up from the Monday morning paper. We’ve seen it all, twice.

But really we don’t know more than anybody else. The fact is that nobody knows anything about fantasy football. Some people have blogs or are on ESPN, but it’s all pretty much guess work, the Roundtable works to make the most educated guesses.

How do I know the Roundtable is giving it to me strait?
The Roundtable is headquartered in Detroit. Since we do not have an NFL team here, we channel our energy on the Fantasy game without any home town bias. The Roundtable may from time to time call out if a statement is made about one of our players. We’ll say right here that we own Steven Jackson and Ben Roethlisberger in a keeper league.

The Roundtable is awesome, how do I link it to my blog?
Send us a note (info [at] fantasyfootballroundtable.com) if you want to trade links, you’ll find our partners in crime under the “Bloggers” heading. We’ll trade links with just about any other Fantasy Football site.

Do you have an RSS feed or email blast?
No. We’re not the type to write 300 words about our opinions. We take daily news stories, make a few comments and move on. If you want to follow the Roundtable you have to do it the old fashion way; bookmark us and check us out when you’re goofing off at work. That said, you can email the Roundtable with any Start ‘Em Sit ‘Em situations or general questions.

You've got a lot of links here, what's the deal?
We feel that’s the best way to tell the story and quote our sources. We never link to any NSFW content.

June 29, 2008

So I've started a Fantasy Football website.
I've been a fantasy player since you had to wait for Monday morning papers and tabulate stats on your own. I've won championships. I've finished in last. I've made great draft picks. I've made one's that would make you laugh and made me cry.
But if there's one thing that I've learned is that Fantasy "Experts" on the pay sites and on TV don't know anything more that I do.
What I've found is that nothing beats your own research and experience. So the goal of this site is to share the tools I use and reach out to other playaz for their insights.
Here's the funny part. This is my first shot at running a web site. At least for the first few weeks, Fantasy Football Roundtable might be as much a reality show about putting a site together as it is a blog about fantasy football.

So to start, you'll see on the right that I posted links to the local sports pages to all 32 NFL teams. I've found that the local guys are a good place to start.

On the left you'll see a link to the forum & email. I'll add other links, information and such as we go on. Bookmark FantasyFootballRoundtable.Com, come back occaionally and check the progress.