What's Your Fanta-ta-sy?

Yes, my fantasy football draft was pretty ludicrous. After spending a good hour, hour and a half meticulously pre-ranking my players, I was feeling very good heading into the season. I had my first six rounds planned out perfectly, and the road to my third consecutive fantasy football championship had been paved.

Only Yahoo! didn't agree. Yahoo!'s draft system went down the Crapper!, I was Screwed! because I had only lazily pre-ranked the players on Yahoo!, instead preferring to use a Word! document. If the ! after Yahoo! is meant to create excitement, it failed, at least the night of the draft. So I get a phone call from one Alex Haugh saying "you just drafted Tom Brady with your first round pick." After he was out for the season. After I placed him on line numero uno under the "DO NOT DRAFT" category. Yeah, Marion Barber was still on the table, as was Frank Gore, not to mention EVERY SINGLE OTHER QUARTERBACK. Yahoo! obviously felt Brady is so God-like he could dominate the competition with one functional ACL (hey, he didn't tear his PCL did he?).

SO here's the end result of this fiasco:


It's only this pretty because I made some quick on the fly adjustments. Picked up Hasselbeck, dropped Heath Miller. Picked up LJ Smith, dropped Kyle Orton. Picked up Michael Jenkins, dropped Jerrius Norwood. Picked up Chris Perry, which, it brings tears to my eyes, forced me to cut Darren McDaniels, the rookie sensation out of Arkansas. Hey, this league didn't have a "kids fathered" statistic (otherwise, McFadden would still be my backup, and I would have bailed Travis Henry out of jail to be my starter). The only thing respectable that happened out of this draft was the Pittsburgh D. So I guess I had a better draft than Matt Millen because Detroit still doesn't have a D.

Also, we're playing with defensive players this year, a foreign concept to many. But I was able to snatch every single second-tier free agent because when Yahoo (I refuse to share the excitement anymore, no more exclamation) picks the defensive players, it picks studs such as Stuart Schwaggert, a backup safety, for instance. So I was able to pick up J-Beast (ex-Hurricane), Freeney, Justin Tuck, Chris Gamble, and DeMeco Ryans. Success.

Now, hopefully some of these guys can put up some flukishly good stats in Week One (actually Week Two for everybody else), so I can actually have some credibility when I make these ridiculous trade offers (I got shot down eleven times in one week. Eleven!!! It's like Ben Wallace shooting free throws), maybe one or two of them will go through.

Anyways, I figure I'd offer three of the ten Fantasy Football Commandments that I have, for your benefit:

1) Thou who haveth Drew Brees shall winneth the Championship. It's not even a question.eth.
2) Thou who drafteth a kicker is doomed for extinction, because I just sign a new kicker every week so why should I waste a draft pick? Pick a running back.
3) Check your team. It's usually helpful.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I guess I didn't cut McFadden after all. I was just trying to drop another Emmitt reference. It worked??????