How to Win Your Fantasy Football League

For millions of football fans, it is time to get serious about drafting our fantasy football teams.  A good draft will mean five months of making fun of your friends as you crush your league.  A bad draft and you will soon dread checking on your team as you drift further and further from the playoffs.

Below are my five tried and true tips to give you the best chance at making the playoffs in your league.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have been playing fantasy football since 2002, with five trips to the podium in eight years.  

Shot of Sports Juice- Washington Redskins.

Below is a link to a story on the ‘demotion’ of Jim Zorn, the Head Coach of the Washington Redskins.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/10238970/Zorn-to-give-up-Redskins-playcalling-duties

I feel bad for Zorn, who has ‘agreed’ to give up play calling, giving the responsibility to Sherm Lewis, who has been with the team for one week.    I don’t feel bad because I like Zorn, or like the Redskins, but I do feel bad about him having his pants pulled down around his ankles in a very public way.  It would have been one thing to spin it to the fans and media like it was Zorn’s idea, but he is now twisting in the wind worse than any coach I can remember.

The Redskins are a complete mess, losing yesterday to the previously victory-less Kansas City Chiefs.  They have a starting quarterback they don’t like in Jason Cambell and an owner that assembles the team like he was playing fantasy football.  I’ve lost track of all the coaches, players and new schemes the team has gone through since Dan Synder bought the team in 1999 at age 34.   I’m 34 and ‘own’ a team (well, a fantasy team).  I can’t imagine creating a situation where I didn’t have the best minds in place throughout the organization and let them do their jobs.  Synder is like the fantasy team owner who looks at historical stats and drafts all the old guys whose best days are behind them.

All of that said, football is the ultimate alpha-male gladiator like game.  The players are expected to give everything they have in the pursuit of victory and the head coach is their Julius Caesar.  If he hadn’t already lost his team, he lost them last night when the GM went all Brutus on Zorn and forced him to admit he had too much on his plate.   This is a common problem for many people in all walks of life who have managerial responsibilities but an inability to delegate.   Fortunately for these people, their shortcomings won’t be on every sports site and on every sports show this week.  For that, I feel sorry for Jim Zorn.

To conclude on a much happier note, my Buffalo Bills proved yesterday that victory can occassionally be achieved in the face of complete and utter incompetence.  If ownership finally gets rid of Jauron I hear Jim Zorn might be looking for work  in a few weeks!

—— Afternoon edit- article including Zorn’s feelings on the issue.  They are as you might guess they would be—-

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/football/nfl/10/19/redskins.ap/index.html

How To Fix a Bad Fantasy Team

 My thanks to the People’s Pigskin for suggesting my first post-introduction post.

I should note up front I am not going to tout free agents that you should pick up.  The quality and depth of your free agent pool is going to depend on your league settings, number of teams and quality of managers in your league. Instead I am going to focus a bit on thinking and thought process related to fixing your embarrassment of a team.