Quick Thoughts on the Eagles/Ravens Tilt

I don't put a lot of stock in what I see in the first week of pre-season, but I do keep things in the back of my mind to see if they continue. Here's what I'll be looking with regard to these two teams going forward:

• PHI's D-line clearly won the battle with BAL's O-line. Joe Flacco didn't have a lot of time to throw and, save for a couple of nifty moves, Ray Rice didn't have a lot of room to run. It's almost as if Juan "in a million chance he'll be a good D-coord" Castillo was overcompensating for the fact that, as last year's O-line coach, he's way out of his element. Still, I'll be watching BAL's O-line like a hawk. I saw bad things about DAL's last year and thus wasn't too surprised when Tony Romo went down.
• It takes not having D-Jax AND Jeremy Maclin for Mike Vick to remember that Brent Celek exists. That said, I guess I have to add Celek to my rankings... at the bottom. Have you noticed I hold grudges?

Fantasy Coupons

One of the things that I probably haven't gotten across is that my rankings aren't how I think the players will finish the year in terms of fantasy points. It's based on the point at which I'd have no qualms highlighting his name and hitting the 'Draft' button. I use Blogger's list feature to accomplish this. I type a player's name in, hit 'Add' and then shuffle him down until I can say to myself "I'd rather take a chance on him than the guy below him."

For example, I've got Cam Newton ranked such that if I've got most of my roster filled out, including a backup QB, I'll take a flier on him in a later round. The upside of his value justifies drafting him at that point.

This is akin to going to the store with coupons and getting your favorite name-brand products for less. You get early round production for the cost of a late round pick. As such, here's my first stab at laying out what coupons I'll be looking for in my drafts:

QBs

• Ryan Fitzpatrick in the later middle rounds: He had a nice multi-week run last year where he put up some pretty good numbers running Chan Gailey's spread shotgun offense. This year, the Bills will be playing from behind once again and CJ Spiller will have another year under his belt (Fred Jackson and Steve Johnson can catch the ball, too). Hey, checkdown passes to him that go to 'the house' count! Unlike some of the other QBs ranked around him, he's in a fairly stable situation with his coaches. Familiarity breeds success, especially this year.
• Cam Newton towards the end of the draft: see above.
• Donovan McNabb towards the end of the draft: AP will keep 9 in the box and if Percy Harvin doesn't have migraine issues, he'll be a great WR. Donovan finally learned that TEs are allowed to catch last year in WAS, so Schianco will help him out. Home games will be in a dome, plus one away game in DET.

RBs

• Jamaal Charles in the early middle rounds: yeah, it'll probably never happen, but I'm low on all Chiefs now that Todd Haley is back in charge of the O and they've brougt in Le'Ron McClain. I've seen stranger things happen, though. Leading into Michael Turner's first year in ATL, he slipped to an early middle round where someone else scooped him up, which totally made up for the fact he took Larry Fitzgerald with the 6th overall pick. He went on to win the league.
• Ryan Grant, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, Michael Turner, Steven Jackson or Mark Ingram in the middle rounds: All but SJax are 'keep the lead' backs for what should be high-scoring team. SJax, while an injury risk, plays in a dome in the Mild Mild West and doesn't come off the field on 3rd down.
• Felix Jones in the later rounds: I'm hoping people basically just forget about him, because I won't. No, he probably won't be the goal-line back, or even the 'keep the lead' back, but he'll get enough touches to make a 10th round pick worthwhile. Tashard Choice may be on his way out.
• Mike Tolbert in the later rounds: I'm hearing Ryan Matthews isn't in great shape, which I'm hoping leads to more touches for the human bowling ball that is Mike Tolbert.

TEs

• Owen Daniels in the early middle rounds: really came on at the end of last year, proving he's healthy.
• Jimmy Graham in the later rounds: another guy I'm hoping people forget about. I have a hunch he'll be getting some red zone looks that used to go to Marques Colston.
• Todd Heap in the later rounds: I'm hoping people remember him as the injury-prone TE from Baltimore and not see him as a TE whose QB is Kevin Kolb.

I've Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

(I Love Lucy reference, for you youngins)

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed I've been tweaking my rankings these past few days. While I don't remember every single move, here are some of my thoughts regarding upgrades and downgrades:

QBs

• David Garrard gets downgraded because I realized he's David freakin' Garrard. He has no one to throw to and the RB situation is uncertain.

RBs

• Ray Rice gets downgraded a bit b/c the Ravens brought in Ricky Williams to do what Willis McGahee did last year. I don't think this will impact Ray much in PPR leagues, but his TD projection is now trending downwards.
• Darren McFadden rises as I finally delved into his 2010 stats and also learned Al Saunders is the new O-coord in Oaktown. I'm still concerned about his durability and if I wasn't a Giants fan living in Eagles' territory, I'd have McCoy ranked ahead of him, but...
• Jamaal Charles takes a big hit b/c KC brought in Le'Ron McClain and I have concerns he'll take over where Thomas Jones left off.
• Felix Jones joins the list now that it's looking like Tashard Choice is getting cut.

WRs

• Devin Hester rises, Johnny Knox falls as Lovie Smith has named Hester his #2 WR. In other news, Lovie Smith still does not know if a football is puffed or stuffed.

Valley Forge Casino: George Washington Could Not Have Gambled Here but You Soon Can!

I've been living in the Valley Forge / King of Prussia area for almost 15 years now and for the past 4 or 5, I've been following intently the progress (or lack thereof) of the casino in the Valley Forge Convention Center.

I've known for some time that this was a "Category 3" license, which means that it's not exactly open to the public and that there were some hoops you had to jump through in order to play.

Well, I've finally heard about the criteria you have to meet. You have to either:

• have a room at the Center's hotel or
• spend at least $25 in their restaurants or stores.

Receipts and/or room keys will be checked.

The VFCC has a steakhouse, Chumley's, and an Italian bistro, Blue Grotto. Neither is heavily reviewed on Yelp, but Blue Grotto currently grades out a bit better.

The casino is set to open in early- to mid-2012. I wish they'd get it open sooner so I could do my birthday dinner there in December, but I'll just have to be patient.

(Source: philly.com's July Casino Chat)

I Guess the Golden Nugget AC Doesn't Want Their $65 Back

I got my first and what may be my only mailer from them. No free play or food, unless I get a room Sun-Thurs starting 9/1 for $49 and then I get $60 in credits ($15 food, $10 gaming, $30 in fitness club passes and $5 for parking). This is probably the same deal that anyone can get in this timeframe.

Of course this makes perfect sense. They gave me $100 free play and that is exactly how much play I gave them. For $100 'coin in', I wouldn't give me anything more.

Curious to see what I'll get from the Borgata.

Linkability 8/6/11

These links have 'linkability'. Okay, by definition, all links have this, but these are also worth checking out:

• The Big Lead's Jason Lisk On Win Total Over/Under: TBL resident-braniac Jason Lisk goes through all the O/U prop bets out there and picks each. This is part 3 of 3 and the article links to the other parts. I like things like this not just for the article itself, but for the comments. I learn a lot of things about other NFL teams from those team's fans.
• Fantasyguru.com article on mispricing: A long, but ultimately rewarding, article about finding great values in your FFB draft. I'm all about value.
• AC2LV's Are You Ready for Some Football?: AC2LV contributor DenverGambler breaks down some NFL prop bets and even throws in a pick (against the spread, no less!) for Week 1.
• AC2LV's Time for Fantasy Football: some guy with my initials wrote some words explaining my QB rankings. He did a good job, too!

So You Had (Or Are Having) A Bad Draft...

I don't know when "draft season" officially starts, but August 1st seems just as good a date as any. I've got my first draft coming up two weeks from Sunday and I'm getting excited. I think my rankings are solidifying over there on the right and many FFB articles are flying around the blogosphere.

In all the "draft advice" columns I've seen, though, I've never seen one that helps you recover from a bad draft.

Hey, things happen. To paraphrase what Michael Strahan had to say after Super Bowl 42, everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. The best set of rankings in the world don't amount to much once you're in that draft room with actual people, some of whom don't conform to the wisdom you've been reading in those other articles for months. How would you react if the TE run starts in the middle of Round 2 and you jump on board, even though you had grand plans of going RB-RB-WR-QB? I had this very thing happen to me last year and I still managed to take 3rd, so I hope you can benefit from my experience.

Here's what happened: with the fourth pick in a 12 team draft where only TEs get a PPR (and you can flex one as well), I reached for Jermichael Finley with the 21st overall pick. Panicked that all the top tier QBs were then off the board, I reached for Joe Flacco in the 3rd round, and then had to settle for Malcolm Floyd as my #1 WR in the fifth. Sandwiched in there was Arian Foster in the 4th; go me!

After the Floyd pick, I knew I was headed down a bad road. I may have had two great RBs and a TE, but my QB and WR corp weren't looking so hot. I had a lot of time to kill between my 5th and 6th picks, so I calmed myself down and figured out my strategy: I'd have to play the QB and WR matchups every week and for that I needed bodies. Lots of bodies. I also needed to, at some point, take a non-WR to use as trade bait.

My next two picks were Dwayne Bowe and Terrel Owens. Okay, now I had 3 decent names to pick 2 from each week.

In Round 8, I saw Matt Forte was still on the board. I didn't LOVE him based on his performance in '09, but hey, Mike Martz was taking over the O and it was the eighth round. I had two great RBs, but maybe someone would want him.

In Round 9, I took Jerome Harrison b/c Monterio Hardesty had gone down and the conventional wisdom was he'd start ahead of Peyton Hillis.

Round 10: Jabar Gaffney b/c I saw in the pre-season he had a good repoire with Kyle Orton. I figured he'd be another body to add to my WR pool.

Round 11: Broncos Team QB b/c I saw Orton had a good repoire with Gaffney and Brandon Lloyd and, hey, maybe that Tim Tebow guy would run in some TDs.

As you can see, once I went into "bodies mode", I made some really good, albeit lucky, decisions. Bowe and TO started many games for me and I flipped Forte for Calvin Johnson after week 1; this solidified my WR1 slot and gave me only 1, rather than 2, choice to make each week. Orton/Tebow started most weeks over Flacco and the rest, as they say, is history.

The important thing was I didn't panic. But even if I continued to draft poorly, I still would've had a shot by working the waiver wire.

And that's probably the most important lesson I can impart: these mistakes are fixable. So if you find yourself in this position, let the panic wash over you (maybe down an alcoholic beverage between picks), regroup, replan and position yourself to win!