TEN RB Chris Johnson Talks to a Fan

Good morning everyone! Please refer to yesterday’s column (Fantasy Football Roundtable) as it is a great indication of how four of your favorite columnists from Hamster Wheel Sports feel about this Fantasy Football season.

I received a note this morning from a great Fantasy Football site I subscribe to – Footballguys.com.  One of their readers sat on a plane next to Chris Johnson yesterday and talked to him about this upcoming season.  Here is the story from here:

OK for everyone wondering if he is going to sign….I kind of have an answer….from CJ himself.

I took todays 12 oclock flight on southwest from nashville to orlando and who was in the check in right in front of me head twitches and all…cj himself. We boarded and I sat right in front of him and his brother and his friend believe it or not in the very back of the plane in coach class. We talked about how he was ONLY offered from one college, East carolina, and how he wanted to play for the canes but broke his leg and no one really wanted him anymore. Anyhow I asked him and his brother seperately if he was going to sign soon and the lack of a positive response was the answer. It didnt sound good. Anyhow things change quickly when you realize your best player isnt in camp and you need to up your offer. I did hear him make mention of 10 to 10.7 to his brother and I dont know weather it was offered by tenn or wanted by him. He seemed like a decent guy, took a picture with him and he signed autos for a few folks, but most people didnt recognize him because he doesnt look like a giant nfl player.

My impression it may not get done as soon as it should and he is pretty small (by nfl standards), a couple inches shorter than me (maybe 5’10”) and about the same size (190lbs)…certainly we have different bursts, ability to cut and stop on a dime (oh and future income). He said he would be ready though and had been training but you cant substitute a 300lber falling on you and the reps you get in camp. I hope he does well since he is one of my favorite players and certainly one of the most dynamic but I could easily see him get injured or pulling a groin or something early this year. I asked him if he thinks jeff demps will break his 4.24 combine record and he said no…I told him he would…twice! He didnt agree but laughed about it.

Interesting, VERY interesting.  With this latest news, I might have to retract my statements yesterday saying I would take Chris Johnson at any point in the back-half of the 1st round.  I think he really might be pressing into the 2nd round if I had to draft today.

Next week I will have my annual Busts/Breakouts/Sleepers/Avoid list.  Until then, any fantasy-related questions can be posted as a comment here or sent via email to: mccannjeffrey[at]gmail[dot]com.

Jeff McCann is a writer for HamsterWheelSports.com.  He loves Chris Johnson as he has done him wonders in fantasy football the past two seasons.  Please CJ2K come back, please!

Fantasy Football Roundtable – COME GET SOME

We are just 2.5 weeks away from opening night and many people have NO IDEA who to take in Fantasy Football this season.  Maybe it’s because of the lockout, player holdouts, the multitude of players changing teams or a combination of everything.  One thing is for sure – we know who to take here at Hamster Wheel Sports and we want to help you DOMINATE the competition.

This roundtable will involve four key members of the HWS family – Matt Angrisani, Poul Carstensen, Bill Serpe and Jeff McCann.  These four talking heads will be touching on a number of topics relating to Fantasy Football for this season.

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Topic #1: Chris Johnson –  If you were drafting today, August 22, at what pick in the 1st round would you HAVE to take Chris Johnson if he fell to you?  He was an automatic top-4 selection.  Now, not so much.

Matt Angrisani:  I was thinking about this the other day actually.  He still is a top talent but this holdout is going to mess him up a bit at first with his team.  Without a holdout, he would be a top 3 pick easily but now, I would have to draft him if he dropped to around the 6th pick.

Bill Serpe:  I wouldn’t take him top 10.  I would pass on him until the 2nd round, for sure.  I’m sure of his talent, but your first round pick should be the person who you most expect to give you results, and if there is any doubt at all, he shouldn’t be a first rounder.

Poul Carstensen:  I’ve done a few mock drafts, and in probably half of them he’s fallen out of the first round. He’s not expected anywhere near camp until labor day.  I agree with Bill- he’s not a true first rounder anymore.  Maybe he’s the wraparound pick for the guy who has the last slot. I think that’s the smart move.

Jeff McCann:  I will tell you this – in a number of my drafts I am sitting in the 9th or 10th slot out of 12 teams.  If he falls to me there I will be SURE to take him.  You have to remember that you are drafting your team to win a Championship – NOT for the first couple of weeks.  If he isn’t in game shape until week 3 then I am fine with it.  The only thing you need to do is grab his backup earlier than expected so you are covered.

Matt Angrisani:  I agree with Jeff.  Anyone who can snag top talent, even as high as the end of the first round, will be given a huge advantage as the season progresses.

Poul Carstensen:  He’s taking a harder line than most have in the past in holdouts. When you tack on missed games (2 or 3) plus getting back into game shape and used to the speed again (2, maybe 3), is it worth it to blow a first rounder on a half-season’s worth of talent? And that’s IF he comes back. I’d be wary of it. He’s talent for sure, but this is a high risk pick.

Jeff McCann:  But if you are sitting there with the 9th pick, and you have a choice between Chris Johnson, the VERY injury-prone Darren McFadden, a deteriorating Maurice Jones-Drew or a top WR (Andre Johnson will probably already be gone, so either Roddy White or Calvin Johnson), who are you going to take?  If you already factor in McFadden and MJD’s missed games due to injury, wouldn’t that equal CJ2K’s missed/slow first couple of weeks?  And who says he hasn’t been getting into game shape by himself?

Matt Angrisani:  The only other thing to think about is that, unlike previous years, there is decent depth at the RB position so maybe Johnson can slip a bit more, as those high level WRs are becoming more scarce.  I would still probably take Johnson but Roddy White is a great pick there as well.

Poul Carstensen:  A player getting ready on his own is almost always behind those who have been training with the team, which lends itself more readily to injury.  The Titans have a new coach in Mike Munchak and two new quarterbacks. A new system + turnover in personnel leads to an increased workload.  Pair that with an unknown level of conditioning, and I think its cause for concern.  I’m not saying I wouldn’t take him, I’m just saying its more risky than I think we’re making it out to be.

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Topic #2: Breakout Year –  Who is going to be this year’s Arian Foster?  Think of a guy that won’t go into at least the 3rd round of drafts, who seems to be over-hyped, but could DOMINATE if/when given the chance?

Bill Serpe:  I can be pretty dumb when it comes to drafts, but a lot of times, I go by how I expect the teams to do.  New Orleans is an offensive juggernaut, and I actually expect big numbers from rookie RB Mark Ingram.  Yahoo has him ranked #57, which puts him a few rounds into the draft.  Even though he’s a rookie, and it could be a learning experience, he has the talent which won him a Heisman Trophy a few years ago, and I would jump and get him a little early.  But, as I said, I’m pretty dumb sometimes, too.

Jeff McCann:  I have to disagree on the Ingram pick.  He is going VERY early in all FF drafts right now and I don’t know why.  He has too much going against him to be taken in the first couple of rounds – the presence of Pierre Thomas and Darren Sproles in the backfield, the fact that New Orleans doesn’t use one specific RB all game long, and the transition to the NFL is a tough one.  I think his rookie year resembles more of Darren McFadden (solid but used sparingly and injured more often than not) than Adrian Peterson.

Matt Angrisani:  Not to sound like a homer, but Mario Manningham.  He has a solid season under his belt and now that Manning doesn’t have Smith or Boss, Manningham will be relied on a lot more.  Remember, he was going to be a late first round talent out of college but his interview on NFL Sirius got him knocked down to the 3rd round.  Steve Johnson in Buffalo is also interesting.  Not much offense at all in Buffalo so Johnson may get enough passes thrown to him that he could have a big year.  I don’t think it will be anything spectacular since his quarterback is Ryan Fitzpatrick, but he’s definitely someone to keep your eye on.

Poul Carstensen:  Can we count Mike Tolbert? He emerged last year when Ryan Mathews started slow, and he’s getting all the #1 work in camp and in preseason action. He was a touchdown vulture that turned into a good back, so an earlier/mid round flier on him may be worth the investment.

Jeff McCann:  My breakout guy this year is Dez Bryant.  He was an undeniable presence when he was on the field last year, and that was with Jon Kitna at QB.  Even with the amount of talent surround Bryant (Miles Austin, Jason Witten, Felix Jones), there will plenty of offense to go around as Dallas plays catch up all year-long due to their horrendous defense.  That also makes Tony Romo a great option at QB for fantasy purposes this year.

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Topic #3: Top Players –  Who is going to be the #1 performing fantasy football player at each of the skill positions (QB, RB, WR, TE) this season?

Bill Serpe:

• QB – Aaron Rodgers  – No explanation needed.
• RB – Adrian Peterson – I would pass over Foster and likely take AP 1st overall.
• WR – Larry Fitzgerald – I expect him to put up better numbers now that he potentially has an adequate QB.
• TE – JerMichael Finley – Just because of his QB.

Jeff McCann:

• QB – Tom Brady – Brady lost Randy Moss last year, gained Deion Branch and never lost a step.  Now add Chad Ochocinco, a healthier Wes Welker, and 2 more pass-catching RB’s to his arsenal.  WOW.
• RB – Jamaal Charles –  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love me some JC.  He took a huge leap forward last year, showing that he is an absolute beast once he learned how to hold onto the football.
• WR – Calvin Johnson – Johnson put up great numbers last year with the 12 quarterbacks Detroit threw out there.  Now give him Matthew Stafford for an entire year and watch him get close to 15 TDs.
• TE – Dallas Clark – If you combine Clark and Jacob Tamme’s #’s from last year – 104 catches, 978 yards, 7 TD – that’s impressive.  Expect Clark to put close to those numbers up this year as he regains his role as Peyton Manning’s favorite target.

Matt Angrisani: 

• QB – Aaron Rodgers – Stealing Poul’s pick before he makes it.
• RB – Adrian Peterson – I think he will become a more Brian Westbrook type back with Donovan McNabb as his quarterback.  I can see Peterson getting a bunch more receptions this year than usual.  
• WR – Roddy White – Another year with Matt Ryan under his belt.  With the WR position not being as daunting, White should be on top of the mountain.
• TE – Jason Witten – With Romo back, Witten is going to get many more throws than last year with Kitna.

Poul Carstensen:

• QB – Aaron Rodgers – Too many weapons not to be successful.
• RB – Jamaal Charles – He was an incredibly productive back last year while being horribly misused by Todd Haley.  He’ll explode this year.
• WR – Larry Fitzgerald – He’s the hardest working receiver in the league.
• TE – Jason Witten – He and Romo are prison-showers close.  I wanted to put Jermichael Finley up here, but I don’t want to appear to be a massive homer.

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And that does it for this week’s edition of HWS Roundtable.  I hope you all enjoyed our first take on the 2011 Fantasy Football season.  It only gets better from here on out, so tune back to HamsterWheelSports.com each and every day as we will bring new insight into your lives.

Jeff McCann is a writer for HamsterWheelSports.com.  He is an avid fantasy football enthusiast as well as an accomplished champion.  Listen to what he predicts for the fantasy football season and you will go far. Trust him, and send him gifts.

Jerry Reese and The New York Giants

You know what’s good?  Stability.  I’m a big fan of stability.  It’s secure, it gives you a sense of calm, it makes your life a little less stressful, and it’s even kind of fun to say.  It’s one of the reasons I really like the New York Giants.  They’re stable.  They hire solid coaches who stay for a long time, they have had the same owners since the NFL started basically, and the core fundamentals of “New York Giants football” has stayed pretty level.  Run first, play good defense, smash the other guy in the mouth.  Done and done.

You know what sucks?  Mistaking being slightly above average and not doing anything for stability.  Maintaining a status quo and thinking everything is going to be just fine.  A lack of action while your biggest rival is having a historic week of adding players.  And that’s what Jerry Reese and the New York Giants have done recently and it’s really pissing me off. 

Last year’s Giants squad did some things very well.  They ran the ball almost at will.  Their defensive line rotation was almost flawless.  We saw Terrell Thomas develop into one of the better corners in the league, Hakeem Nicks make circus catch after circus catch, and Ahmad Bradshaw make defenses look stupid.  About the only thing we didn’t see was if Jason Pierre-Paul could back-flip over the offensive line in pursuit of the quarterback.

We also a ton of passes dropped, way too many interceptions, a lack of depth on the offensive line that clearly cost them late in the season, and a punter who shouldn’t have been on the team past week 4.  And let’s not forget the complete lack of anything remotely resembling production from the middle linebacker position. 

So, naturally, you should address areas of concern in your offseason.  And yes, I completely understand that this offseason was crazy with the lockout.  But there are still things you could do.  Like what?  How about draft a player you need for starters!  Antonio Pierce was a very good middle linebacker who started to slow down in 2008.  The only linebacker they’ve taken higher than the fourth round since then is Clint Sintim in 2009.  He not only was an outside linebacker, but he also sucks.  There has been a pressing need in the middle of the defense for three seasons now and Reese hasn’t done a thing about it.

I also get that you can’t address all of your needs.  Every team has holes.  With a hard salary cap, its just impossible.  But when it’s a problem like the hands of your wide receivers being awful and slapping well thrown passes up in the air for defensive backs to snare, you find a way to fix it.  You find a way to get a receiver with sure hands your quarterback can rely on.  I like Hakeem Nicks a lot, I really do.  But at least twice a game he’ll have a terrible drop or bat the ball in the air.  Same with Steve Smith.  You need to bring someone in who can catch the damn ball and not make his quarterbacks life even harder than it already is.  No, Eli Manning is not the best quarterback in the league.  He’s not top five.  But he’s pretty good.  Give him a chance.  By bringing back the exact same receiving corps from last year you’re not helping him.  We’ve seen what these guys can do for awhile now.  Time to fix the problem.

That’s not a plea for the Giants to have pushed harder on Plaxico Burress, even though I think they should have.  That is me just saying that there was another glaring hole that Jerry Reese has just left to rust.  When things have been rough for awhile at a spot, you need to find a way to fix it and he just hasn’t.  We give Reese a lot of freedom because of the Super Bowl win against the vaunted Patriots in 2007.  But that was three seasons ago.  In a division that is always going to be ultra competitive with the Eagles and Cowboys in it, you have to constantly be on the lookout to improve.  It doesn’t seem to me that Jerry Reese has done that.  He is confusing inaction for stability and it’s going to hurt the Giants this year just like it did last year.    

 Stop twiddling your thumbs and playing games with Osi Umenyiora and Ahmad Bradshaw.  Don’t flirt with Jason Snelling.  Fix our football team.

Rashard Mendenhall Should Shove His Tweets

For all you faithful clickers out there, you know me fairly well by now.  I usually have some sort of random intro where I make a weird analogy that doesn’t really make any sense and then talk about how great the Yankees, Knicks and Giants are and how much it must suck to be a Mets fan.  We have a few laughs, Matt Angrisani complains about ERA+, and everything is great. 

But today I am not going to do that.  Today, I am going to listen to one Rashard Mendenhall and have a conversation.  It’s going to be quite rational, eloquent, and well thought out.  It’s even going to be entertaining. 

And what will we be conversing about?  I’m glad you asked that.  I think since Mr. Mendenhall inspired this idea, it should be related to him.  So let’s talk about how Rashard Mendenhall is the biggest moron of all time and I hope he gets snapped in half next season.

For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Mendenhall apparently wanted to have a nice sit down conversation with Osama Bin Laden about the events of September 11.  His first tweet on it “What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”  Umm, we got his side.  He took credit for planning the whole damn thing.  But, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at first.  Mendenhall is only 23 years old, he was only 13 when it happened, so he probably wasn’t reading and watching everything he could during that awful week.  It could just be he was misinformed, and he is right to some extent in that we shouldn’t be celebrating death. 

But then he said this: “We’ll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style.”   Really?  Are you kidding me?  Are you actually serious with that comment?  You know why its not hard to believe?  BECAUSE IT HAPPENED!  On September 10, 2001 it would have been hard to believe.  The next day?  Not so much.  We know exactly what happened.  Four planes were hi-jacked that day.  343 firefighters, 72 police officers, one K9 officer, one CIA agent, and 3,000 American citizens died.  The country shut down.  At school that day we stood in line at the payphones trying to call home to make sure everything was ok.  For a few misfortunate ones, everything wasn’t ok.  And he thinks its hard to believe?  Yeah, that makes sense.

What really got me going is that he decided to try and “explain” his comments.  He said on his blog that he was trying to promote conversation.  Well, now we’re conversing.  Conversing about his idiocy.  Conversing about his lack of respect for what happened.  He tweeted “There is not an ignorant bone in my body. I just encourage you to think.”  Well, I think that you’re a clown.  So he succeeded in getting people to think and converse.  Nice job you schmuck. 

Oh, and that whole “There is not an ignorant bone in my body” thing?  Yeah, every single bone you have is ignorant.  Good job making sure everyone with a pulse knows it now.

Tuesday Quick Hits!

First off, I would like everyone to read both Matt Wolfe’s and Greg Binder’s thoughts on the NFL draft which were posted yesterday.  They both offer great insight into who teams *SHOULD* draft based on their need and what type of defense they utilize.  As much as I think I know about football, these two blow me away regarding scouting of players at the collegiate level and their projections of how they will do in the NFL.  Kudos to you both.

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HOW BOUT THEM METS???!!?!?!?

Okay maybe that was a little strong.  They have a modest 4-game winning streak at the moment after losing their previous 12 of 14 games.  It’s hard to get too excited for this team, as they will disappoint in the end.  The team just plainly cannot compete at a high level in this league with all the injuries that have bogged them down (as evident of years past).  But I’ll enjoy the ride as it lasts, hopefully at least until July.  Then I can start focusing on football as the Mets drown into 4th place.

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HOW BOUT THEM KNICKS AND RANGERS??!?!?!?!?!

Okay maybe that was a little harsh.  Oh well, where are all those fans now?  My “Cara de Libro” feed had been blowing up for the past few weeks about both teams, rightfully so as the fans should be happy their teams made it to the playoffs.  But what I don’t get it as how did the amount of fans for each team go from about 3 to 79?  I despise fair-weather fans.  Cue the “you’re a Mets fan who only is happy about his team when they win” comments – which is true, I am only happy when they win but I will never not show my pride for them.

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HOW BOUT THEM NFL OWNERS AND PLAYERS?!?!?!?!?!

I do have to say that I don’t have the knowledge of what is really going on here, and yesterday just confused me even more.  The Judge ruled in favor of the Players, however NFL pundits have been saying all day today that the Owners were the winners from yesterday’s ruling.  Ummm, what?  Does someone care to explain because I’m stumped.  All I know is that this NFL draft is going to be VERY different than in year’s past, since Free Agency has yet to occur and teams have a number of holes to fill.  Usually they go into the draft after signing a few free agents and fill a small number of holes with their seven draft picks.  This year, they will/should take the best player available as even if they can’t fill a hole with college players, they can just sign the free agents that already have NFL experience afterwards.  Very interesting.

Also, I heard this on ESPN Radio’s Mike and Mike this morning – anyone else think it’s funny that a woman (the Judge) was controlling the fate of the NFL?

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That’s it for this edition of your weekly Tuesday Quick Hits by yours truly.  Tune in tomorrow when Matt Angrisani attempts to use more statistical mambo jambo to explain who he thinks is the best player in baseball.

Jeff McCann has been spoiled over the last few days as he has been able to watch the Mets win a few games.  All that will change soon enough, he’s sure.