Free Playoff Fantasy Football

0 Comments read Matt Waldman
Didn’t get to draft Calvin Johnson this year in your fantasy league? Draft him weekly (or as long as the Lions remain alive) at Fantasy Throwdown. Photo by MattBritt00.

You can’t beat the intensity of the NFL playoffs, but you can add to it with one-on-one fantasy football. Mike MacGregor and I are holding playoff fantasy football all the way through the Super Bowl at Fantasy Throwdown.

That’s right, you can have a Super Bowl fantasy match up. In fact, we’re holding a playoff tournament right now with 24 players participating in four, one-on-one games this week. If you missed the tourney, you can still challenge a friend or someone on the site – its easy to play and difficult to stop!

Here’s the basics (for more complete directions go here):

  • Challenge a friend or another person on the site.
  • You and your opponent determine the three games for that week that will comprise your player draft pool.
  • Pick your games wisely as well as your draft order, because you each get to block a player from the draft pool during the draft. If there’s only two good QBs from those games you selected, you can set it up to force your opponent to settle for a scrub.
  • Draft your team.

Drafts take 10 minutes if you and your opponent are both online. Or you can stretch out the draft throughout the course of the week or even do predraft settings. Play standard or IDP, PPR or non-PPR while chatting live with your opponent if you wish.

Keys to a Good Back-Shoulder Fade

0 Comments read Wide Receiver
Keshawn Martin was one of two receivers I watched in recent months that got me thining about the techniques required to execute a good back-shoulder fade. Photo by Mattradickal.

The back-shoulder fade can be an unstoppable weapon if a receiver understands how to run the route and the quarterback throws the ball with timing and confidence. Here are components of the route that make the play successful. Continue reading →

RSP Cutting Room Floor: College RB and WR Notes

0 Comments read Players, Running Back, Wide Receiver
Jarrett Boykin has NFL athleticism but the Hokie offense didn't demand him to develop NFL receiver skills. Photo by Gary Cope.

If you haven’t noticed, the RSP blog is often my catchall area to write about anything I can relate to football. Nonetheless, rookie evaluation is still far and away the headliner. With the regular NFL season in the books I’ve ramped up my film study of college players. Here’s a few odds and ends about several players I’ve watched recently. For much more in-depth analysis, get the Rookie Scouting Portfolio publication available April 1.

Western Kentucky RB Bobby Rainey is the best running back prospect you’ve never heard of. Continue reading →

Message from Footballguys Players National Champion

0 Comments read Reads Listens Views
I had my worst fantasy football sesason in 15 years - by far - until I got this email below.

I had my worst year in 15 seasons playing fantasy football. I made the playoffs in only 50 percent of my leagues. In fact I had four teams miss the playoffs, which accounts for 40 percent of my total non-playoff qualifiers in my career in the hobby. But a nice consolation has been the number of fantasy owners emailing me over the past few weeks thanking me for suggesting they consider a different approach to drafting teams, which I termed the Upside Down Drafting strategy.

But the email I got this afternoon from Ronald Eltanal, the $125,000 winner of the Footballguys Players Championship, makes me feel like a champion even if I didn’t win one this year. See below…

Matt,

I just won the Footballguys Players Championship (I still can’t believe it as I write it). I’m writing to thank you for your advice this season, in your footballguys articles and in the stuff you write for your rsp blog. Take a look at the squad I drafted, and you can see it has your fingerprints all over it: Continue reading →

Boycotting the Corner Store: A Lesson for RBs

0 Comments read Players, Running Back
Other than Reggie Bush, I can’t think of a back that loved “taking trips to the corner store” more than Bills RB C.J. Spiller. Now that he’s boycotting the corner store his production is blossoming. See what I mean below. Photo by Matt Britt.

Isaiah Pead is an NFL running back prospect for the 2012 NFL Draft. The 5’11”, 198-pound University of Cincinnati senior is agile, and quick. He earns his tuition gaining yards from spread and pistol sets. This morning I’m watching Pead gain 191 total yards from scrimmage and score two touchdowns against NC State.

I’m not surprised about his performance, because I’ve seen Pead before. In another sense, I’ve seen Pead many times before. The Bearcats’ star runner shares similar tendencies of most good college running backs. However, one of these tendencies is a bad habit in the NFL. I call it, “taking trips to the corner store.”

Most of us have a favorite corner store in our neighborhood. We go there for gas, cigarettes, junk food, energy drinks, beer, lottery tickets, you name it. Nothing there is really good for us, but we can’t resist the temptation. In football I see the “corner store” as a running back’s decision to bounce a run outside. Continue reading →

Gone Fishing

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For the next week I’ll be spending most of my waking hours watching college prospects. I have studied nearly 100 players this fall for the 2012 RSP, which will be available on April 1. With time off from work, I’m devoting my break solely to watching film.

I’m also depressed about Adrian Peterson’s injury. I couldn’t watch any more NFL football for the week after seeing it. Although we know most players leave the game due injury, when it happens to a player with this kind of talent and passion for the game makes the heartbreak of injury more unbearable.

I might write about it, but I have goals to reach this week with the number of players I want to study by the New Year. If you don’t hear from me by then, Happy New Year!

On the Defense: The RSP Football Writers Project

0 Comments read RSP Writers Project
Is a shutodwn corner like Charles Woodson your preference or are you seeking a gianormous, space-eating defensive tackle? Its these choices you'll face when building a team as a part of the RSP Football Writers Project. Photo by Elvis Kennedy.

By Jene Bramel

Last week, Matt introduced the RSP Football Writers Project, in which a collection of football writers and thinkers will have 4-6 weeks to put together an NFL team.  Each writer will have access to any player they want, but they’ll be forced to work within a salary cap and personnel requirements. More importantly, they’ll have to defend their choices as part of a coherent fundamental and philosophical approach.

I expect the writeups and discussion on this blog in the coming weeks to be among the best football reads you’ll see all year.  Continue reading →

Guy Lights a Fire Under Bank of America’s Hind Parts

0 Comments read Walk on the Wild Side
Insert Bank of America behinds over top...Photo by Baronsquirrel.

Occasionally, I like to write about things here that have nothing to do with football and today I was alerted to a story about an MBA candidate that I wrote about at my day job. He won a prestigious entrepreneurship competition for presenting a pitch for a product that actually has football implications – a hand-held device called the Traumatic Brain Injury Test (T-BIT), which determines whether an athlete has a concussion.

However Ken Williams didn’t get into the news for T-BIT, but for finding an inventive and humorous way to get Bank of America to stop dragging its feet: a music video.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/4rEfSupQB78] Continue reading →

RSP Football Writers Project: The Readers Team

0 Comments read RSP Writers Project
In fantasy football Adrian Peterson is a great player to build a team around. However if you had to build a real team from scratch with realistic fiscal constraints it's not as easy a decision. Photo by xoque.

Last week, I announced the RSP Football Writers Project, which is the collection of terrific football writers who will each be given 4-6 weeks to construct an NFL team from scratch within the constraints of a salary cap. Fellow Footballguys.com writer Sigmund Bloom and I will be developing the salary list, personnel requirements, and fundamental questions that the writers must answer.

We’ll also share the info and instructions here so anyone can download and construct a team. If I can arrange the right kind of panel to judge, I might even sponsor a contest for those of you playing at home. Stay tuned.

For the past two weeks, I’ve had several initial thoughts about the construction of my team. I’m sure many of my ideas will change dramatically as I get further into the process of building my NFL team, but I thought I’d share my thoughts. In fact, I’ll probably keep you guys posted with my progress and depending on the situation, ask for your feedback.

One idea I am going to implement is a Readers Team. Based on your votes, I’ll compile a team on your behalf. Today we’re going to begin voting on the Readers Team’s football philosophy.

Continue reading →

A Tebow-Fox Back Story

0 Comments read Players, Quarterback
Tim Tebow, John Fox, and Brian Xanders offer a confluence of unique backgrounds to create this great NFL story. Photo by Wade Rackley.

The X’s and O’s of Tim Tebow, a podcast produced by Doug Farrar on Shutdown Corner featuring Cecil Lammey, provides great analysis on the Broncos quarterback.

I had the pleasure of speaking with former NFL scout Russ Lande this week in Atlanta about Tebow, and Lande shared an excellent back story about Broncos coach John Fox that I think adds to the confluence of events that helped create this situation in Denver.

Lande explained that after John Fox left the Oakland Raiders he was hired as a consultant for the St. Louis Rams where Lande was working at the time as a scout. Lande was assigned to break down tape to assist Fox in a presentation of information and as they worked together, the future Carolina and Denver head coach told Lande that he agreed with the great Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne that the option could work in the NFL

Fox told Lande that if he were given the opportunity to coach for an organization that had management with the courage to do so, he’d try to bring the option to the NFL. As Farrar and Lammey mention in the podcast, it was John Fox who initially brought the Wildcat to the NFL. And it only goes to show that the combination of Tebow’s skill sets, Fox’s affinity for the option, and personnel man Brian Xanders’ flexibility has produced the most intriguing story of the NFL season.