Fantasy Keeper Options 2008

(my fantasy league is apparently still on vacation)
It's fantasy football pre-season and in usual fashion, no one from my fantasy league has bothered to read my emails or the extensive document I attached to one of them, explaining in grand detail exactly how the fantasy keeper selections work. Therefore, in an attempt to save myself time and aggravation, I am choosing the keepers for them.

Christina actually already told me who she's keeping for the Black Widows this year, but I was imitating her general practice of tuning me out and happened to miss what she said. I think she should probably keep Santonio Holmes in the 9th round as that's a pretty good value for him. Not bad for a guy who had 8 touchdowns and almost 1,000 yards last year.

Purple Haze has the least number of options as Malia added and dropped (which automatically disqualifies a player from being kept) a multitude of players in order to get her team on track for a championship last year. It worked, she won the league title and now her only true keeper option is Ben Roethlisberger in the 6th round or nothing at all. While he had a lot of TDs, Roethlisberger's passing yards were on the low end in 2007. I expect the Steelers' offense to improve this year, but this is a very inconsistent QB#1. With that said, he finished last year as our 4th best fantasy QB and he's a good deal in the 6th round so I'm keeping big Ben for Malia. By the way, while it's hard to convey my lack of enthusiasm for Purple Haze to the fullest extent here without being able to use voice inflection, please note that I harbor intense resentment towards her team, which unwittingly pays tribute to Jimmy Hendrix, as I lost to her in the Finals. (Fact: Malia loves purple but when she came up with her team's name she had no clue as to its origin).

Both Malia and Sarah are new moms in 2008 so congrats to them--hopefully their babies will create enough of a distraction to prevent them from picking up the good free agents...hehehe...

Red Dogs owner Sarah will be keeping Braylon Edwards in the 5th round. His 16 TDs and almost 1300 yards last year make this one a no-brainer, assuming he can keep his shoes on and keep people from stepping on the back of his feet. I'll mention Sarah's other options just because it wouldn't be football if I didn't mention Brett Favre. And I don't mean that in a complimentary way. She could keep Favre in the 8th round, which is what his true value is thanks to his projected decreased passing yards, increased interceptions and downgrade in offense. No thanks. The next option is to keep his new teammate, Jerricho Cotchery, in the 7th round. Cotchery somehow caught 82 passes for 1130 yards in 2007, but had just 2 TDs. Theoretically those numbers should improve with a hall-of-fame-qb throwing to him this year. But, I wouldn't count on it.

Jacquie is new to the league this year and while she was on vacation in New Orleans, she won the keeper rights to Plaxico Burress in the 5th round or Eli Manning in the 7th round. Manning was a great fantasy quarterback in weeks 1 and 17 last year (not to be confused with weeks 1 through 17). Clearly the Super Bowl MVP was not a fantasy MVP throughout the regular season. Just goes to show how meaningless fantasy really is. Burress has an ankle injury keeping him out of the pre-season, which actually could benefit him if you happen to be one of those people (such as myself) who thinks the pre-season is all risk and no reward for veteran players. Burress has only caught one touchdown in 2008 so far and that was the one that won Super Bowl XLII. That plus the fact that he's Eli's favorite target makes him worthy of a 5th round pick.

Alexandra won the rights to Julius Jones in the 5th round or Isaac Bruce in the 14th round. Since she just got back from spending the summer abroad in Oxford, England (tough life), she may or may not know that both of these players moved around during the off-season. Bruce signed with the 49ers, after being released by the Rams, and although I can't be too excited for a guy who's almost as old as Brett Favre and catching passes from Alex Smith, I do like his upside. Not as much as Julius Jones' potential though! I love the move to Seattle from Dallas where he had to share his carries with Marion Barber. This former Irish tailback had over 1,000 yards two years ago and there's no reason why he can't surpass that with the Seahawks. But what remains to be seen (yuck-awful use of passive voice) is what he can do as far as scoring goes...

And for our third and final new fantasy member, Brooke, who has been busy working on her 15th career while flying across country to the ESPYs and getting back surgery and whatever other trouble she can possibly get herself into , the players at decent keeper value are Brandon Marshall in the 13th or Lendale White in the 5th. Apparently Marshall went to Iraq in the off-season with the amount and types of injuries he had-- perhaps warfare is what they mean when they say "off-field incidents." If he plays he definitely going to be worth more than a 13th round pick, whereas White could easily be a 5th round value depending on how our draft goes. White should be the starter in Tennessee, but with the pick of Chris Johnson in the first round of this year's NFL Draft , who knows? I'm giving Brooke Mr. Marshall.

Golden Rules without a doubt should keep Adrian Peterson in Round one and then choose to go 10th in the draft order. Unlike most of the "guys" out there who leave their draft order to random chance, this league takes control and uses the random drawing of names from a hat merely to provide guidance as to the order in which we choose our draft order. Therefore, Melanie can easily end up with All-Day as the 10th pick in the first round. Last time I spoke to Melanie she explained to me that she had fallen from the uneven bars and then went biking on a nice path-- or actually the drugs explained that to me. Therefore I'm going to just go ahead and confirm this decision for her.

Big Cats owner Leila will be taking a 10-day excursion to Peru right in the middle of draft week and although I wanted to kill her at first, we have finally come to a resolution as to when our draft date is, so all is forgiven. Miss Peru has two decent wide receiver keeper options as she can keep Randy Moss in Round 2 or Greg Jennings in Round 12. Moss is definitely a second round pick and Jennings is more like a 6th or 7th round pick. Obviously the value lies in the latter, but I'll let her decide if she wants to secure Moss in that second round spot.

Dientes Locos, also known as Bubble Girl, Wine Sipping MBAs and Beer Guzzling Machines has some pretty nasty keeper options and I don't mean nasty as in Malia's favorite song. Go with Leon Washington in the 9th round or nothing at all. 9th is probably a little high for a back-up who's only going to touch the ball in single-digit numbers per game without an injury to Thomas Jones.

As for me, I may have to pass on a keeper this year. My options are Tedd Ginn Jr. in the 9th, Joey Galloway in the 6th, Chris Cooley in th 5th or DeAngelo Williams in the 3rd. Any thoughts?