ESPN appears to have revamped its fantasy football website significantly, and I like what I see. I'm moving my keeper league over from Fox Sports, a hassle I'm only undertaking because I'm so impressed. The layout is simple and easy on the eyes; the only comparably clean site out there is Yahoo's, which I refuse to use because of the inflexibility of its waiver wire system.

ESPN has clearly put a good deal of thought into how fantasy football players use their site. The best websites work so well that you don't have to think about them - the next thing you're looking to do is always right there waiting for you. This is the feeling I get on ESPN.com. While I liked Fox Sports because it offered all the features I need, moving from that cluttered, clunky interface to ESPN is like taking a breath of fresh air.

In case you aren't a Firefox user yet, here's a great reason to become one: The fantastic (and fantastically simple) add-on called Hyperwords (www.hyperwords.net). Hyperwords allows you to select any word, name, or phrase on any page on the Web and immediately plug it into an online resource of your choice. Select an address and send it to Google Maps. Select a phone number and send it to Skype. Select someone's pompously cryptic French expression, translate it into English to find out what it means, then never tell anyone about it in case it's one of those expressions that everyone seems to know but you.

There's lots more you can do, but most important to fantasy football players is its central function: Sending your selected text to a search engine of your choice. So let's say someone offers to trade you Ronnie Brown, and your first thought is, "What's the deal with his knee, anyway?" Just select his name, right-click, select Google News, and there you go. Sure, you could have opened up a new window, gone to news.google.com, typed in Ronnie's name, and thereby accomplished the same thing, but that would have cost you a whole extra five to ten seconds, which is of course simply unacceptable.

In case you're not one of those fantasy football addicts that can't wait until your real league's drafts to have a fantasy team in front of you...those who, like myself, annually sign up for a Yahoo! Public league team just so that you have something to look at for the month before your draft...I figured I'd provide you with a quick glimpse of the new and improved Yahoo fantasy football draft room.

Click through to the blog for full-size image and commentary...

You can find all of our positional rankings at www.ffgeekblog.com/power-rankings .

Here are the rankings for kickers going into the 2008 season. To be honest, don't expect me to update or change this list very much between now and the beginning of the season. I just don't care that much about kickers, and neither should you. In standard scoring leagues last season, the difference between the top kicker ( Mason Crosby) and the fifteenth ranked kicker ( Neil Rackers) was only 35 points, which comes out to a little over 2 points a game. I don't know about you, but there weren't that many games in my fantasy team's season that were determined by 2 points or less.

The majority of the kickers at the top of these rankings are on teams that score a lot (Patriots, Cowboys), or teams whose offenses are OK but can't get it into the endzone on a regular basis (Titans, Redskins). If the team can't even almost score on a regular basis, then you will find their kicker near the bottom of the rankings (Dolphins, 49ers).

Anyway, don't draft a kicker until your very last pick, if at all. I'd rather pick up an additional "sleeper" pick and wait until the beginning of the season to figure out which player I should drop in order to fill that "K" roster spot. The only exceptions to this rule would be leagues that force you to have all positions filled at all times, and leagues where you have to pay some type of fee per transaction.

Here are the rankings for team defenses going into the 2008 season. As you can see, the perennial teams at the top of this list (Chicago and Baltimore) seem to be on a downward spiral, with the new powerhouses of Minnesota and San Diego leading the way this season. With team defenses though, even more so than with tight ends, you definitely don't want to rush when drafting one. If you don't get at top tier defense around the 10th round or so, I'd suggest holding off until one of your last picks to take one. The difference between 75% of the defenses is so small that it won't have much affect on your season...plus if you're really into weekly match-ups, you could always pick up a defense each week based on the team they're playing and hope it works out.

These four wide receivers stand out to me as representing the "first tier" of overvalued wideouts - guys whose names frequently leap off the page to me as I review power rankings from around the web. Someone in your league will draft one of these players far too early. Don't let it be you.

Over the past week or so, I have been participating in an eight team mock draft over e-mail, hosted by www.WestCoastNonsense.com. The teams were made up of people from different fantasy football blogs, including FFLibrarian.com, FantasyFootballBlog.net, TheFantasyFootballReport.com, WestCoastNonsense.com, and PortlandSportsman.blogspot.com. The draft followed the standard serpentine format, with the basic scoring system being 6 points for RB/WR score and 4 points for a QB score.

As we begin to amp up and get ready for the 2008 fantasy football season, I thought it was time to begin our weekly Ask the Geeks column, so we begin with a question from Mark regarding the Jacksonville Jaguars running game this season:

"I had a fantasy football question for you that has me perplexed. I'm a big Jaguars fan, but I'm not sure when to take Freddy T or MJD. Taylor is the starter, but can he remain healthy? How much time will they split? Will Greg Jones be in the mix? Should I avoid them all together? I see MJD in the top 15 on most lists, but I feel like Fred did better last year. I'm thinking Taylor would be an awesome #2-3 RB, but I'm trying really hard to be unbiased. I'd appreciate your thoughts."

Our takes on this question after the jump...

With the initial quarterback and running back power rankings already up, it's time to rank favorite position in fantasy football, the wide receiver.

FFGeekBlog ranks the 2008 RBs.

Is it time to reevaluate the RB-RB approach? The subject has been broached by several bloggers and columnists this off-season. Here I'll provide a summary of their opinions, as well as my own take. Will we reach a consensus of sorts?

EA released the 2008 edition of its fantasy football site today. I signed up to take a look, and am disappointed to have to say that this site looks far from ready for prime time. I'm not really sure why they opened it up to the public in this condition to be honest with you. Screen shots and discussion after the jump.

Adrian Peterson is an exciting fantasy player by any measure. Besting the NFL single-game rushing record in his rookie season was a feat for the ages. Many a fantasy football trophy was won last year thanks to his statistical brilliance. I certainly wouldn't be incredibly surprised if he has an even better season in 2008. Even though I think he has a higher ceiling than any running back in the league, if I were drafting with the #2 pick tonight, I'd be taking Addai over Peterson (assuming, as I think we can, that LT goes #1 almost universally). Here's why.

At some point in '07 (when the season had already started and it was too late), I noticed that Fox Sports Fantasy Football Commissioner offered pretty much everything that a Yahoo Plus league did - except for free, rather than $125 per league (irked by the fee, we went with Yahoo's free version last season, which has far fewer features and customization options). I tucked that little nugget of knowledge away until today, when I decided upon further review to go with Fox for the keeper league I commish. Here are a few of my initial impressions.