From Justin Mooney... Week 4's Fifteen Fantasy Predictions!

What you need to know for week 3!

You'll be hearing a lot from this league.

A Defensive Lineman for St. Louis with the unlikely name of C.J. Ah You faces the dreaded cut down today. Merely for comedic purposes, I hope this young upstart makes the squad. If only to say smile and say "Ah You" everytime he makes a tackle.

In other news, Lead with the Head favorite Chad Johnson has leagally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco. While this is entirely silly, it is also entirely awesome. Will I buy his jersey? Yes I will. Will the NFL scoff and scowl? Yes they will. But the law is the law and if we know anything about Rog Goodell, he's a stickler for those laws.

Crucial psychological draft day tips at FranklinStripFanatics.com

Kyle Orton, in the Bears 3rd pre-season game, the one that Dennis Green gives the most importance to, played...

PRETTY GOOD

10-17 is not too bad... 2 TDs is freakin' great.

The guy does have a winning record as a starter. He played pretty good last year. His rookie year, when he was a below average "game manager" was his rookie year. Peyton Manning wasn't tits in his first year. He was obviously better than Orton was (and will always be) but he definitely struggled.

Orton has been in the same offense for 4 years. He can now run the full offense... not the abridged version he had to run as a rookie forced into service due to a Rex Grossman injury.

Before we start sucking each others popsicles, this was against the 49ers, in the preseason... but it was still a good showing against their first team defense.

Many experts are predicting the Bears to be an awful offense, but what killed them last year was their shoddy running game... they were actually slightly better than league average through the air. If Forte is an improvement over Benson/Peterson (which should be a given) and Orton is slightly better than he was last year and does not make the killer turnovers that Rex did... I think the Bears could be a decent sleeper team. The strength of the NFC East will make it tough for the Bears to compete for a wild card... but who knows.

That's why they play the game!

It's all about comparing the off-season distractions of many of the top QBs and comparing those to the off-season distractions of Kyle Orton.

I have never been a fan of the RB-RB draft strategy. I'm all about best available. Last year in the FSF, the top 10 point scorers were QBs, the 11th was a QB, the 12th was a QB, then finally we get to the first RB, LaDainian Tomlinson.

Now obviously the need for RBs should not be ignored. I still condone taking a good RB, but the difference between the top RB and the 10th RB ( Marshawn Lynch) was 5.7 points per game. The difference between the top QB (Brady) and the 10th QB ( Carson Palmer) was 9.4 PPG.

[For WR it's #1 Moss to #10 Colston at 6.32 PPG.]

If you went to the 20th ranked RB, LenDale White, the PPG difference between him and LT2 is only 7.62 PPG.

The difference between the 11th ranked RB and the 30th ranked RB is a measly 3.2 PPG.

Still think you need RB-RB?

Of course these are based on 2007 stats, an up year for QBs and kind of a down year for RBs, but in this excellent article on ESPN.com you can see the over-valuing of the RB-RB strategy.

For an example, if you went RB-RB last year you probably wound up with something like Addai-Jacobs (29.6 PPG) or Portis-MJD (25.8 PPG)... not bad.

But if you went RB-QB you could have gotten Addai-Brady (44.5 PPG) or Westbrook-Romo (42.6 PPG).

So maybe RB-RB as a rule is not the smartest of plays. (Of course, if you pick an RB in round 1 and a miracle falls to you in round 2, you take him. Don't be an idiot either.)

This season it would not be unreasonable to see Brady, Romo and Manning all go in the first round. There are really only 4-5 top tier QBs that would warrant early pickings. Then there are another 5-7 QBs that will get you basically the same fantasy points and you can get them in later rounds.

My point is this, there are only a few elite players at each position, players that really set themselves apart from the rest of that position. Those are players to target. Don't fall prey to an outdated strategy.

In a battle of not who would win the starting job, but who would lose... Rex lost.

The Chicago Bears have named Kyle Orton the starting QB of the 2008-09 NFL season. In actual fact, they have named him the starting QB of the first game of the 2008-09 NFL season. After that all bets are off.

I'm interested to see what the Bears do now. Considering they have baffled common sense and slapped logic in the face the last two years, there is really no telling what they will do. But this is what they should do:

1. Shitcan Rex Grossman.. now! 5 minutes ago. Get him off the team. If Orton struggles, you can't be tempted to put Sexy Rexy back in there. Mark McGwire does not want to talk about the past, and the Bears should not either. They need to commit this season 100% to Kyle Orton.

2. Promote Caleb Hanie to the active roster as the #3 QB. He's raw, but talented. I don't know if I even want him to see too much the field this season, but I also don't want to see him lost to another team if we leave him on the practice squad. Try to get him some meaningful reps in the last two pre-season games. Let's find out what we have here.

3. Obtain a distraction-free veteran back-up QB. McCown might get cut by Miami. I'm sure there will be other cuts too. Make a trade. Something! But get in a guy who is NOT going to create a situation where Orton is looking over his shoulder. Daunte Culpepper would be a horrible move because he would want to start, pout when he is not starting, not aid, mentor and tutor Orton and Hanie and be a distraction. But there needs to be someone on the team that can step in for a few games if Orton gets hurt... or is terrible.

By mid-season we should know if Orton or Hanie is the man, and if not... start thinking '09 draft.

The fact is: Orton has won when he was the starter. The Bears have a few playmakers on offensive and are being predicted to be so bad, they might sneak up on a few people. Turnovers kill a team and Orton doesn't turn it over as much. The Bears D should be greatly improved and their Special Teams are among the tops in the NFL. They will be in a lot of games if the offensive is decent and limits mistakes.

Orton is the lesser of two evils and as a Bears fan, that ain't so bad.

I did a pretty good QB breakdown for fantasy drafts over at www.franklinstripfanatics.com

Check it out and have a great draft!

Getting away from the fact that Baltimore v New England last night was one hell of a football game, with all the drama one would expect in prime time... Baltimore sure whines a lot for a team that acts so tough.

I've never seen an entire D, talk so much trash and peacock about so much AFTER getting burned for a TD. I understand that it may have been a strategy to try and bully and intimidate NE, but really... are you going to intimidate the core of the Patriots? Brady? Belichick? Moss? The O-Line? I think they've played in some big games before... in January.

And what was all the hate for Wes Welker? Sure, he's a hell of a football player, a sparkplug and a competitor... but did he spend the pregame stretching time making prison jokes to Ray Lewis? The Ravens D was in his face from the opening whistle. Then all the pointless penalties, Bart Scott melting down (more in a second), then all the whining. Landry acted like a pouty brat.

And Samari Rolle didn't like being called "boy". Then don't act like one. Act like a man... the Ravens seemed like they were readying their excuses before the game was over.

Bart Scott... pro-bowler... a force of nature... loses his mind. He'll probably be suspended, and maybe it won't matter to the Ravens' season at this point, but come on! He was lucky to not be ejected (or maybe he was, it was never clear) but the NFL needs to take the nod from MLB and start ejecting more players and coaches. There is nothing more exciting than some manager or player getting tossed from a baseball game. But in the NFL they are rare to pull the trigger. I say do it! It will only add excitement and eliminate some of the "thug element" the NFL claims it does not want. If a player gets tossed for obvious and over-the-top unsportsmanlike conduct, it will calm down.

What sucks is that the Baltimore D's whining outshined a fantastic game by Boller, McGahee and the rest of the offense. They played great, definitely good enough to win. The O-line DOMINATED the Pats and McGahee ran like a man possessed... I had to replay many of his runs because I couldn't see how he found space. He broke tackles, and on one run almost broke Junior Seau's ankles and will. Boller made a serious claim to the starting job.

But no one will remember that... they will remember the D melting down and bitching. It's too bad.

It's seems like the right thing to do to blame Norv Turner for the Chargers fall from 14-2 to a (maybe) 9-7 team... but you'd be wrong. It's easy to throw darts at his quite-honestly-frightening complexion, but it's too easy. It's like the Staples Easy button... sure you can push it, but what the hell does it really do? And who buys it? They sell it... SOMEONE is buying it. But I digress...

The one to blame is A.J. Smith, the tyrannical GM of the San Diego Chargers. (The same San Diego Chargers who eject you from the stadium for smoking a cigarette 20 feet from the smoking section because that's where a stadium employee accidentally told you to smoke, confiscating a $300 ticket you somehow scored after you drove 2 hours from LA to see SD v CHI opening weekend... Karma's a bitch Powder Blue!)

Smith is the one who let Bum's kid go, let Cameron go (Cam Cameron will wind up a quality Head Coach, just maybe in the CFL), and then fired Marty. This team was there. They had the Patriots beat if not for a foolish and freakish fumble by a DB who was too excited he had won the game with a pick. Last year's Chargers, with another year's experience, would be every bit as good as this year's Patriots. They had a better D, a smart coach (whose post-season's failures were legendary, but come on... the man could/can coach) and the best offensive weapon in the league.

And, by way of ego alone, A.J. replaced him with Norv Turner.

Norv Turner is like a really good chef. Delicious, healthy, organic, with wonderful presentation. Then someone offered to let him run his own restaurant, and it was okay, but not great, and then they fired him. So he became Chef at another restaurant, did great, and they let him run that one... but he did a bit worse once he was in charge again... so they fired him. (It's not like he was running Kottite's House of Flan, but like a bistro that Zagat's never reviewed and that got a B health rating) Then he went back to being a Chef again, and was great.

At this point, someone had to notice... this guy is NOT a head coach, but one hell of an OC. So what did Smith do? Hire him as the HEAD COACH. It's not Norv's fault... what's he supposed to do? Say no? Continue as Alex Smith's mentor? Hells no! He took the job, like anyone else would. And he has struggled, as has been his pattern. But you can't blame him for that, he's just doing what he's always done, be mediocre.

The fantasy effect has been felt as well. LT2 may wind up still being the #1 RB this year, but it's a far cry from last year's nuclear winter. Gates is still great. Rivers has regressed (but was never that great to begin with). Vincent Jackson has been a BUST. The DST has been a disappointment.

But you were wearing powder-blue-colored glasses if you didn't see this coming. The writing was on the wall. Other clichés were there as well.

But don't blame Norv.