The Thursday night game between the Patriots and Jets was a quarterback-friendly, overtime shootout. The kind of game fantasy owners dream of, unless of course they were part of the faction that watched New England quarterback Matt Cassel’s 400 yards and three touchdowns waste away on their bench. Brett Favre, meanwhile, had the far better game in reality, efficiently completing 26-of-33 passes for 258 yards and two touchdowns in a 34-31 overtime win.

For football fans and Bill Belichick bashers, there was more joy in reality than in fantasy Thursday night. For fantasy owners with enough reason to put Cassel in their starting lineups, there was plenty of joy in a breakout performance that went into the NFL record books. In addition to monster passing numbers, Cassel rushed for 62 yards and became the first quarterback in league history to accumulate 400 passing yards and 60 rushing yards in a game. Read more »

Week 10 has come and gone. The Lions couldn’t pick up a win for the tenth straight week. We saw the return of Thursday Night Football with a primetime slugfest between the arms of Cutler and Quinn and the verbal diarrhea exhibited by Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and Cleveland’s Kellen Winslow.

Then, in another exciting rendition of NFL action on Sunday, Green Bay vs. Minnesota went down to the wire, two second-tier backs found paydirt thrice, and a one Tyler Thigpen played like he actually belonged in the NFL. Jake Delhomme did not however. Read more »

The entire country, or at least those with the NFL network in their cable package, tuned in to the beginning of Thursday Night Football this week to watch former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn make his first professional start. What they got was a front row seat to watch one of the most disappointing offenses in the league break out of its funk and light up the scoreboard.

The Denver Broncos came out of the gates hot to start 2008. They weren’t held to under 34 points until they suffered their first loss in Week 4 to the Chiefs. In their first five games Denver’s quarterback Jay Cutler eclipsed 300 yards passing on three occasions, including games of 350 and 361.

Rookie wide receiver Eddie Royal blew up in his pro debut by receiving for 146 yards and a touchdown. The next week, in his first game of 2008, wideout Brandon Marshall followed Royal’s example and hauled in 18 passes for 166 yards and a score against division rival San Diego. Sitting at 4-1 during an AFC power-shift, Mike Shanahan and company seemed poise to grab the reins and ride the wave of success to a playoff berth and then some. Read more »

Finally, a lopsided game on Monday Night Football in 2008. However, it was the team not expected to prevail that was on the winning side of a 41-7 rout.

The host New England Patriots spanked the Denver Broncos in a game that left Patriots fantasy owners smiling. Oppositely, the blowout also left us wondering where in the heck has Denver’s high-powered offense gone over the past few weeks?

In what was billed to be a clash of AFC powers, it seemed that only one contender showed up to play; likewise, the quarterback in white expected to shine on the national level was upstaged by a no-name fill-in not named Brady. Read more »

This year’s trade deadline came and went Tuesday afternoon, supplying several familiar faces in much newer places. Easily, the major deal included sending Detroit WR Roy Williams and a few draft picks to Dallas for a slew of similar draft picks, including a first rounder in next year’s draft.

Elsewhere, former MVP Shaun Alexander signed as a free agent with the Washington Redskins, joining a club that already boasts the league’s leader in rushing yards, Clinton Portis.

The headline deal that wasn’t made was Chiefs TE Tony Gonzalez. The disgruntled future Hall-of-Famer will now finish out the season with Kansas City, for better or worse. Read more »

We cannot understate the impact of getting team-specific news from local newspapers. While reading blogs like this one certainly can paint a big picture of what’s happening around the National Football League, questions about players and teams can best be answered by local beat writers. These are true journalists who cover a team all week, have locker room access and get a much better feel for all of the developing storylines - big and small.

There are two difficult things for a fantasy owner in their plight to find this kind of information. First, locating hometown news sites online can be time-consuming and difficult. Second, once you find the news you need, what do you do with it? How do you put it into the perspective of YOUR fantasy team? Read more »

Consider player rankings in the same light as your typical college basketball or football rankings. Once the early adjustments are made to take care of teams and players we underestimated and overestimated, only big events should spur big changes. While a multitude of upsets took place last week in college football, there were far fewer landscape-altering events in fantasy football.

Brett Favre’s six-touchdown effort against Arizona was the closest thing to Oregon State’s shocking upset of USC last Thursday. With that outburst, Favre surged to the top of fantasy quarterback rankings and took the NFL lead with 12 touchdown passes. The big boys in our top 10 held down the fort, even Philadelphia’s Brian Westbrook, who has caused owners headaches with a nagging right ankle injury, and Dallas’ Marion Barber, who carried just eight times in a loss to the Redskins. Read more »

Youth movement has been a good theme for 2008, with an influx of rookie running backs, dominant performances by young quarterbacks Jay Cutler and Philip Rivers, and lost confidence in some of the game’s best veterans LaDainian Tomlinson, Randy Moss and Peyton Manning. There are no signs of halting the movement, so youth have continued their invasion of our pre-Week 4 edition of the Fantasy NFL 101.

Second-year back Adrian Peterson narrowly fended off a healthy-looking Tomlinson for No. 1 honors, while Frank Gore and Marion Barber jumped Brian Westbrook, who is questionable this week with an ankle strain. Two more young backs are waiting in the wings in Marshawn Lynch (No. 6) and Joseph Addai (No. 8). Read more »

Week 3 could feature several games that produce shootouts like last week’s San Diego-Denver clash or Philadelphia-Dallas on Monday night.

Jay Cutler leads the NFL in passing yards after brilliant performances against Oakland and San Diego and gets another favorable matchup with the Saints in town this week. For anyone not convinced on starting Cutler, search our tag for Brandon Marshall and Eddie Royal, Cutler’s top two targets.

49ers QB J.T. O’Sullivan surprised everyone with a gutsy performance in Seattle. Look out for a HUGE fantasy day at home against Detroit. He’s almost guaranteed to put up numbers, although if the Niners grab a big lead early the Lions may see San Francisco’s backups.

This week is also about quarterbacks who need to prove something. Matt Hasselbeck’s sqaud is 0-2 after two subpar performances, and the veteran needs to bounce back with a strong outing against St. Louis. Philip Rivers and company are also 0-2, and they need nothing more than a convincing win on Monday Night Football vs. the Jets.

Baltimore’s Joe Flacco can prove that Week 1 was no fluke, Donovan McNabb can knock off his toughest test this year, and Aaron Rodgers can finally prove himself against a team that actually has a victory.

Here are the top quarterbacks for Week 3:

Time to shake things up in our Week 3 rankings, especially at the top where the unthinkable happened - LaDainian Tomlinson lost his weekly home at No. 1 to Adrian Peterson. More struggling backs were bumped from the top five, as we try and let go of our preseason draft stocks and start seeing reality for what it is.

Reality is, Steven Jackson and Joseph Addai are no longer more desirable than Clinton Portis and Marion Barber. Ditto for Randy Moss, who was passed by Terrell Owens as our No. 1 wide receiver after seeing New England’s revamped offense with Matt Cassel at the helm. Read more »