New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush will reportedly miss the next 2-to-4 weeks with a torn meniscus in his left knee, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Bush had missed practice time this week with swelling in the same knee, then left the Saints’ 30-7 loss to Carolina when he injured it on a punt return.

Needless to say, Bush’s absence from both the Saints’ and fantasy teams’ lineups will hurt. Entering the week, he led the NFL with eight touchdowns and was a force in PPR leagues with 42 catches. While he struggled to move the ball on the ground — he averaged just 3.4 yards per carry — Bush was the league’s only player to score at least one rushing, receiving and return touchdown. Read more »

The NFL season is more than one-third complete and its been an exciting six weeks. Now that we have a relatively decent grasp on what’s occurred and what to expect for the rest of the ‘08 campaign I thought it would be a good time to sit back, analyze some results and talk about the immediate future of the NFL. Read more »

Let’s be honest. The Kansas City Chiefs are going in one direction, and star running back Larry Johnson is going in another. That’s especially true this weekend, when the Chiefs head to Arrowhead Stadium to take on the Tennessee Titans while Johnson sits at home and serves a one-game suspension for violating team rules.

Rebuilding is an awkward time for veterans like Johnson and tight end Tony Gonzalez. They are big parts of the organization’s past, but are gradually being phased out of future plans. Johnson hasn’t made life any easier by showing hostility and lashing out at team management. It’s only a matter of time before he and the organization head for a messy split. Read more »

Time to shake it up.

No more standing by and watching top dogs Adrian Peterson and LaDainian Tomlinson get out-produced by the likes of Clinton Portis, Frank Gore and Marion Barber. That trio is no doubt a placeholder until A.P. and L.T. break out of their funks, but the body of work still deserves the recognition.

Philosophically, we’ll be treating this poll just like an AP Top 25 in college football. Just because a team keeps winning, it doesn’t mean it has chance after chance to retain the No. 1 ranking. Peterson was the equivalent of, say, Georgia eking past Alabama-Birmingham, Jacksonville State and Troy: while he technically didn’t lose a ton of ground, he didn’t gain any of it, either. 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 »

Another week in the books, this one being the lightest of the early season with six teams on byes. That fact didn’t make Sunday’s action any less stunning, though, with a major upset pulled by the Kansas City Chiefs and a huge day from Jets quarterback Brett Favre.

Favre garnered our Week 4 MVP honors, arguably the most prestigious in all of professional sports, and led a Dream Lineup that also included Larry Johnson, LaDainian Tomlinson, Laveranues Coles and Jason Witten. Writer Bertha dives into the whole lot of awards in this week’s edition of Big Bertha’s Hardware. Read more »

For the fourth straight week, I thought I had a handle on the NFL.

Broncos ae great, Chiefs are terrible. Cowboys are unbeatable at home. Rams are not competitive. Brett Favre will never learn the Jets offense in time to make big fantasy contributions. Matt Schaub will be benched by Week 5. Lane Kiffin will be out of a job any day now.

None of those things happened this week, though Kiffin could be canned by Raiders owner Al Davis at any moment. The point is, no assumptions are fool proof in the National Football League, which makes predicting fantasy football results a nearly impossible feat, too. Read more »