Consensus Start/Sit and more!

A few quick links before we get to the consensus start/sit for the week...

• Need some IDP advice? Scope out FFManiaxs' Week 8 IDP Start/Sit.
• Okay deep leaguers, you're going to want to pay attention to KFFL.com's blog post Don't overlook the fantasy football depths. Names that only those in the deepest of leagues should be interested in, fyi.
• I was on GoGameFace's GameOn podcast earlier this week talking about how I got my start, my love for the Broncos, and my conviction that Austin Miles Miles Austin (ahh, gotta love a name screw up -I'll blame that on Austin Collie and my 8th grade boyfriend, Austin. Perhaps if I'd dated a Miles...) is a great start this week. Bonus? You get to hear Bill Root from RotoExperts.com, too. 
• Speaking of podcasts, back in September I spoke with some of the Fantasy Football Tonight guys (thanks Ryan and Jeff!), but there are many, many podcasts to chose from, which is one of the great features offered from Fantasy Football Search.
  

Consensus time - remember, I've gone to each of the start/sit sites I linked to earlier this week and pulled together the players with the most start and sit votes for the week. They're listed here in no particular order:

QB

Start: Brett Favre, David Garrard, Jay Cutler

Sit: Donovan McNabb, Matt Ryan, Eli Manning, Matt Hasselbeck

RB

Start: Steven Jackson, Matt Forte, Kevin Smith, Beanie Wells

Sit: Ryan Grant, Knowshon Moreno, Marshawn Lynch

WR

Start: Austin Collie, Donnie Avery, Mike Sims-Walker, Devin Hester

Sit: Derrick Mason, Terrell Owens, Mario Manningham, both Steve Smiths (NYG and CAR), Ted Ginn Jr.

TE

Start: Jeremy Shockey, Vernon Davis, Zach Miller

Sit: Tony Gonzalez, John Carlson, Visanthe Shiancoe, Todd Heap, Tony Scheffler

Kicker

Start: Robbie Gould, Matt Prater

Sit: John Kasay

D/ST

Start: Colts, Chargers, Bears, Cardinals

Sit: 49ers, Broncos

Lots of Week 8 Start/Sit Advice

Thanks to all for your input on my 1st Annual FFLibrarian Readers' Choice poll - I should have the poll ready to roll early next week and have definitely added some questions and sites thanks to your emails and comments. Can't wait to find out which sites you all love to read!

I've got a fun weekend ahead with lots of friends coming in for the marathon - and my brother-in-law should be en route from the ATL before long. Good times ahead. Look for me in my FFLibrarian t-shirt spectating on the marathon course!

You're all really here for the start/sit advice, so let's get to it!

• Start/Sits:
• Talented Mr. Roto's Fear and Loathing in Fantasy Football
• FFGeekBlog's Hit & Misses - Week 8: Happy Halloween!
• Bruno Boys' Week 8 Start Ems
• FFToolbox's Week 8; Sit 'Em
• The Hazean's Week 8 Start & Sit: OK, now you can start Brett Favre
• Yahoo!'s Roto Arcade Flames & Lames: Darren Sproles, Three, Two, One...Liftoff! 
• Pyromaniac.com's Start 'Em - Sit 'Em: Week 8
• NFL.com's Start 'Em & Sit 'Em 
• Fighting Chance Fantasy's Who to Start, Who to Sit
  
• CBSSports.com's Start 'Em & Sit 'Em: Week 8 (video starts right away)
  
• Rapid Draft's Week 8 Start 'Em/Bench 'Em Report
• RotoExperts' Dear Diary: Sit/Start

• And of course there are other things to link to today besides start/sits...like The Hazean's Bye Week Plug-and-Play suggestions.
• Check out Rotoworld's Football Daily Dose for some thoughts on this weekend's upcoming games. 
• Some rankings for the week:
• Mac Bros Start/Sit Rankings 
• Fantasy Hulks' Week 8 Rankings 
• FOX Sports' Projections/Rankings by position
• Yahoo!'s Early Position Ranks 
• Finally, don't forget to participate in my weekly league with 365FantasySports.com - this week's password is 8book.
  

I want your opinion!

I've had an idea rumbling around in my head for awhile and think it's time for the 1st Annual FFLibrarian Readers' Choice poll. I want to know which fantasy sites and writers you all find the most helpful - and there's nothing like a good ol' fashioned poll. So here's the deal - I'm pulling together my poll right now using Google Docs (don't worry, you'll be able to answer with or without a google account) and am hoping to have the poll up and running for the entire month of November. In early December, I'll reveal the winners in each category. Now before I get too far into the poll I wanted to let you know the questions I'll be asking and give you a chance to respond in the comments section if there are any sites that I should be sure to include in the survey. I'm already including a lot (and I mean a LOT) of the obvious sites that I link to frequently, but please feel free you voice your opinions below just to be sure I cover all my bases! The questions will be:

1. Which website featured on FFLibrarian is your overall favorite fantasy football resource?
2. Which website featured on FFLibrarian has the best preseason rankings?
   
3. Which website featured on FFLibrarian has the best waiver wire advice?
4. Which website featured on FFLibrarian has the best start/sit advice?
5. Which website featured on FFLibrarian has the best weekly rankings?   
6. Which fantasy football columnist featured on FFLibrarian is your favorite? 

Hope you guys are as excited about this idea as I am!

Get ready for Week 8 prep

I love my neighborhood - I think it's just beautiful. I felt this way as soon as laid eyes on it when we were apartment hunting this summer. There's just such an abundance of character between the brownstones, old apartment buildings, churches, banks, and even the court buildings. Now I'll be the first to admit that I didn't think anything in New York City could possibly top my Boulder foothills, and while Boulder still takes the cake, my Brooklyn 'hood is awesome in a totally different way. I was walking around in the cool drizzle here yesterday thinking about how absolutely lovely the changing leaves are, even on a soggy day...and it occurred to me: this is it. This is how autumn was meant to be.

And what makes autumn even better? Football. So let's get to today's links:

• In yesterday's comments, reader Brian reminded me that I've been neglecting FantasyPros911 - and what an oversight! Thanks for the nudge, Brian, since it's definitely worth your time to check out some of their gems. Today I'm particularly enamored with their Week 8 IDP Fantasy Football Rankings: Top 225. Who else ranks that many IDPers?? You can break it down by position as well.
• Another by request item - a few weeks ago a reader asked for an analysis on fantasy points per target and since I like to play with just about any football stat available, I pulled something together for my weekly Bruno Boys article. Take a look to see which WRs aren't quite living up to their potential but might have a little something more to give in the second half of the season.
  
• Scope out Ultimate Fantasy Football Strategy's Team by Team Projections for Week 8 - you'll see some nice charts with projected fantasy points based on matchups.
• The NY Times' Fifth Down blog has their weekly matchups advice ready to go (including a few favorite links for the week from yours truly) - great place to go if you're looking for start/sit feedback.
• The Hazean's Six Big Fantasy Names to Sell is full of good stuff. I have to admit I don't agree with the idea of trading away some of these guys, particularly Greg Jennings and Steve Smith (CAR), but I love reading the Hazean's thoughts.
• ProFootballWeekly.com's Ten most intriguing players of Week Eight hit the nail on the head with Miles Austin. Will he keep it going? I say yes, indeed!
  
• A handful of start/sit and rankings links are up:
• FFGoat's Start em, Sit em, and Sleepers Week 8
  
• Junkyard Jake's Sleepers/Creepers
• Mr. Fantasy's Week 8 Rankings (link goes to RBs)
• 12StepDrop's Contentious Starts and Sits: Week 8 
• FFToolbox's Week 8: Sit Em 
• FFXtreme's Start and Bench Advice: Week 8
  
• Fantasy Joe's Studs, Duds, and sleepers: Colts' Collie to fill injury void
  
• Ask the Commish's Sit or Start for Week 8
• FFToday's Position Projections for Week 8 (link goes to QBs)

Will you all be tuning in to watch The League tonight? I'm headed to a concert so I've got it set to DVR - I'm intrigued, I admit it, despite this far less than awesome review.

Contest news from Week 7!

A few early evening links for you before my weekly contest update...

• Rotoworld's Week 7 Target Report confirms what I was thinking and writing about in my column for the Bruno Boys this week (article will go up in the next day or so) in terms of Chris Chambers. His number of targets per game have actually increased since 2008 but clearly he isn't capitalizing on them...combine that with Norv's comments and Floyd will soon take over giving Chambers little to no fantasy relevance.
• Take a look at FantasySharks.com's Week 8 projections or FFToolbox's Week 8: Start 'Em for some early Week 8 lineup advice.
• I'm following the news on Goodell appearing before Congress to talk concussions - I read Malcolm Gladwell's article on the topic in The New Yorker a few weeks ago and definitely learned a little something. What I find most fascinating are the responses to the CBS article I link to here...lots of negativity. Am I naive in that I was expecting football fans to actually care about the long-term health of players?

Well there are plenty of 6-1 teams in my monster 96-team FFLibrarian League, but only one team remains 7-0: Dangerous Beans, who posts on this site as EshInPennsyltucky. So when he comments, I say listen up since he clearly knows what he's talking about. Though it pains me a bit to say that since I'm sitting here at 1-6 in that league and yet I'd like to think I know what I'm talking about most of the time. I'll blame my situation squarely on Matt Forte's shoulders but to be honest, I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons. What I have learned from this monster league experience is that 16-team leagues just aren't that much fun for me...when your waiver wire options are truly awful, it takes away a bit of the fantasy joy for me.

Anyway, here are the top 5 scorers for the week in my monster league:
1. The Sugar Bakers - 158.80 points
2. ColdOne - 152.60 points
3. Lab - 131.55 points
4. Scotch for Breakfast - 131.45 points
5. Up Down Left Right B A - 130.95 points

Last week a great number of you participated in my weekly contest with 365FantasySports.com - love having all that interest, thanks guys! Below you can see the winning roster below from our winner: Tourinct, who rocked the win despite a 1-point performance from Westbrook. Impressive. The point caps game winner this week was repeat player (and winner!) Zrayed. Nicely done to both of you!

If you'd like to join in on the fun and show off your fantasy football knowledge for Week 8, then feel free to join us! It's free, very quick and easy, and full of smart fantasy minds. Get started here if you haven't participated before. The password this week is 8book - enjoy!

Gearing up to spectate

I was watching the weather forecast this morning (fairly standard since I'm a weather nut) and couldn't help but wish I was back in Boulder where they're getting dumped with snow today. Much better than the sogginess that has descended upon NYC. Here's hoping the snow clears out in plenty of time for our Boulder buddies to make it out here for the NYC marathon. My husband and a bunch of our friends are running the marathon this weekend and I'm planning out my spectator route - any suggestions? I'm thinking mile 8 and mile 19 or so - then closing things out near the finish. I'm taking advice from seasoned NYC marathon spectators though.

It's just occurring to me now that I should have made a Fantasy Football Librarian shirt for my husband to run in for the race - that would have been awesome. By the way, if you're thinking to yourself, gotta get me one of those FFL t-shirts, fear not, it's as easy as could be. Click on the Support the FFLibrarian link on the right side of the blog and buy up a shirt, a mug, a whatever for your favorite FFLibrarian fans. I mean the holidays are right around the corner, what says Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah better than a FFLibrarian shirt, eh? Right?!

Moving on to today's links:

• First off, I can't ignore Larry Johnson's pure idiocy. His hateful language was just deplorable but I guess the upside is that it leads to articles such as the Fifth Down's Being Gay in the NFL: "The Only Thing We Need Is a Hero" that look at the macho culture of the NFL a bit more. With Johnson likely out the door before long, remember to grab Jamaal Charles if he's on your waiver wire.
• Speaking of waiver wires, there are some good ones still out there:
• Talented Mr. Roto: The TMR FAQ - learn everything you ever wanted to know about Matthew Berry and of course some player pickup advice.
• FantasySharks.com's Waiver Wire Pickups
• Numbers & Guts' IDP Wednesday: Week 8 for those in IDP leagues
• Last week I did an interview with The Football Girl - Melissa from The Football Girl is interviewing lots of players and other interesting folks so keep your eyes open for podcasts from her in the future, too.
• On the podcast front, I'll be talking with the GoGameFace ladies today - should be fun.
• Some of my favorite bloggers out there teamed together to answer the question, Who is your biggest buy-low candidate for Weeks 8 through 16? in this week's roundtable discussion. Lots of Jennings love here - read on to find out who else they like.
• The Hazean's Seven Fantasy Mirages or Seven Fantasy Studs-to-Be? offers up some sage advice on the fantasy worth of 7 players you might be considering for your squad.
• FFToolbox's Week 8: Sleepers of the Week advises playing Marc Bulger if you're in a bind. Oh man, I feel sorry for those in St. Louis and Detroit being forced to watch that matchup. Cross your fingers that the local stations will take mercy on you and offer up another game, too.
• A handful of start/sit links are up with advice for your roster this week:
• FantasySharks.com's Start/Bench List
• FFToolbox's Who to Start Rankings/Projections
• Hatty Waiver Wire Guru's Studs, Starts, Sleepers, and Bench
• FFManiaxs' Week 8 Start/Sit

Just part of the club

My dad was in town last night (major bonus to living in NYC? seeing my family frequently) so I missed part of the MNF game to enjoy a tasty dinner at Basera (best naan I've had in awhile, by the way) with the NYC transplants in my extended family. Always a good time. Meanwhile tonight I'm embarking on what I see as a ritual for practically every urban-dwelling 20/30-something woman I know: a book club. It's like the urban response to being a soccer mom or something. To be honest, I don't really understand the appeal. Now I realize that I'm a librarian and in theory I should enjoy incorporating books into my everyday life as much as possible, but there's something so incredibly cheesy about a book club. That said, this is my sister's book club so I'm trying to have an open mind here. And that whole reading thing is of course something I can get down with...

Speaking of reading, I've had a busy morning reading the latest waiver wire posts and other helpful hints for Week 8 and beyond:

• First up, Chris Cooley is out for the year - heads up for Cooley owners to go grab a new TE off of waivers (of course if you need suggestions, you can scope out waiver options in the links below).
  
• Jay Clemons is the commish of my fantasy basketball league and I think I can safely say that the man does not sleep. Or perhaps he just cat naps his way through the day. Which then only makes his Fantasy Clicks: Week 7 Revelations article that much more impressive. Great read for a fantasy take on last weekend's games.
• Sports Grumblings' The Fire Sale: Kicking it up a notch is up with World Series thoughts and of course fantasy football. Gotta admit that moving to NYC has not made me a Yankees fan at all. Plus my sister's friend Eric Bruntlett (of the unassisted triple play action earlier this year) plays for the Phillies and is their good luck charm for the playoffs, so I'm totally pulling for Eric and the Phillies. 
• It might be two weeks away, but PFT reports the Steelers could be shorthanded in Denver.
  
• Lester's Legends has a few guys that you might want to avoid this week if possible in Fantasy Football Pitfalls - Week 8.
  
• Waiver wire links for today:
• KFFL's waiver suggestions by position (links to QB)
  
• The Hazean's Week 8 Waiver Wire Adds
• Hatty Waiver Wire Guru's Week 8 video
• FFManiaxs' Week 8 Waiver Wire
• Fantasy Joe's Signs point to Greene for upstart rookie
• FFGeekBlog's The Wire - Week 8: What Greene Can Do for You (sense a Greene trend here?)
  

Week 7 with a dash of fantasy basketball

I have a whole new respect for double fantasy sports players - by that I mean those who are playing two different fantasy sports simultaneously. I've decided it's time to tango with another fantasy sport and since I dig basketball, I jumped in head first to an SI Friends & Family league, which started drafting a few days ago. Here's hoping I'm not way in over my head. Thanks to those of you that sent fantasy basketball resources my way - I'll be getting a post up (hopefully this week!) with feedback on my favorites so far just in case any fantasy basketballers out there are interested.

Some good games and some serious blowouts yesterday - I thought I'd get started today with a few injury updates and then dive right into the rest of the links:

• There's a very good chance that I'll pull out a win in the BWW All-Star Blogger League this week despite a goose egg from Leon Washington, who is unfortunately out for the season with a broken leg (which required immediate surgery in Oakland). Tough times for Leon, here's hoping for a speedy recovery. Meanwhile, fantasy footballers who are in need of a RB who might have some good weeks ahead, you know what to do - Shonn Greene. His 144 yards and 2 TDs should be reason enough to grab him.
• More injury news from FFToolbox - Jermichael Finley is out for a few weeks with a sprained knee. Bummer, the dude was putting up pretty decent numbers. And other news just to be aware of for now, Andre Johnson suffered a chest contusion - if he does miss any time, Kevin Walter could likely pick up some yardage as he did last year when Johnson was out.
• If you need a wrap-up of some of the games this week, check out CBSSports.com's First Response: Something is in the air. Or of course Peter King's MMQB, Seven storylines from wild Week 7, is also a good read as always. Will the NFL have a franchise play annually in London? Intriguing.
• Two more good reviews of the weekend's game from Fantasy Hulks - Mr. Monday Morning and Rotoworld's Beyond the Box Score.
• Time to scope out the waiver wire advice for Week 8:
• Lester's Legends' Get 'em or Don't Sweat 'em
• The Hazean's Daily Haze: Early Week 8 Waiver Wire Thoughts
• FootballDocs' Waiver Wire
• ProFootballWeekly's Fantasy Ticker - I'm psyched about Mike Wallace, too...
• The Bruno Boys' Cut Them Loose and Pick Them Up
• IDP Waiver wire pick ups from Monk's IDP Week

Favorite article of the week & consensus start/sits

Wow. I just watched a heart-breaking loss for the Tennessee Volunteers (and my husband) as their kicker had a 45-yard FG blocked, to lose to top-ranked Alabama. What a disaster for the Vols kicking game today...meanwhile my Northwestern Wildcats narrowly eked out a win against the lowly Indiana Hoosiers. Could've been a bit embarrassing - oh wait, a bit more embarrassing - had we lost. 

Anyway, thought I'd get the consensus start/sit links for Week 7 up - and a few extra links for those looking for one more opinion or one more interesting football tidbit. First up, links:

• I've written a lot about it this week but the photo documentation of my brussels sprouts adventure is up on Fighting Chance Fantasy, as well as this week's Five Game Parlay bets. Will I be able to turn things around this week? One can only hope.
• Football Outsiders' Mike Tanier does another excellent job with his Week 7 NFL Matchups on the Fifth Down - I'm honestly not sure if there's a better review of each week's games out there. Seriously, do yourself a favor and go read Tanier's piece.
• FantasySharks.com's The Hive is up with advice for those in IDP leagues.

Consensus start/sits - for those new to this feature, I read through all the start/sit links that I provided earlier in the week and tally up those players with the most start and sit votes. You'll see their names below listed in no particular order...

QB

Start: Jay Cutler, Matt Cassel, Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger

Sit: Brett Favre, Jake Delhomme, Mark Sanchez, Jason Campbell, Kurt Warner, Donovan McNabb

RB

Start: LaDainian Tomlinson, Laurence Maroney, Jonathan Stewart, Ryan Grant, Thomas Jones

Sit: Brandon Jacobs, Rashard Mendenhall, Clinton Portis

WR

Start: Austin Collie, Miles Austin, Hines Ward, Johnny Knox, Steve Smith (NYG)

Sit: Santana Moss, Terrell Owens, Roy Williams, Steve Smith (CAR), Braylon Edwards

TE

Start: Heath Miller, Greg Olsen, Sean Ryan, Visanthe Shiancoe, Jason Witten

Sit: Vernon Davis, Brent Celek, Owen Daniels, Zach Miller

Kicker

Start: John Kasay

Sit: Robbie Gould

D/ST

Start: Colts, Patriots

Sit: Cardinals

Lots of start/sit advice for Week 7

So I attacked my brussels sprouts consumption challenge with vigor last night. To many of you this might seem like a small task, but those who knew me in my youth (and my mom in particular) perhaps understand the undertaking that this was for me. I like to refer to myself as someone with a sensitive palate; my family just calls me a picky eater. I have of course progressed quite a bit since my youth but just to give you a sense of my picky eating (and my stubbornness), I didn't eat pizza until I got to college. Yeah, I said it. No pizza. My worst years were my elementary school years: I was that kid at birthday parties who showed up already fed; the one with a PB&J sandwich in my lunch box at a restaurant while the rest of my family ate normally; the one that possibly offended her grandmother with her refusal to eat more than one pea. Yes, I was a joy to feed. The good news for those parents out there with picky eaters is that we grow up and accept that spinach is a treat, lima beans are delicious, Indian food is tasty, and damn that pizza sure tastes good.

Point being, I played the role of Brussels Sprouts Chef last night and determined that you can dress up a sprout all you want - but it's still a sprout. I used two recipes, the better one being a variation of a recipe that a reader posted here on my site (thank you Les Savy Ferd!) and the first few bites really weren't that bad. The second recipe had such promise (it included pine nuts, apples, honey - those are all tasty items!) but it failed miserably. I've sent photo documentation of the evening to Fighting Chance Fantasy, which will probably go up tonight with the next set of bets in the Five Game Parlay series - here's hoping my picks this week will be a bit more accurate.

Moving on to today's start/sit and other great links:

• First up, start/sits:
• FFGeekBlog's Hits & Misses - Week 7: New England Heads to Old England
• FFToolbox's Week 7: Sit 'Em
• Matthew Berry's Life's little dilemmas (I'm Facebook friends with both my mom and dad so I found this one particularly amusing)
• The Hazean's Start & Sit Week 7
• Bruno Boys' Week 7 Start Ems
• Ask the Commish's Sit or Start
• Rapid Draft's Week 7 Start 'em/Bench 'em Report
• CBSSports.com's Week 7 Start 'Em and Sit 'Em
• FFNerd's Where to Put 'em - I like the Nerd's willingness to put Owen Daniels on his bench list despite the fact that the expert consensus has Daniels as the #5 TE for the week.
• Roto Arcade's Flames/Lames: Jonathan Stewart will slather Bills in Baconnaise - nice little nugget I learned here: the Steelers haven't allowed a 100-yard rusher in the past 28 games. 
• Onto the best of the rest:
• Which franchise might be moved to L.A.?? See Fifth Down's Los Angeles Needs a Team: Which Franchise is the Flabbiest?
• Yahoo!'s Shuffle Up and Deal rankings for the remainder of the season.
• I love it when I can go to one site and find a variety of expert opinions, so I'm digging all the roundtable discussions I'm seeing this season. Take a look at RookieBlitz.com's Week 7 Sleepers discussion today. 
• Mr. Fantasy's Week 7 position rankings - this one links to QBs.
• Fantasy Check has a great run down of the injuries that players are battling this week in Fantasy Check Up. 
• My Office Pool has advice on Week 7 Buy Low, Sell High if you're contemplating making some roster moves.

I'll be back with the consensus start/sit either later today or tomorrow. Enjoy your Friday!

Afternoon links & contest updates

Come and get your fantasy love here, friends. I'm in a great mood - just finished up an interview with Melissa from The Football Girl (the podcast will be up in the next few days) and spent basically the whole day at a spa by accident. Well kind of by accident. I was getting my hair cut and my stylist ended up needing to leave in the middle due to a family emergency - while I really didn't mind (family comes first and far, far before hair cuts), the salon bent over backwards to make me feel like a valued new customer and I ended up with a facial, hand massage, a goodie bag of lotions, and the best stylist in the salon to finish up. Trust me, it was good. You ladies out there in Brooklyn (and dudes who like nice a coiffure) who need a new salon, just drop me a line and I'll send along their name.

Anyway, all of this makes me want to put a few more fantasy links up - and of course update you on the FFLibrarian weekly contests. So links first, contest news second:

• 12StepDrop's Contentious Starts and Sits: Week 7
  
• FFManiaxs' Week 7 Start/Sit
• Pyromaniac's Start 'Em Sit 'Em (new link, would love to know what you all think)
  
• The top 5 scorers in all 6 conferences of the monster 96-team FFLibrarian league are:
• Vick's Cellmate - 165.50 points
• Beltway Bandits - 160.75 points
  
• The Sugar Bakers - 156 points
• Dangerous Beans - 151.15 points
  
• Sweet Thunder - 149.50 points

• And for the first time this season, one player has won both of my weekly contests with 365FantasySports.com: garywink - congrats Gary! His winning roster in the main pick 2 contest is pasted below. Remember, you can jump into this league any time - the password this week is book7 and here's a good starting point if you haven't participated yet. I've got the pick 2 contest and a salary cap contest up this week; play in one, play in both!

Sprouts, start/sits, and rankings

Those of you who have been following along with the Five Game Parlay I've been participating in with Fighting Chance Fantasy know that I got a bit too sure of myself (and the Eagles) last week and set myself up for a brussels sprouts extravaganza - I promised to provide photo documentation of me eating a sprout if the Eagles didn't cover against the Raiders last week and trust me, I do not want to eat a sprout. But you fine people have given me several sprout recipes, and I'm a woman of my word, so tonight we'll be fixing up several sprout dishes. Should be an interesting dinner.

So let's get to some start/sit links and other good stuff...

• The Fifth Down's Week 7 in Fantasy Football is up with my weekly batch of best links and lots of matchup advice from the Sablich brothers.  
• Good stuff from the KFFL blog - this week's roundtable discussion between a bunch of my favorite bloggers is "Which two players are you stashing for the second half? Why?"
• ProFootballWeekly.com's Ten Most Intriguing Players of Week Seven - love the Frank Gore call. I added him to my list of players that will jump up into the Top 10 fantasy RBs by season's end in my column with the Bruno Boys this week.
  
• Time for your Thursday dose of start/sit links:
• FantasySharks.com's Start/Bench List Week 7
• FFToolbox's Week 7: Start 'Em
  
• Fighting Chance Fantasy's Who to Start, Who to Sit
• Fantasy Football Xtreme's Start and Bench Advice: Week 7
  
• NFL.com's Start 'em & Sit 'em 
• Football Docs' Start Sit 
• Also lots of rankings:
• Fantasy Hulks' Week 7 Rankings by position (link goes to WRs)
• Mac Bros' Start/Sit Rankings Week 7
• Bruno Boys' Rankings by positon (goes to TEs)
• Yahoo!'s Early Position Ranks, Week 7 
• FOX's Weekly Rankings/Projections
• RotoExperts' Lineup Rankings from Scott Engel

Wish me luck with the brussels sprouts...

Week 7 (already?!) prep

This might be a quick post - I've got a final round interview with a library here in NYC and need to head out the door before long. I'll try to get another post up this afternoon with more links plus some info on this week's FFLibrarian weekly contest with 365FantasySports (password is book7 for you eager beavers out there).

Last night I had about 17 different windows open on my computer, working on a presentation that's part of my interview today, working on my Bruno Boys article, and working on my links for the NY Times' Fifth Down. My night work session was peppered with cheers from our downstairs neighbor who is quite clearly a Yankees fan. Speaking of baseball, big night tonight in our house since my husband is a big Dodgers fan...

Anyway, here are some quick morning links:

• There are still some quality waiver wire articles to scope out:
• The ever-entertaining Matthew Berry's Waiver Wire: Celebrity edition
• FantasySharks.com's Waiver Wire Pickups
• FFGeekBlog's The Wire - Week 7: Shiancoe on the Move 
• The Hazean's Week 7 Waiver Wire Adds
• CBSSports.com's Waiver Wire: Will Maroney be a phony again?
•  Numbers & Guts does another great job at pulling together all sorts of IDP nuggets of info in this week's IDP Wednesday. Note the suggestion to go grab Witherspoon off of waivers.
• A little something else for those in IDP leagues - FantasyFootball.com's Wire Me This (IDP: Week 7).
  
• Hatty Waiver Wire Guru's Week 7 Studs, Starts, Sleepers, and Bench is up and will be updated daily until game time.
• KFFL.com's Week 7 Sleepers (listed by position) are up - the Raiders D/ST is an interesting and perhaps clever snag this week, particularly for those who are rewarded heavily for sacks and interceptions.
  

Finally, I'm playing a new fantasy sport this year, my fine readers: fantasy basketball. I'm starting the prep but would love to hear about any favorite fantasy basketball sites that you all use. Not sure I'm ready to whip up a Fantasy Basketball Librarian site quite yet, but that's on the horizon.

Tuesday morning fantasy links

Eddie Royal really pulled through for me. If you missed what happened last night, check out this ESPN article first. So let me list the ways I love Royal...first and foremost, he helped the Broncos win. Second, in my BWW All-Star Blogger League, return TDs count so I pulled out a 3 point win thanks to Royal (and Prater) to go 5-1 and get a little bit closer to the trip to Miami during the Super Bowl. Third, I was playing against my husband this week - he had Royal, I had the Denver D/ST. In a move that I couldn't have orchestrated better myself, our league settings did not give my husband points for Royal's TDs, but gave them to me instead for the Denver ST. Now for those of you calling shenanigans here (like my husband), I still would have won despite Royal's TDs. Oh winning against a spouse in FF is a beautiful thing.

Thanks for letting me talk about my fantasy successes here - the fact that I worked the system so well this week was just too noteworthy.

So moving on to today's links:

• Lester's Legends offers up some much-needed Bye Week Alternatives for Week 7 with a bunch of big fantasy teams on bye - take a look at his high-end alternatives, solid alternatives, and even desperation time picks for some bye week void help.
• A few articles note which players are moving up or down in value after Week 6 games:
• Sports Grumblings' The Fire Sale - which inevitably provides a few chuckles as well
• FantasySharks.com's On the Rise, On the Fall
• Take a look at FFToolbox's Week 7: Hot Trading Tips for guys you might want to try and move off your squad off possible.
• Yahoo!'s Roto Arcade's 7-on-7: Running is clearly not our Forte - some good injury updates/nuggets here.
• I'm so glad to see a little love for Tony Scheffler in Rotoworld's Still in the woods review of the MNF game and other league updates. I love me some Scheff...perhaps he's on the fantasy rebound here!

A few more waiver wire links for you today:

• NFL.com's Week 7 waiver wire report video
• KFFL.com's Waiver Wire by position 
• Fantasy Football Jungle's Waiver Wire
• The Hazean's Waiver Wire Thoughts
• Hatty Waiver Wire Guru's Week 7 video
• FFManiax's Week 7 Waiver Wire
• Fantasy Hulks' Waiver World: Week 7

Scouring for new names on waiver wire

What a crazy Sunday. As evidenced by my picks in Fighting Chance Fantasy's Five Game Parlay for the week, I was pretty off on the outcome of a lot of games. And now I have to eat a brussels sprout. I'm not happy about this and my inner child is emerging ("does one bite count?" "what kind of a chaser food can I have ready?").Oh Eagles...how did this happen?

I had a great weekend with my mom in town though I did end up trading in some football for a trip to the MoMA, so I've been catching up on the big football news from yesterday. If you also missed any of the games yesterday, there are a few good recap articles out there. So onto today's links!

• First great recap of the weekend comes from USA Today's Fantasy Joe - Explosive games make for hectic Week 6.
• Another good game review, which includes some waiver wire names you might want to scope out - CBSSports.com's First Response: Is the Brady of old back?
• In addition to some unexpected outcomes for the week, there were also an unusually high number of injuries. Rotoworld's Week 6 Bumps and Bruises covers injuries on the biggest name players. Check back with their NFL Injuries section for more details over the coming days. 
• There aren't a ton of new names on the waiver wire this week but there are several sites reminding you of which players you should focus on picking up this week:
• ProFootballWeekly.com's Fantasy Ticker: Week Seven
• FootballDocs' Waiver wire pickup/drop advice
• FanHouse's Waiver Wire Wonders: Take the Last Train to Sidney
• Bruno Boys have both their Cut Them Loose article up with Pick Them Up still to come
• Lester's Legends Get 'em or Don't Sweat 'em 
• For those in IDP leagues, check out Monk's IDP Waiver Wire Pickups 

I'm sure my regular readers know how excited I am about tonight's MNF game - go Broncos!! Eddie Royal is tweeting how ready he is for the game with a link to the MNF theme song, and frankly I couldn't agree more!

Consensus Start/Sit for Week 6

Sorry for the late posting of the consensus start/sit lists this week - my mom is in town and honestly I just completely forgot! My apologies...keep in mind that this consensus is an average from all the start/sit sites that I linked to earlier in the week, many of which try to avoid recommendations on total studs or total duds. So if you're debating between a stud and one of these guys, definitely keep that in mind when you look at these names:

QB
Start: Matt Hasselbeck, David Garrard, Matt Ryan
Sit: Mark Sanchez, Eli Manning, Trent Edwards, Matt Cassel

RB
Start: Rashard Mendenhall, Knowshon Moreno, Cedric Benson, Cadillac Williams, Ryan Grant, Jonathan Stewart
Sit: Brandon Jacobs, LaDainian Tomlinson, Jamal Lewis, Willis McGahee, Julius Jones

WR 
Start: Santana Moss, Donnie Avery, Wes Welker, Nate Burleson
Sit: Vincent Jackson, Terrell Owens, Derrick Mason

TE
Start: Jermichael Finley, Jeremy Shockey, Todd Heap
Sit: Heath Miller, Zach Miller

Kicker
Start: Josh Scobee, Jason Elam, John Kasay
Sit: Rian Lindell

D/ST
Start: Patriots, Panthers, Packers
Sit: Bears

Perhaps it's needless to say but I'm also way behind on e-mails and start/sits in the comments for the weekend. I'll try to get back to you before game time tomorrow!

Contest updates and evening links

Lots of winners to announce today. Last week I ran three different FFLibrarian weekly contests with 365FantasySports.com so I've got three winners:
1. Freeroll contest where you pick two from each offensive skill position: ziggy64
2. Late games challenge where you only pick from players in the late Sunday and Monday night games: Fantazzle
3. Points cap challenge where you pick your players within a points budget : Zrayed

Nicely done, all. Try your hand at the weekly contests if you haven't already - this week I'm just doing two - the pick two freeroll and the points cap. Click here and use the 6book password to participate.


In the 96-team monster FFLibrarian league the top 5 point scorers across all 6 conferences were:

1. Steel Vipers - 187.75 points
2. HitNRun - 165.05 points
3. Blue Boy Bed & Breakfast - 140.65 points
4. denverdelinquents - 137.15 points
5. 3rd String Wannabe's - 135.50 points

Finally, a few links to wrap things up:

• My article for the Bruno Boys was a little late this week and went up this afternoon - better late than never! Check out Who Will Continue To Be a Top 10 RB?
• Position rankings from the Rotoprofessor - this links to top 35 WRs for the week.
• Fantasy Guru's John Hansen has Three Tips for the Rest of the Season up on our BWW All-Star Blogger League. Some very interesting little nuggets there.
• Mike Tanier from Football Outsiders does an excellent job with his Week 6 N.F.L. Matchups on the Times' Fifth Down blog - great read.
  

91 great years

Happiest of birthdays to my wonderful grandpa - he turns 91 today. He's a big fan of the Detroit Tigers and Northwestern and Michigan football - and I think genetically speaking, he's really the one I can thank for my love of football. So three cheers for my grandpa for ultimately making this blog possible!

So I've been spending some of my morning playing around with the Fantasy Football Nerd's lineup analyzer - it's awesome. You need an account (free!) and it's really easy to add in your leagues; the Nerd Analyzer will then compare your roster to the weekly rankings and projections and show you your ideal team, projections included. I was feeling like a smarty pants when the Nerd and I came up with the exact same roster in my BWW All-Star Blogger League, but then I realized I'm sort of in bye-week-plug-in-desperation-mode and a trained monkey could have done what I did. So I put in another team that I play in with my Boulder buddies and other than the suggestion of playing Garrard over Cutler, I matched perfectly with the Nerd again. I'm really feeling good now! Though not sure I can bring myself to start Garrard over Cutler this week after such a painful Jacksonville performance last week. But I say check out the analyzer - it has the power of many expert sites behind it. Sounds pretty amazing, right?

Let's get started with start/sit links:

• I really dig what Schauf puts together in Week 6 Start 'Em/Bench 'Em Report - for those of you that find more value in start/sit advice listed by each matchup rather than a smattering of suggestions, definitely check this one out. 
• TMR's Love/Hate: Facts to love, facts to hate - comes with a video that starts right away, fyi
  
• FFGeekBlog's Hits & Misses - Week 6: Brady Back in Business
• The Hazean's Week 6 Start & Sit: Give Cedric Benson Another Try
• FFNerd's Where to Put 'Em
• Roto Arcade's Flames/Lames: Matt Hasselbeck, flying like an eagle to the sea
• Bruno Boys' Week 6 Start Ems
• RotoExpert's Dear Diary: Sit/Start 
• CBSSports.com's Week 6 Start 'Em and Sit 'Em
• Fighting Chance Fantasy's Who to Start, Who to Sit - Week 6
• NFL.com's Start 'Em & Sit 'Em - with bonus video
  

Other gems:

• With a meandering walk through pop culture and a brush with politics, we have a top 10 pickups that will shape the rest of your season from Hatty Waiver Wire Guru.
• This week's rankings from Fantasy Hulks are up and ready for your review.
• Ultimate Fantasy Football Strategy's Team by Team Projections - Week 6 are up and I love their charts as always!
• Check back with Fighting Chance Fantasy for this week's Five Game Parlay that I'm participating in - I went 4-1 last week (take that oddsmakers!) and am looking for another big win this week.
• Yahoo!'s Roto Arcade has this week's Shuffle Up and Deal rankings for the remainder of the season up.

Finally, I am still doing my weekly contests with 365FantasySports.com this week, never fear! I'll post more details in a bit but the password is 6book for those who are eager to participate. 

Little Week 6 sumpin' for everyone

My mom is coming to visit this weekend - she's going to be the family guinea pig on the fancy wifi-enabled buses that run from DC to NYC (yes, seems a little odd to call a bus fancy). My sister lives here in NYC, too, which means my mom will be in complete heaven spending all weekend with her girls (if you know my mom, I promise you could see her visibly gushing with excitement for this weekend) and I can't wait to have her here in my new home. Sadly it will be cool and rainy all weekend here in NYC - perfect football-watching weather, right? Well perhaps I can talk my mom into watching some football with me... 

Now to today's links!

• Is Bradshaw better than Jacobs? Rotoworld explains why it's time to buy low on Jacobs now.
• LOTS of good stuff in IDP Wednesday - Week 6 from Numbers & Guts; good pickups, bye week fillers, and those teams that allow their IDPers lots of tackle opportunities. 
• The Fifth Down's Week 6 in Fantasy Football Matchups is up with my weekly recommended reading list at the bottom - check it out!
  
• More IDP info with RotoExperts - IDP: Matchups to Watch has 10 matchups each for DLs, DBs, and LBs to keep an eye on this week.
• Along those same lines but with offensive skill players, see ProFootballWeekly.com's Ten Most Intriguing Players of Week Six. 
• Wondering about the value of some of your players? Thinking about making a trade? Take a look at The Sports Outlaw's Ballin' or Fallin' - Week 6 for some info on guys who are shooting up or down the fantasy value meter. 
  

And the slew of start/sit links and rankings up today:

• FootballDocs' Start Sit
• Junkyard Jake's Sleepers/Creepers
• Rotoholics' Starters and Sitters - Week 6 - I like the different levels of starts and sits here (can't miss, strong, borderline, and weak starts plus bench warmers).
• FFToolbox's Week 6: Start 'Em and Sit 'Em
  
• Mac Bros have their Start/Sit rankings up by position 
• More position rankings from Fantasy Hulks
• Mr. Fantasy's position rankings - link goes to QBs (I'm intrigued to see Deion Branch listed in the top 40 this week but not Nate Burleson - as Fantasy Check notes, Burleson is top dog on KFFL's projections for WRs this week).
  

Bringing the heat!

After a long weekend in Tennessee, my husband and I returned home last night to a chilly, autumnal New York City. We walked into our apartment and realized that for the first time in over a decade, since those good ol' college dorm years, we have no control over our own heat. This is old hat to NYCers I'm sure, but I stared down the radiator in the bedroom last night, looking and then groping the thing for anything that would even remotely feel like an on-off dial...no dice, nada. But not too long after we got home and sat shivering on the couch, a lovely clanking sound began and that new-heat-burning-dust smell filled the apartment. Ahh, sweet sweet heat. That said, this morning those lovely radiators no longer seem to be emitting warmth. It's going to take me awhile (and many layers?) before I get a grasp on the inner workings of our heat. So not in my realm of past experiences.

Anyway, I'm back in town, have unpacked my tiny travel bag, and am ready for a new week of fantasy football! I put up a bunch of waiver wire links yesterday and have a few more today, but lots of other stuff as well. I've pretty much got waivers coming out my ears right now so I'm in the market for some new material.

• FFXtreme has just the cure I need with their Start & Bench Advice with the added bonus of a chart with defensive rankings against the run.
• FFToolbox's Who to Start Rankings have Aaron Rodgers as the top QB this week. Works for me since my BWW All-Star Blogger League team could use that boost with so many of my key players on bye this week. 
• Another start/sit is up: FantasySharks.com's Start/Bench List Week 6.
  
• If you're in need of some players to plug in for your superstars on bye, see what The Hazean suggests in Bye Week Plug-and-Plays for Week 6. Gotta say that I'm just not sure I could play the Bucs defense; leaving that spot empty might be the smarter move there...sad, I know.  
• The FFGeeks offer up some Week 6 Defenses to Consider if your D/ST is on bye.
• Lester's Legends hosts the blogger roundtable discussion this week: Aside from LT, which player or two saw his keeper value take the most significant hit and why? Get interesting input from lots of savvy bloggers - good stuff.
  
• Scope out the Fifth Down's Playing after a Bye Week: An Advantage or Overrated? I'm hoping the Chargers have nothing against my Broncos this week. The crazy socks should of course give the Broncos the edge this week, no?
  
• There are still some waiver wire links worthy of posting:
• CBSSports.com's Waiver Wire: There has to be a catch, right? is particularly nice since they actually provide a prioritization of waiver picks rather than just throwing up a bunch of names.
• Matthew Berry is always worth the read so take a look at his Week 6 pickups.
  

And the waivers just keep on coming

Just a quick post this morning - I'm in the ATL this morning (a shoutout to my Atlanta readers and of course the Falcons) and am en route to the airport before long so I can only throw up a few links. I'm heading back home to NYC so my blogging for the rest of the week should be back to normal.

Lots of waiver wire links for you today:

• FFGeekBlog's The Wire
• Hatty Waiver Wire Guru's Week 6 video
• KFFL's Waiver Wire by position (QB here)
• Pigskin Addiction's Waiver Wire Work
• Fantasy Joe's waiver picks
• NFL.com's Waiver Wire Report video
• FFManiaxs' Week 6 Waiver Wire
• Fantasy Hulks' Waiver World

A few non-waiver links:

• The Fantasy Football Report's Buyer's Bargains - Week 6
• Fifth Down's Top 7 Points From Week 5
• Fighting Chance Fantasy already has Who to Start, Who to Sit up for Week 6 - impressive!

5-0 Broncos!

Waahaahaaha! The Broncos are 5-0!! I mean no offense to my sister and other Pats fans but I'm so psyched about yesterday's win. So good! As evidenced by my extreme usage of exclamation points here. I didn't catch the game other than about 2 minutes (so yes, I saw the ridiculous socks) since yesterday was my husband's grandmother's funeral (sorry to those I didn't respond to with start/sit advice) but I have it DVRed and waiting for me back at home. I'm still in Tennessee until tomorrow afternoon and my postings today and tomorrow are going to be on the late side - good thing there are lots of great sites to scope out.

• Fantasy Hulks reviews the Sunday games and flaunts the Miles Austin call they made in Mr. Monday Morning: Week 5.
• FFGeekBlog lists all of the 2 TD receivers yesterday in Receivers gone wild! Wow.
• Rotoworld has a nice review of 5 games yesterday in Cardiac Cats Strike Again.
• Another great wrap-up of the Week 5 games from Football Outsiders - Audibles at the Line.
• The Fifth Down's Is Anyone Afraid of the Broncos? provided me with a little snippet of McDaniels and his post-game celebration. Mine was somewhat similar (but not quite as many full-body fist pumps) as we cruised through rural Tennessee and I got game updates from my iPhone.
• Fighting Chance Fantasy asked a handful of us to participate in his Five Game Parlay competition - last week was my first week and I didn't do so well. Fortunately I'm on the rebound this week, especially if the Jets win by more than 1.5 points.
• Monday Morning Rehab from The Hazean reviews Megatron's knee situation and updates on Coffee, Cotchery, and Eli.
• A few waiver thoughts:
• The Hazean also offers up some Early waiver wire thoughts including guys like Austin Collie, Sammy Morris, and Jeremy Maclin. All had big games and could still be available on waiver wires this week.
• More waiver wire considerations from the Football Docs.
• Bruno Boys' Cut Them Loose and Pick Them Up for Week 6
• ProFootballWeekly's Fantasy Ticker: Week 6
• Any IDPers who are looking for some new guys off of waivers might want to scope out Monk's IDP Week 6 Waiver Wire Pickups. I think I'm seeing some repeat names from past weeks, which of course means there are some solid, consistent guys possibly available...
• MMQB's Broncos, Bengals open some eyes with impressive Week 5 wins - I learned a little something about Orton: his first pick all season came at the end of the first half this week. There's a lot of Orton love oozing out of Peter King right now.
• Love how quickly Hatty Waiver Wire Guru has his Week 6 Studs, Starts, Sleepers and Bench players up for this next weekend's games. Keep in mind that he'll be adjusting the names here as the week progresses.

I'll have suffered my first loss in the BWW All-Star Blogger League this week (can I blame it on Rodgers being on a bye?) and my first win in the FFLibrarian monster league. Toss in a 5-0 Broncos and a 4-2 Northwestern Wildcats and this was a fairly successful football weekend for me; I'll take that!

Consensus Week 5 Start/Sit & other links

Greetings and welcome to the Friday evening edition of the consensus start/sit. Before we jump in though, a few links for you to add a little something to your early weekend festivities.

• Take a look at Ground Running Back Goulash from Razzball - a look at the different rush defenses that are matching up head-to-head this week.
• Fantasy Sharks' The Hive - Week Five Edition for those who need some IDP assistance.
• I've had a few requests for a recap of the strength of schedule links - here you go:
• FFToday's Strength of Schedule 
• CBSSports.com's Interactive Defensive Matchup Tool
• FFToolbox's Strength of Schedule
  

Now to the consensus start/sit. As always I'd like to remind you that these are not my personal start/sit recommendations but a look at which players got the most start or sit votes from all these expert links that I offer up during the week. Players are listed in no particular order and without further ado...

QB
Start: Tony Romo, Joe Flacco, Ben Roethlisberger
Sit: Tom Brady (has never been on this consensus sit list before...), Eli Manning, Carson Palmer


RB
Start: Marshawn Lynch, Tim Hightower, Ahmad Bradshaw, Jerome Harrison, Rashard Mendenhall, Knowshon Moreno, Brandon Jacobs, Glen Coffee
Sit: Cedric Benson, Joseph Addai, Thomas Jones, Kevin Smith, Steven Jackson


WR 
Start: Pierre Garcon, Mike Sims-Walker, DeSean Jackson, Derrick Mason, Nate Burleson
Sit: Antonio Bryant, Braylon Edwards, Santana Moss, Ted Ginn Jr.

TE
Start: Vernon Davis, Dustin Keller, Brent Celek

Sit: Kellen Winslow, Zach Miller, Ben Watson


Kicker
Start: Jeff Reed, David Akers, Adam Vinatieri, Nick Folk

Sit: Jason Hanson


D/ST
Start: Cowboys, Bils

Sit: Seahawks, Titans, Broncos

Friday fun with Week 5 links

In the past week I've had three readers contact me about linking to rest-of-the-season rankings, in particular those from Yahoo's Roto Arcade, which seemed to be missing this season. I'm very happy to report that upon checking my links this morning I discovered Roto Arcade is doing their Shuffle Up and Deal rest-of-the-season rankings again so if you're looking for some feedback on values for the remaining weeks, be sure to scope it out.

Next up, I wrote about this on the Buffalo Wild Wings All-Star Blogger League website, but I wanted to be sure to let you all know about a site called FantasyIQ.com that I've joined - it automatically imported my lineups from my Yahoo and ESPN leagues and tracks all of my roster decisions for the world to see without me having to do a darn thing. So if you'd like to thumbs up or thumbs down or comment on my start/sit or waiver wire actions, come on over to FantasyIQ.com.

Now onto more start/sit links for the week:

• Matthew Berry's dating life and love/hate picks for the week are detailed in Guys I Love, Guys I Hate, Girls I Date.
• RotoExperts.com's Dear Diary: Sit/Start
• Bruno Boys have their Week 5 Start Ems up with Sit Ems still to come
• Rapid Draft's Week 5 Start 'Em/Bench 'Em Report
  
• More Roto Arcade linkage - Flames/Lames: Jerome Harrison, bow-wow-wow-yippie-yay
• FFNerd's Where to Put 'Em
• Rotoholics.com's Starters and Sitters - Week 5
• The Hazean's Start & Sit: Week 5 
• CBSSports.com's Week 5 Start 'Em and Sit 'Em 
• FFGeekBlog's Hits & Misses - Week 5
• Fighting Chance Fantasy's Who to Start, Who to Sit
  

Best of the rest:

• Looking for some more opinions on your start/sit options? Swing by the Washington Post's Fantasy Check for an online chat at 12:30 eastern today.
• I haven't linked to Mr. Fantasy in a long time but let's give him a try again - take a look at position rankings for Week 5. What do you guys think? Keep Mr. Fantasy on the weekly rotation here?
• Okay, take a deep breath and plunge into Fantasy Hulks' Running Back Statistical Forecast Modeling. I'm digging it, as I dig most any analysis in FF land.
• Week 5 rankings from Rotoworld - great stuff as always.
  
• Some of my favorite bloggers are getting together each week for a roundtable discussion - this week's topic hosted by Fantasy Pros 911 is about helping struggling teams get back in the fantasy chase. 
  
• Finally, I just can't help but link to this interesting little tidbit - the Packers vs Vikings game last MNF was the most-watched cable show ever. EVER. Wow.

I'll be working on my consensus start/sit later today but will then be out of town for the next several days. I'll try to get my regular posts up but might be working on a slightly different schedule. Good luck this weekend!

Lots of start/sits for Week 5

I've got blogger's block this morning so instead of detailing the meandering thoughts in my head or life in Brooklyn, I'll instead just skip the chit chat and jump right to today's links. Lots to look at:

• Who doesn't want advice on the Top 5 Most Likely to Go Off - Week 5? See which players are going to knock you over with their stat lines this week. In a good way. 
• Lester's Legends brings us Week 5's Fantasy Football Out on a Limb - will Wells outperform Benson this week?
  
• I've got my weekly top links up in the NY Times' Fifth Down - Week 5 in Fantasy Football Matchups - and there's lots of great lineup advice there, too, from the Sablich brothers. They do a fantastic job at responding to start/sit questions in the comments, so ask away!
• I had a handful of IDPers that I needed to replace for this week's bye so I first turned to FFToday's IDP Notes for the latest and greatest news on the IDP front.  

Let's mosey on over to the start/sit advice available for the week:

• FFToolbox's Week 5: Start 'em and Sit 'em
• Fantasy Joe's Studs, duds and sleepers: Moreno should shine against the Pats  
• FFManiaxs' Week 5 Start/Sit
• FFGoat's Gut Check Fantasy Football Start em Sit em and Sleepers Week 5
• Junkyard Jake's Sleepers/Creepers  
• Yahoo! once again brings their start/sit to you via video for each position. This one goes to WRs but you can find other videos linked on the page as well. 
• More video start/sit from NFL.com - note that Fabiano is available to chat online Friday morning at 11 am eastern.
  
• Fantasy Tailgate's Starters/Slackers 
• Football Docs' Start Sit 
• Ask the Commish's Sit or Start
  

Rankings for Week 5:

• Fantasy Hulks' Week 5 Rankings by position (this one links to WR)
• FFNerd's Sit/Start Rankings by position - remember you can switch between PPR and standard scoring
• Mac Bros' Start/Sit Rankings by position (links to QBs)
• RotoExperts.com's Week 5 Lineup Rankings by position

I've been thinking a lot about running my annual accuracy challenge on these weekly rankings - not sure it's something that I can promise to deliver each week but I might take a stab at it one of these weeks. Would that be of interest? I'd try to go back in time to gather weekly rankings from the start of the season, too, and then we'd have a multi-week look at the most accurate weekly rankings. If this sounds as delightful as I think it would be, let me know. 

Contest updates!

Let's talk about the winners in my various FFLibrarian contests. First up, the top 5 scorers in my 96-team FFLibrarian League:
1. Cruzan Stomp Revival, 156.80 points (yes, that included the 49ers D!)
2. UltimateFFStrategy.com, 149.50
3. The Dogs of War, 147.70
4. FantasyIQ, 144.60
5. Htown, 136.05

Congrats to the big scorers - keep it coming!

And in my weekly contest with 365FantasySports.com, the big winner of the week was kanabro - nicely done! See the image below for the top contestants and winning lineup. Oh and hey, hey the FFLibrarian came in 4th! If you'd like to prove that you can beat me in FF, sign up for one of my weekly contests with this week's password: book5. I've got three different contests going on so pick one from the contest lobby or choose them all! First we've got the "pick 2" contest that we've been running all along (pick 2 from each position); second, my personal favorite is a contest where you can only pick from those players in the late afternoon games, the Sunday Night and Monday Night games (a second chance game for those who already know they're toast after the first games are done!); or third, a 375 points cap game. E-mail 365FantasySports.com if you need to refill your points for free. 

Oh boy, oh boy

I've got a heavy heart today - my husband's grandmother passed away. She was really special to my husband and a truly wonderful woman so it has been a tough morning for us. We're off to eastern Tennessee this weekend so it may be another difficult weekend for me to answer start/sit questions. If you need advice though, there are lots of wise FFers out there and many of these links will take you to sites that can answer your questions.

Since I've known her, whenever my grandmother-in-law saw us walk into her room, she seemed so overcome with delight at being surrounded by her family that she would say with a smile on her face, "oh boy, oh boy" over and over again. Or when she was pleased with a present or photo or some other memento we brought with us, she'd give us all a "purr, purr" and you knew she was happy as a clam (or cat, as the case may be though that's hardly a well-known phrase). So in her honor, here are some links to make you go "oh boy, oh boy" or "purrrrr":

First up, let's review some new waiver advice out there:

• I've never seen Dancing with the Stars so I learned a lot of DWTS and fantasy football tidbits from Matthew Berry's Dancing With Week 5 Pickups. Never thought I'd say that.
• FFGeekBlog's The Wire - Week 5: Maybe the Steelers do have a running game!  
• CBSSports.com's Waiver Wire: A Must-Add Brown? Go Figure  
• Heads up IDPers:
• IDP Waiver Wire from Kilroyz Krystal Ball  
• Wire Me This (IDP) from FantasyFootball.com 
• IDP Wednesday from Numbers & Guts
• Monk's IDP Waiver Wire Pick Ups (thanks for the kind note, Monk!)
  
• Cappers Picks Blog's Week 5 Fantasy Football Waiver Wire (thanks to Fantasy Sports Central for the new site)
  

Start/sit and Week 5 rankings links:

• FantasySharks.com's Start/Bench List Week 5
• FFToolbox's Who to Start Rankings/Projections
• Hatty Waiver Wire Guru's Studs, Starts, Sleepers and Bench chart
  

Best of the rest:

• Big news today from FootballOutsiders - Crabtree signs with the 49ers and Braylon Edwards traded to the Jets. 
  
• FFToolbox recommends a few sleepers for Week 5 including LeSean McCoy who may still see a decent number of touches this week even with Westbrook returning from his injury. They're playing the Bucs, can we say great flex start??
• Week 5 Plug-and-Plays from The Hazean - I think this is bad fantasy karma but I'm kind of hoping Hasselbeck doesn't return so that I can play my backup, Seneca Wallace, against a lax Jacksonville pass defense with Aaron Rodgers out on a bye.
  
• Did you have any idea that Willis McGahee, Fred Jackson, and Julius Jones would all be top 10 fantasy RBs? Yeah me neither. I took a look at the consensus ranking positions that I compiled back in August by looking at 11 different fantasy football expert preseason rankings, and compared what we saw there to what we see now with RBs and WRs. The results will be up in my Bruno Boys column later today.