Over the next few weeks, the people who bring you the People’s Pigskin will try to get you prepared for fantasy football season by taking a peek at one of the most critical items in your preparation efforts: the fantasy football preview magazines. Today we kick things off with an offering from the “Worldwide Leader.”
ESPN Fantasy Football 2010
Vital stats: $7.99 price, 148 pages, 424 offensive and 150 defensive player reviews and one tear-out cheat sheet. (No preview for Domenik Hixon, though. They dodged that bullet.)
Top 10 picks: If you’re in a 10-team league, ESPN says the first players that should come off your board are Chris Johnson, Adrian Peterson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice, Steven Jackson, Frank Gore, Andre Johnson, Michael Turner, Drew Brees and Randy Moss.
Intriguing nugget: You might have guessed this from the way that top 10 list looks, but the folks in Bristol urge us fantasy players to “bury the Two Stud Running Backs Theory — the outdated strategy of drafting RBs with your first two picks no matter what.” That’s because the advent of the two-back system means “fantasy options at that position have grown more plentiful while the scoring output of the middle-tier performers has declined.”
Head scratcher: The Connecticut cabal also wants you to exercise caution when drafting a rookie running back. At least, that’s what the point seems to be here: “If you’re measuring sexy, then rookie running backs rank up there with Jessica Biel and Sofia Vergara. That said, I wouldn’t touch Biel or Vergara (or Ryan Mathews) until at least the fifth.”
Um…so if you’re in a league in which Jessica Biel and Sofia Vergara are legitimate options for your lineup, wouldn’t they be gone by, say, the middle of the first round? You’re expecting to draft four sexy people before you get around to picking Biel and Vergara? Or are you taking them in the fifth round because you think they could fill in for you at quarterback on your bye week? Um…let’s just move on.
Kicker rule obeyed? Every single fantasy football preview issue — including ESPN’s, in two different places — tells us that kickers should never be drafted until the very last round. And every preview gets its resident “experts” together for a mock draft. Yet in ESPN’s 10-team mock draft, the kicker rule is violated by two different “experts.” Why? Maybe, like the Situation, the rules don’t apply to them.
One more thing: Having over 500 individual players reviewed in your preview magazine seems impressive, until you realize that the stats (like some bras) are padded with items like this in-depth look at Johnnie Lee Higgins of the Oakland Raiders: “Higgins could make waves returning kicks, but with too many wideouts ahead of him, it’s a long and winding road to significant offensive touches.”
We’ll be back with the weekly NASCAR predictions.
The People's Pigskin 
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