Xark!

NFL Draft Day 1 Fantasy Report

From a fantasy football perspective, the top three rounds of this year's NFL Draft were pretty tame. By my count there are only five potential rookie fantasy starters at the end of the day, and few veterans moved around.

SAFEST ROOKIE FROM A FANTASY PERSPECTIVE: Assuming he signs his contract and shows up to minicamp and training camp, RB Marshawn Lynch should be a Day 1 starter for Buffalo. There are reasons to like this player in this situation:  He's the No. 2 RB in this year's class, has a good combination of skills and talents, and he goes to a Bills team that has a good young QB-WR combo in Losman and Evans. Also the Bills invested in offensive linemen during free agency. Lynch doesn't look like a sure-fire NFL star, but he's the kind of guy who could gain 1,100 yards and score eight to 10 times in 2007.

BOOM-BUST PICK: Adrian Peterson dropped to the Vikings at No. 7, and since Minnesota just picked up former Baltimore backup Chester Taylor for big bucks in 2006 free agency, that puts the draft's top RB in an RBBC with a guy coming off a 1,200-yard season. Combine that with his indeterminate recovery from a broken clavicle and it's pretty obvious that Peterson is a high-risk fantasy pick, particularly in teams that don't carry-over players from season to season.

But here's the way I look at it. Bottom line on Peterson is that he'll play. His floor is about 600 yards and five touchdowns. His ceiling? Nobody knows. Peterson comes into the league with powers and abilities far above those of mere mortals.

It says here that he'll split time with Taylor his rookie season, post No. 3 RB fantasy stats, and then move into a true feature-back role in 2008.

GREAT PLAYER, BUT CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Everybody in the world agrees that Calvin Johnson is a once-in-a-generation prospect, but his fantasy situation is murky at best. In the first place, he'll be playing alongside the closest thing to a Calvin Johnson clone in the league (Roy Williams). His Mad Scientist offensive coordinator did a poor job of keeping the Lions balanced in 2006, which means that situations, competition and poor QB play could do more to shut down Johnson than any defense opposing coordinators are likely to devise.

Johnson should become a great fantasy player, but it might take him two or three years. Had he gone to Tampa I'd have considered him a potential Top 20 WR in 2007, but right now he looks more like a No. 3 with upside.

TIGHT END CONTRIBUTOR: One of the under-reported stories of Day 1 was the plunge taken by Miami TE Greg Olsen. Considered the No. 11 pick overall by Mel Kiper, Olsen was considered a mid-first-rounder in most mock drafts. When he slid all the way to the Bears at No. 31, Jerry Angelo abandoned his plans to trade down and took the tight end he has been looking for since 2005.

Olsen will not be the starter in Chicago. That distinction will belong to Desmond Clark, who is coming off his Mentos year. But don't get too hung up on that. Olsen will see plenty of action in 2007 and could wind up being a valuable pickup in leagues that require a TE. Just don't overspend to get him, because he's not likely to score like one of the top six NFL TEs.

SITUATIONAL SLEEPER:  Brandon Jackson doesn't strike me as an NFL fantasy stud, but he's a first-day rookie in a good situation. Green Bay can move the football, and Jackson is in position to contend for the starting job. Doesn't mean he'll take advantage of the opportunity, though.

NOT THIS YEAR: Jamarcus Russell and Brady Quinn might start for their prospective teams  at some point this season, but they're not worth drafting in most fantasy leagues. Picking up as free agents during the season? That's more like  it. 

VETERANS WHOSE STOCK JUST DROPPED: If you've got Chester Taylor on your roster, today was a bad day. Not only did Taylor finish 2006 weak after a strong start, but now he starts the 2007 season as the guy competing with Peterson, one of the most dynamic RBs to come into the league in a decade. He was a protectable player on Friday, but he's a toss-back-in-the-pool guy as of Saturday afternoon.

Steven Jackson is universally recognized as a Top 5 (if not Top 3) fantasy RB. But the Rams may have created a bit of an RBBC when they drafted FB/RB Brian Leonard in the 2nd round. Leonard (who would have been an intriguing fantasy prospect had the Giants drafted him on the previous pick) is just too good to leave on the bench.

VETERANS WHOSE STOCK JUST ROSE: Josh McCown moved from backing up Jon Kitna in Detroit to an open competition for the starting QB job in Oakland. McCown is a journeyman, but he could easily be the opening day starter for the Raiders. Just don't expect to see him keep that job all season.

Jamal Lewis and Edgerrin James should both benefit from nice OL upgrades.

SHOES WAITING TO DROP: Somebody is going to trade for Michael Turner, but who? Randy Moss should be moving to Green Bay on Sunday, also.

FOX News: "We're not making this up!"

Fox & Friends apparently spent Tuesday morning covering a parody news story as a real news story. Says that guy who sits on the left side of the couch, "We're not making this up!... We're not being duped. I looked this up on a couple of Web sites up there."

And later in the day, Lou Dobbs picked up that erroneous "ham sandwich" fact from the Fox program, too (it was introduced in the Associated Content parody. The original incident involved a ham steak). Dobbs may not get his marching orders directly from Roger Ailes, but he's got his populist outrage down pat: "Mr. Superintendent, may I say, you're out of your cotton-pickin' mind."

Somebody. Shoot. Me..

Scotty writes his memoirs

News item:

NEW YORK (AP) - A memoir by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan will be published next spring by PublicAffairs.

The book will run 416 pages, but the publisher acknowledged on Tuesday that McClellan actually wrote only one 334-word passage, which the former Bush spokesman merely repeats over and over and over.

Wicca: Put a kitty on it

Re: Nightwind's post below, where she comments:

Which also begs the question of how one can vary a pentagram.  Put a happy face in the center of it, I suppose.

Ah, but as we've proven before, there is always a way. How do you like this concept, Catherine?

When more is less in discussing religion

After nine years, the Department of Veterans Affairs today agreed to include the pentagram on its list of approved religious symbols for veteran gravestones: http://www.cem.va.gov/cem/hm/hmemb.asp

Make no mistake:  I'm thrilled at this development.  While I'm not so much into the conspiracy theories some Wiccans have accepted in explaining the delay, I certainly do believe that it is time for the symbol to be included in the list, especially considering that atheists and humanists already have their own approved symbols as well as several groups less known and less numerous in this country than Wiccans.

At the end of the AP article reporting on this event, however, is the following explanation:

Wicca is a nature-based religion based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons. Variations of the pentacle not accepted by Wiccans have been used in horror movies as a sign of the devil.

Wiccans constantly complain about being compared with Satanism, yet at the same time these sorts of explanations and/or disclaimers continue to compare the two groups - even if in the negative - when no comparison is called for.  The last sentence doesn't even make a lot of sense... perhaps especially to someone not very familiar with Wicca or uses of pentagrams.  Dictionaries generally consider pentacle and pentagram to be synonymous.  A pentagram is a five-pointed geometric shape.  By that definition, not accepting a pentagram makes as much sense as not accepting a rectangle; something either is rectangular or it isn't.  Which also begs the question of how one can vary a pentagram.  Put a happy face in the center of it, I suppose.

Caption contest

This is posted over at my Fun & Games blog. You can enter the official contest by e-mailing your caption to me (make the subject line "CAPTION CONTEST" so I don't mistake you for spam).

Freedom from optimism

Downward mobility has few perks, but O how you savor them.

Lately I've been enjoying what I would have once called defeatism, and I'm enjoying it the way a newly released ex-con enjoys a day at the park: the freedom is exhilarating, but the unregulated newness of it all is a bit frightening. Call me a "glass-half-full guy" in the midst of an extremely sexy flirtation with value-neutral pessimism.

Because here's what they didn't teach us in management training, though the few of us who paid attention learned it through experience anyway: While leadership has always required the ability to inspire hope in the led, the practice of modern corporate management seems to be based on a profound willingness to deny unpleasant reality.

Funniest thing I've read all week

I'm a little behind on my magazine reading, and just yesterday got around to Simon Rich's The Wisdom of Children in the March 26 issue of The New Yorker (Shouts & Murmurs column). Here's Segment No. 1: A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids' Table...

MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I'm having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
MOM: Let's talk about which kid I like the best.
DAD: (laughing) You know, but you won't tell.
MOM: If they ask me again, I might tell.
FRIEND FROM WORK: Hey, guess what! My voice is pretty loud!
DAD: (laughing) There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren't.
MOM: I'm angry! I'm angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I'm angry, too! We're angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.
FRIEND FROM WORK: I am the loudest! I am the loudest!
(Everybody laughs.)
MOM: I had a lot of wine, and now I'm crazy!
GRANDFATHER:  Hey do you guys know what God looks like?
ALL: Yes.
GRANDFATHER: Don't tell the kids.

Counter-intuitive

From Bruce Schneier comes a piece about defending yourself with kindness.

Maybe those Quakers had a point, eh?

Judgement

Paul Graham is one of those people whose writing makes me think.

His latest essay is on the topic of how you are judged:

Our early training and our self-centeredness combine to make us believe that every judgement of us is about us.  In fact most aren't. This is a rare case where being less self-centered will make people more confident.  Once you realize how little most people judging you care about judging you accurately—once you realize that because of the normal distribution of most applicant pools, it matters least to judge accurately in precisely the cases where judgement has the most effect—you won't take rejection so personally.