Well, if you can’t stop him, just keep picking him. Certainly Drew Brees did not disappoint his fantasy owners in Week 2, going for another 3 passing touchdowns, giving him 9 on the year in the first 2 games of the 2009 fantasy football season. As good as Brees was in Week 2, he wasn’t the best. Matt Schaub gave him a run for his money going for 4 passing touchdowns. And Philip Rivers only threw 2, but he also had 436 yards, by far the high of the day.

With performances like that, why even look at the other quarterbacks for next week? Why not just go with these guys? Well, if only fantasy football projections were that easy.

Here are our Week 3 fantasy football projections at the quarterback position:

Drew Brees, New Orleans Saints at Buffalo Bills
Not even the fans of Buffalo are going to be able to slow this guy down. The fact that he dismantled an Eagles defense that ranked #3 in the league last year is beyond amazing. He didn’t even have to try. In Week 3, don’t expect any changes from Brees and that Saints offense. The Buffalo Bills proved that they have issues guarding the middle of the field and Brees will exploit that. With Brees and wide receiver Marques Colston clearly on the same page now (2 touchdowns in Week 2), Brees now has a receiver that he can work off of in order to take advantage of the other players on the field. Last week you saw Reggie Bush get in the action, and Devery Henderson was a factor as well. With him spreading the ball around like that, the Bills don’t stand a chance. If Brees throws for anything less than 3 passing touchdowns in Week 3, I will be highly amazed.

Peyton Manning, Indianapolis Colts at Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals defense has really showed me something over the past couple of weeks, but they haven’t shown me enough to get me off picking Peyton Manning to pick them apart. While the Cardinals may be playing some inspired ball, they still have a relatively vanilla defense, that at its core, is entirely to susceptible to the strengths of Peyton Manning. In Week 3, expect Manning to manipulate the defense with the playaction fake. The Cardinals have been very aggressive at stopping the run this year, and if they want to continue that in Week 3, they are going to have to commit to it. Try as they might to stop Manning from passing the ball, their commitment to the run will go unfettered, and Manning will use that against them, just as he did against the Dolphins last night. This could be a really big day for the guys in the slot, as the Cardinals will certainly take away Reggie Wayne early in the game. I expect Dallas Clark, and maybe even Hank Baskett, to be Manning’s main targets in Week 3. Quite frankly, this could be a very big fantasy football week for all of those guys, including Peyton Manning, who should have no problem dealing with this Cardinals defense.

Eli Manning, New York Giants at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Yes, I’m going with Peyton’s brother, and this may be the last time I do it during the 2009 fantasy football season. Eli looked great against the Cowboys last week, and it really surprised me. Maybe the Dallas Cowboys defense is worse than I think it is, but I did not see a whole lot of receivers running free and it is not as if there wasn’t any pressure on Manning; it was just a very impressive game by Eli, who does not have very impressive wide receivers to boot. Going up against a Tampa Bay defense that has looked young, at best, should be easy pickins’ for a veteran quarterback Manning. With Brandon Jacobs in tow, expect the running game of the Giants to lull the Bucs Cover 2 defense into playing the run. That should lead to some holes over the middle for Manning to take advantage of. Not to mention, the Bucs have had numerous missed assignments in the secondary over the past 2 weeks of football, so expect a couple of freebies in Week 3 as well. Much like Drew Brees, if Eli Manning doesn’t throw for at least 3 touchdowns this week, something would have had to have gone terribly wrong.

Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers at St. Louis Rams
Well, Rodgers hasn’t exactly blown anyone away in the 2009 fantasy football season. Yes, he had a decent performance in Week 2, going 21 for 39, 296 passing yards and a touchdown. But it’s that single touchdown, and just the one he had in Week 1, that are troubling his fantasy owners. Last year, Rodgers was a statistical compiler, accumulating passing yards and touchdown passes as if they were collector’s items. Well, expect him to get back on track in Week 3, as the Packers travel to St. Louis to play the shoddiest team on turf. Don’t be fooled by the Rams defensive performance against the Washington Redskins last week; the Skins’ 9-point effort only demonstrates how bad Washington’s offense is. Rodgers and the Packers should have no problem taking advantage of the Rams secondary. With Jennings and Driver going up against far inferior corners, the Packers passing game will look as good as it ever did in 2008. One can only hope that the game does not get too ugly so that Rodgers isn’t dealt the fantasy football death-card and has to hand the ball off for the majority of the second half.

Those are our top picks for Week 3 of the 2009 fantasy football season. Here are some of our other Week 3 projections and predictions:

Week 3 Fantasy Football Projections – Top Picks
1. Quarterback Projections
2. Running Back Projections
3. Wide Receiver Projections
4. Tight End Projections
5. Defensive Projections

Week 3 Fantasy Football Projections – Secondary Picks
1. Quarterback Picks
2. Running Back Picks
3. Wide Receiver Picks
4. Tight End Picks
5. Defensive Picks

Week 3 Fantasy Football Rankings
1. Quarterback Rankings
2. Running Back Rankings
3. Wide Receiver Rankings
4. Tight End Rankings
5. Defensive Rankings

Week 3 Sleeper Picks
1. Quarterback Sleeper Picks
2. Running Back Sleeper Picks
3. Wide Receiver Sleeper Picks
4. Tight End Sleeper Picks
5. Defensive Sleeper Picks

So the Fantasy Football experts at ESPN have laid out their rankings for Week 1 of the fantasy football season. Certainly there are a lot of similarities between their Week 1 projections and mine, but there are some slight differences.

I’ll lay out their rankings and give you my analysis of them, and of course you can see my top picks, every week, right here at TheSportsWatchers.com.

ESPN’s Quarterback Rankings for Fantasy Football Week 1:

1. Drew Brees – Drew Brees is facing the Detroit Lions, so this ranking makes perfect sense. That’s why I have Brees over Brady in my quarterback “Face Off” of the week.

2. Tom Brady – Brady faces a Buffalo defense that the Patriots have been 11 times in a row. It suffices to say, he’ll have a pretty good outing passing the ball against this Bills team that couldn’t beat Matt Cassel last year.

3. Peyton Manning – Manning will be up against the Jacksonville Jaguars, who’s defense took a step back last year, and because of that, I too think he will have a very effective day passing the ball. However, ESPN had some dissension here, with one analyst ranking Manning the 6th best fantasy quarterback on the Week 1 schedule.

4. Aaron Rodgers – Statistically, Rodgers had a great season in 2008, and really, that’s all that matters in fantasy football. He’s up against the Chicago Bears defense in Week 1, fortunately for him, this defense is far from what it used to be. Although I don’t have Rodgers quite this high in my projections, he should have a decent day.

5. Kurt Warner – I definitely think that Warner’s matchup with the 49ers garners a higher ranking that Rodgers against Chicago, but most of the ESPN brass disagrees with me on this notion. I guess they didn’t see the 70% completion percentage, nearly 600 yards and 4 touchdowns Warner had against the 49ers in 2 games last season.

Rounding out ESPN’s Top 10 projected quarterbacks:

6. Philip Rivers vs. Oakland Raiders
7. Matt Schaub vs. New York Jets
8. Donovan McNabb vs. Carolina Panthers
9. Matt Ryan vs. Miami Dolphins
10. Tony Romo vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

I like Rivers, Schaub and McNabb in the top 10 for this week, but Ryan might have a tough day if the Miami stops the Falcons ground game, and I just don’t see Romo playing too well in his first game without Terrell Owens. Hasselbeck and Carson Palmer would have better options for inclusion in the Top 10.

The New England Patriots enter the season as one of the favorites to reach the Super Bowl. But in Week 1 of fantasy football, all we care about is what their players are going to produce on the field, two years after being the most prolific offense in the history of football.

In Week 1 of the fantasy football season, the New England Patriots will go head to head with the Buffalo Bills. While the Bills certainly have high expectations for the 2009 season, one can only hope that their mediocre defense (14th in 2008) won’t completely fold in their opening game of the season.

Tom Brady, Quarterback
There’s no debating, Tom Brady will have a dynamite game in Week 1. Entering the 2008 season, he was a top 5 pick in just about every fantasy football league other there. He had been that dominant, and fantasy players were hoping that he could do it again last year. However, an injury kept him out until this Monday, when he will face a Bills pass defense that finished 13th in the league. Brady should have no problem manipulating the young safeties of the Bills team, and certainly they have no match for Randy Moss at wide receiver. With Brady and the entire Patriots organization looking to get their franchise quarterback off to a solid start, anything short of 300 yards passing and 3 touchdowns would really surprise me.

Laurence Maroney
With the signing of Fred Taylor many people have already pushed Maroney to the back of the fantasy football line. In fact, Maroney is only owned in 25.8% of leagues, while Fred Taylor is owned in 91.8% of leagues. How anyone can explain this is beyond me. Maroney is the younger, faster, more senior (in this offense) running back, and the entire fantasy world is spitting in his face after a couple of injury-riddled years. But in Week 1 of the fantasy football season, Maroney is the better fantasy play against the Bills. Maroney has looked fresh and preseason and he is the better receiver. So from that, I’d take it that Coach Belichik will give Maroney more plays than Taylor and just hope he’s in the game when the Pats are in the red zone.

Randy Moss, Wide Receiver
Of course, Randy Moss might score more touchdowns this game than all of the New England running backs combined. Moss and Brady are just itching to hook up in a regular season game again, and we definitely saw their ability to do that in their 3rd preseason game against the Washington Redskins. And if Moss’s love for Brady isn’t enough reason for you to buy into his Week 1 projections, then how about the fact that Moss be going “head-to-head” with Terrell Owens on Monday Night Football!

Wes Welker, Wide Receiver
If you’re in a points-per-catch league, there is no better player to have than Wes Welker. The man has caught more passes than anyone else in football over the past 2 seasons, making him one of the most consistent wide receivers in all of fantasy football. In Week 1 of the fantasy season, you can expect the Bills defense to stay in a two-shell all game in order to protect themselves against the deep ball to Randy Moss. This will inevitably open up the middle of the field for Wes to catch anywhere between 12 and 15 passes, which makes him a very viable fantasy football option this week. And if you’re worried about Welker’s ability to score touchdowns, just remember, even though Welker had 3 touchdowns last year, he had 8 when Tom Brady was the quarterback in 2007.

Week 1 Fantasy Football: Buy or Sell
1. Quarterbacks: Garrard and Favre
2. Running backs: Williams and Parker
3. Wide Receivers: Branch and Marshall
4. Tight Ends: Carlson and Cooley

Week 1 Fantasy Football Projections – Top Picks
1. Quarterback Projections
2. Running Back Projections
3. Wide Receiver Projections
4. Tight End Projections
5. Defensive Projections

Week 1 Fantasy Football Projections – Extra Picks
1. Quarterback Fantasy Football Projections
2. Running Back Fantasy Football Projections
3. Wide Receiver Fantasy Football Projections
4. Tight End Fantasy Football Projections

Week 1 Fantasy Football Projections – Sleeper Picks
1. Quarterback Sleeper Picks
2. Running Back Sleeper Picks
3. Wide Receiver Sleeper Picks
4. Tight Ends Sleeper Picks
5. Defensive Sleeper Picks

This week, my Fantasy Football League will officially begin. I’m not referencing the start of the NFL season, but my actual league gets started on Wednesday night with our fantasy draft at 10:00pm EST.

I know, many of you had your fantasy football drafts way back in August, and even if you did have it late, you took advantage of the long Labor Day Weekend to get it done.

I’m just one of those who loves to wait as long as humanly possible to have fantasy football draft. Afterall, so much happens in the preseason and we depend on those first round picks so much that to have a draft anytime before the 3rd preseason game is just ridiculous.

But I won’t lie, I did have a little bit of trouble getting everyone in line with the draft this year. You see, my fantasy football league goes back. Way back. All the way to 2004 when me and dawg from my college football team at Columbia had our own 2-man fantasy football draft. The next year, our senior year, we would go on to include everyone on the team, and we have continued to tradition, although in dwindling numbers, up until now, with a Fantasy Football League we have now labeled “Gold Dinner,” in reference to our alma mater’s annual celebration of the graduating of our college football seniors.

Of course, my roots in fantasy football go back way further than that. Outside of the ice cream man, fantasy football was one of the first things I ever saved money for. It was around 1994 where I began to notice ads in the newspaper and magazines for fantasy football players. You remember those. The leagues where you mailed in money and picked a team in salary cap league format and then you competed against the rest of the nation to win weekly and seasonal prices. Needless to say, I was only 11 in my first league, and so I sucked at it. Plus, if I recall correctly, the more money you had, the more points you could put toward buying players, so they weren’t exactly competition friendly to the annual salary of a 7th grader.

Still before the age of internet fantasy football kicked in, I turned toward fantasy football league’s I could win…the kind I started my own. So in 1996 at the age of 12, I started my own league where I listed off a series of 20 possibilities in fantasy football. Those possibilities would go something like, “Marshall Faulk will score 1 touchdown,” or “the Dallas Cowboys will beat the San Francisco 49ers.” Each possibility would have a certain number of points rewarded if correct and a certain number of points deducted if wrong, all based on the likelihood of that possibility. For example, you could gain more points and risk more points being deducted for predicting that Brad Johnson would throw 4 touchdown passes, but the risk/reward was much lower if you predicted Kurt Warner would throw 1 touchdown pass. The possible points rewarded and possible points lost equaled the same total every week.

My participants would sign their initials next to the things they thought would happen, and each Sunday night I would calculate the points won and loss by each person and add their overall points gained to their yearly total using an Excel spreadsheet. I did this all the way through my freshman year in high school. It was a marvelous success, and in the 3 years I did it, I won 2 of them—without cheating. I did, however, play to some of the biases and favoritism of my opponents/friends with the possibilities I would propose, but I was probably even at bigger advantage because I loved to see my favorite players reach lofty goals and produce a severe amount of points.

By my sophomore year in 1999, the internet had caught up to fantasy football and Sandbox.com came up with one of the first free fantasy football leagues. My friends and I joined that, and I’ve been playing fantasy football leagues with them online every year since.

Fast-forward to the present, and the impending draft of my Gold Dinner Fantasy Football League. There are 9 football alumni on the team, and 1 former member, who make up this year’s 10 teams. It’s divided into 2 divisions, one for the offense, and one for the defense, which really has no significance at the end of the day. This year’s version of the Gold Dinner league is titled Gold Dinner II, despite the fact that I’ll be going to my 3rd post graduation Gold Dinner (my first post-grad fantasy league was called Lions forever…doesn’t have the same ring to it).

Last year, in Gold Dinner I, the message boards were a frienzy. People talked trash to the high-heavens. Peoples characters were questioned, people abandoned their teams, and others refused to pay the league fee. I had a rough start to the season, starting 0-3, despite having scored the 4th most points in the league after 3 weeks. I am the commissioner of the league, so people began to make fun of me “The Sports Watcher,” for not living up to my moniker. But I knew my team was good and that my record did not reflect my team’s ability. So I made a few trades, and needless to say, I went on to win every single game for the rest of the season in route to the first Gold Dinner championship ever.

Did I brag in the message boards?

Nope!

All I wrote in the message boards after Week 3, was “1,” “2,” “3,” “4,” “5,” and all the way up to “12,” after my championship victory.

And so with Week 1 of the NFL and fantasy football season upon us, my counting begins again this week. I’ll be using my own quarterback, running back, wide receiver and tight end rankings to determine just which players I’ll be drafting in my Gold Dinner II draft this Wednesday night. I’ll be live-blogging the draft, so come join me and a couple of my friends on the “Internets,” as we talk up the biggest night of the fantasy football season on the eve of the start of yet another well-anticipated year in the NFL. The draft starts at 10:00pm EST, so the live-blog will start a little bit before that. Come join the fun, and if you’re in a draft of your own, you can read the live commentary at another time at FantasyFootball.TheSportsWatchers.com.

If you play fantasy football, then you know that everyone and their momma is trying to tell you who to draft, when to draft him, and how you could have mad that last draft pick better.

If you play fantasy football, you also know not to damn thing anyone tells you when it comes to setting up your fantasy football team—except for me that is (and your momma to, but only if she’s not in your league).

Here, I’m not going to tell you who to draft. No I’ve done that already, and I’ll have plenty of opportunities leading up to the first week of the season to give you my pre-season fantasy football draft analysis again, and of course you’ll be reading and hearing my fantasy football advice all season long here at TheSportsWatchers.com.

So what am I going to tell you if I don’t tell you whether to pick Tom Brady or LaDainian Tomlinson with the first pick, the ranking of the running backs, the projections for the quarterbacks and the consistency of the wide receivers?

I’m going to tell you the exact opposite. I’m going to tell you who not to draft.

This has been my ultimate key to fantasy football success. You have to know who to stay away from. Sometimes the decisions you make are hard, because often the players that you need to eliminate from your selection pool are the same players that are coming off of more than stellar seasons in the year prior. But if you took a guy like running back Larry Johnson in 2007, who dominated the NFL in 2006, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

If LaDainian Tomlinson was the king of fantasy football in 2006, than Larry Johnson was heir to the throne. He had a career year and ran behind what was probably the worst offensive line he had ever played for. And while LJ racked up his 1,789 yards in 2006, he also accumulated 416 carries, which essentially wore him out to the point where he was destined to fail in 2007. Knowing that, I removed Larry Johnson from all of my fantasy draft boards last year, and I effectively avoided his 8-game and 559-yard disappointment of a season.

You too can benefit from removing certain players from your draft board, because there are a few players out there that are projected to have unfavorable fantasy football seasons, and I’ve got a list of them. Before I give that to you, let me warn you, there will appear to be some contradictions between my rankings and involving these players on this “Don’t Draft List.” However, the rankings assume that the players will live up to their talents, while this list assumes that the worst of the players. So use this list as a guide to avoid drafting certain players when there are other equal or comparable fantasy football players to draft from.

With that said, here is the “Don’t Draft List!”

Carson Palmer, Quarterback, Cincinnati Bengals – I don’t like what I’m seeing from the Bengals offense so far. Their offense was the one good thing they had going for them last year and now it looks almost putrid. Here they are, looking to get receivers, trade grade-A running backs, and risking the seasons with wideout who has a bum shoulder. And of course, Carson is the one who will suffer from all of this. Not to mention, I don’t think the Bengals adequately addressed their offensive line issues during the off-season. Carson may be a highly-talented quarterback, but this year, there is a very likely chance that he won’t be his usual self.

Marshawn Lynch, Running Back, Buffalo Bills – I don’t care how many top 10 lists he is on this pre-season, because most importantly, he didn’t make mine! Besides, we all have seen this movie before. Rookie running back enters the league and explodes for big season, then said rookie running back follows it up with a dud for sophomore campaign and fantasy football players all over the country are devastated by his poor production. Now clearly, that doesn’t happen all the time, and I don’t expect it to happen to Adrian Peterson. But the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of rookie running backs who rush for 1,000 yards don’t rush for a 1,000 the following year. I can’t find the percentage, but trust me on this, Lynch is likely to behold himself to that trend.

Calvin Johnson, Wide Receiver, Detroit Lions – Don’t buy the hype quite yet. I know, I know, you’ll be kicking yourself if you pass up on Calvin Johnson and he has a terrific season. But he is going to go entirely too high in the draft, and the likelihood of you having a shot at him the rounds where he should be drafted are unlikely. Heck, even fools on ESPN are ranking him in the top 10 despite him showing no evidence of that last year. Look, I love what Calvin Johnson can do, but he hasn’t done it yet. Not to mention, I’m almost 100% sure that at the end of the day, a healthy Roy Williams (his teammate) will have a better year than a healthy Calvin Johnson, and there’s no reason for you to go out and draft a #2 receiver as early as Johnson is projected to go. That said, I do expect Johnson to have a big Week 1, but I think Roy will have a big week too, so…

Antonio Gates, Tight End, San Diego Chargers – The fools who have Antonio Gates ranked as the #1 tight end in all of fantasy football have to be the worst prognosticators ever. There is absolutely no way that Gates will finish the year as the top tight end, if he will finish the season at all. The man has missed training camp, barely practices now, and I’m not even sure I saw him play in the preseason, and I know for a fact he didn’t play in the team’s 3rd pre-season game. But if you want to bet the farm on Gates go ahead. We all know he’ll be taken in your fantasy football draft before just about every other tight end, which means you’ll be picking him way too high if you target him. If you do draft Gates as high as he has been going in drafts, that alone could ruin your entire draft. But hey, that’s just my fantasy football prediction.

More Fantasy Football Articles:

“Don’t Draft List” Part I
My 3 Bold Fantasy Predictions
Should You Trade Your First Pick
Fantasy Football Predictions Week 1 – Quarterbacks
Fantasy Football Predictions Week 1 – Running Backs
Fantasy Football Predictions Week 1 – Wide Receivers
Fantasy Football Predictions Week 1 – Tight Ends
Fantasy Football Predictions Week 1 – Defense

Let’s get right to it, you don’t want to have the wrong defense on your fantasy football team in Week 1 of the NFL season, because if you do, that alone could cost you your first game of the young fantasy football year.

The unfortunate thing is that predicting the best defenses of the season is like trying to find a needle in haystack…it’s virtually impossible. Sure, you can go off of last year’s results, and usually you do have 2 or 3 perennially good defenses, but after that, it’s a total crapshoot. Everybody does so much to try to improve their defense that you can’t always measure just how successful a newly reconstructed defense is goint to be without seeing them play. Not to mention, defenses get so much better during the season that usually the best defense in Week 1 is not the best defense in Week 17.

Well, despite the confusion that goes into ranking and projecting defenses for fantasy football, I’m here to take on the mystification of it all. So with out further adieu, here are your defensive rankings for Week 1 of the NFL season:

1. San Diego Chargers vs. Carolina Panthers – Even without a healthy Shawne Merriman, the Chargers should be okay facing a Steve “Smith-less” Panthers offense in Week 1 of the season. Some day, the Panthers will have to explain to me how difficult it must be preparing for Week 1 of the season without your best player, despite the fact that he is completely healthy—at least physically healthy that is. The Chargers should dominate the Panthers, with a pass rush that will more than welcome quarterback Jake Delhomme back from injury and secondary that will make Mushin Muhammad wish he was catching passes from Kyle Orton this season.

2. Jacksonville Jaguars @ Tennessee Titans – With all due respect to my man Vince Young, his offense just isn’t that good. As a result, I think the Jaguars are a safe bet to have a good day on defense. If they just play average defense, they’ll still hold the Titans to a below 20-point offensive day. And if they play great defense, they’ll dominate the Titans offense and may hold them to 10 points or fewer.

3. New York Jets @ Miami Dolphins – The Jets spent a lot of money on the defensive side of the ball this off season—some would say too much money given some of the talent they picked up. Regardless of that, they are playing a Miami Dolphins team that is rebuilding from 1-15 season. Now excuse me if I’m wrong for saying this, but wouldn’t the 1-15 season have been a good time to have started the rebuilding process? Oh well, it works out great for the Jets, who should dominate a Dolphins offense that has an unhealthy Ronnie Brown at running back and a quarterback in Chad Pennington that is still learning the offense. Should be a great start to the Brett Favre era in a J-E-T-S uniform.

More Fantasy Football Projections:

Quarterbacks - Predictions – Week 1
Running Backs - Predictions – Week 1
Wide Receivers – Predictions – Week 1
Tight Ends - Predictions – Week 1
Defenses - Predictions – Week 1

Fantasy Football Week 1 is slowly coming upon us. One of the positions that very few people tend to pay attention to is that of tight end. Many fantasy players aim at getting Tony Gonzalez, Antonio Gates or Jason Witten, and when they don’t, they pretty much settle for the next biggest name and hope that he doesn’t cost them the game.

Well, that’s a loser’s mentality in fantasy football, because not only can having a bad tight end cost you a victory in Week 1 of fantasy football, but having the right tight end at the right time can bring you victory.

In projecting fantasy football tight ends, it’s the same as it is for the quarterbacks, wide receivers and running backs as well—it’s all about matchups!

So in giving you Fantasy Football Week 1’s predictions and rankings, I have taken into account all of the various on-field intricacies that could make or break your team in the opening week of the NFL Regular season.

Before I get to the fantasy football projected starters at the tight end position, let me say one last thing about the importance of a tight end. In most standard fantasy football leagues, you will notice that the difference between last year’s #1 tight end (Jason Witten) and last year’s #10 tight end (Tony Scheffler) was just over 5 points per game. That’s a vast difference, especially when the tight ends aren’t usually where you’re looking to get the majority of your points from. Needless to say, you don’t want to have Scheffler on your roster when you’re going against the guy with Witten on his roster, because right there you’re pretty much down by 5 points before you even start the week, and that won’t bode well for you throughout the season.

Anyway, in giving you my fantasy football predictions, I want to help you avoid the scenario of having a Scheffler versus a Witten and help you start the right tight ends on your roster, even if they aren’t top 10 at the end of the season. This will help you avoid wasting a high round draft pick on a big name tight end, and it will help prevent you from losing points if you decide to wait until later in the draft to get less talented pick. Tight end is a great position to spot pick on your roster. So in an effort to help you pick this week’s spots, here are your fantasy football rankings for Week 1 of the NFL season, and a sleeper pick to help you out as well.

1. Jason Witten, Dallas Cowboys @ Cleveland Browns – Last year’s #1 tight end starts out on top again. His display of agility for someone his size is almost unmatched in this league, which makes him a very difficult cover for most linebackers. And considering that the Browns don’t have any linebackers (of note that is), they won’t be able to lock up Witten in sort of way. If your league counts receptions, Witten is an especially good pick this week, as most teams lacking defensive talent tend to try to limit the deep ball in their first game as a means of masking their deficiencies early on in the season. That should result in a lot of check down passes to Witten and a lot of points for you fantasy football team.

2. Kellen Winslow, Cleveland Browns vs. Dallas Cowboys – Needless to say, the Cowboys linebackers aren’t exactly great cover guys either. While their defense is considerably better at stopping the run and should have improved at covering wide receivers with the addition of Pac-Man Jones, they still don’t have linebackers that run all that well, and they certainly don’t have a guy that can run with an athletic beast like Kellen Winslow. Most likely, the Dallas Cowboys won’t be as conservative as the Browns, so instead of a lot of check down passes, you’ll probably see Derek Anderson throw Kellen a few passes down the seam, which could mean big plays and 1 or two touchdowns for Kellen—a good reason to pick him up in your drafts or your salary cap leagues.

3. Vernon Davis, San Francisco 49ers vs. Arizona Cardinals – Vernon had a better campaign in his sophomore season than he did in his rookie year, and expect the growth trend to continue in 2008. Vernon has great speed, a lot like Kellen, and that will make him a severe mismatch against the Arizona Cardinals. Plus, this is his first game under the Mike Martz system, and even though Martz doesn’t have a history with prolific tight ends in his offenses, he has been featuring Mr. Davis all off-season, and I’m sure that he will release his talents unto the world in Week 1 of the season.

Fantasy Football Sleeper Pick

Your sleeper pick is none other than Greg Olsen of the Chicago Bears. Call me crazy if you will, but I think Olsen will not only have a stellar Week 1, but that he is in line for a decent season. Kyle Orton looked pretty damn good in his pre-season “debut” as the starting quarterback for the Chicago Bears, and if he plays that well, Olsen will certainly have his chance to shine, just as he did at the University of Miami. And even if Orton doesn’t pan out at quarterback, Olsen could still have a big year being that reliable safety valve for Orton whenever he is in trouble. Going against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 1, Orton will see a lot of pressure from the defensive line, so he will have to hit that safety valve in Orton a lot. Also, the Colts play that Tampa 2 defense, which plays right into the hands of tight ends that can run. So laugh at me if you want to for picking Olsen, but I think he is going to have a very big week for the Bears, and he will be a great sleeper pick for your fantasy football team if you put him on the roster.

More Fantasy Football Projections:

Quarterbacks - Predictions – Week 1
Running Backs - Predictions – Week 1
Wide Receivers – Predictions – Week 1
Tight Ends - Predictions – Week 1
Defenses - Predictions – Week 1