Fantasy Football 2011: Top 5

So apparently I have a problem. It's apparently an addiction to have completed 10 mock drafts up until this point. But one thing I have noticed in these drafts is the high amount of variability in the first round. Generally, its the same people going 1-5 and then the next 5 are the same people in varying orders however that has not been the case this year. I have seen 6 different people go #1 overall including Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, Arian Foster, Mike Vick, Jamal Charles, and even Rashard Mendenhall. That being said this is my Top 5 for the first round. Feel free to comment or debate any of these.

1. Adrian Peterson
With a decent quarterback behind him and a bunch of solid receivers AP is set up to do what he does every year.

2. Mike Vick
I know what your thinking. Dan quarterbacks are so deep this year why would you waste your number 2 pick on an injury prone QB. Here's why: Mike Vick is a play maker. He was among the league leaders in fantasy points last year even not playing every game either due to his injury or to Andy Reid. As for being injury prone, think of it this way. Everybody is injury prone. How many hits is AP gonna take this year? Who took Brady a few years ago and expected nothing to happen to him. The fact of the matter is anybody can get hurt at any time so ignore injuries unless the injury is current.

3. Arian Foster
I've got good news and I've got bad news. First the bad news. Every team is now looking for this guy on every play. He had most of his success last year early in the year when nobody was game planning for him. Now for the good news. Matt Schaub isn't getting any worse. With his ability to air it out to Andre Johnson defenses wont be able to cheat up into the box to shut down Foster or they will get burned deep. So they have a choice. Either get burned deep and then have Houston run out the clock on them or let them run initially either way Foster is going to get his touches.

4. Ray Rice
With Willis McGahee out of the picture look for rice to get all his regular touches plus extra goal line carries.

5. Chris Johnson
Tennesee has no other option but to hope that CJ can run the ball effectively.

If I have time I hope to finish out the first three rounds.

Yahoo! Fantasy on the Bears

If you play fantasy football (and hey, who am I kidding, nine out of the ten of us who read this thing do), then you probably are familiar with Yahoo's Juggernaut Index, written by Andy Behrens. If not, you can find all the entries here at Roto Arcade.

Behrens ranks every team in the NFL for the coming season, not by hopes for a good year in the wins column, but by how useful their players will be on your fantasy squad.
The countdown has now reached No. 20, the Chicago Bears. Much of the analysis is based on the new Martz system and how well the Bears' personnel can handle it - one stat I thought was interesting is that in every year with Martz as the OC, his teams have given up a lot of sacks, and thrown a lot of INTs. More details are over at Yahoo.

One Bear who Behrens trashes is Matt Forte:

"Forte was of course a fantasy star in his rookie season, thanks largely to the 379 total touches, but as an actual NFL talent he appears to be just another guy. He still hasn't averaged 4.0 YPC over a full season, and it may not happen this year. He certainly looks like a runner who needs an outstanding O-line and an old school lead-blocking fullback; in Chicago's offense, he'll have neither."

But he does wrap up by noting that, "This was the most difficult JI of all," so maybe there's still hope. Personally I'm looking at drafting at least one of the Bears' WRs, whichever one falls to a convenient position to be my third or fourth option.