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When he was being ignored by the higher-ups in Miami and appeared destined to stay stuck with the Dolphins in 2008 it was easier to feel for defensive end-linebacker Jason Taylor. However, when his posse leaked to the media his lack of interest in going to Green Bay because the market isn’t big enough he risked losing some goodwill.

Sure, the Packers reside in middle America. And sure, Brett Favre retired this offseason, making the season ahead much more murky.

But this is a team coming off a 13-3 season during which it surprised the league by reaching the NFC Championship game. Aaron Rodgers, while unproven, comes with a decent enough pedigree to think the team will at least be competitive during the season ahead.

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As mentioned more times than you probably care to read Zoneblitz is operated by a pair of homegrown Minnesota Vikings fans. That’s been more frustrating than joyous for the past six or seven years but you’ve got to stick with your team, don’t you?

Anyway, if Dr. Z at Sports Illustrated is right we Minnesotans might finally get our payoff this year. He’s pegged the Vikes to knock off Dallas, New York, New Orleans, and all other comers to grab the NFC berth in the big game.

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Six weeks until training camp, but Yahoo! is already full force into their barrage of Fantasy Football ‘08.  They had a 10-round mock draft a few weeks back, and today writers Brandon Funston, Andy Behrens, and Brad Evans provided some top 5 Fantasy lists.

The first thing that jumped out at us?  It appears that everyone wants to pick the next Adrian Peterson.  Each guy had at least one rookie RB in their ‘Top 5 Players [tehy'll] most heavily target’ list–and Behrens had two.  Which strikes me as downright foolish, given that few rookie RB’s contribute to the level of an Adrian Peterson.

Jonathan Stewart (Funston, #2; Behrens, #1) - I understand that in the long run, he may be the better overall back than DeAngelo Williams.  But Behrens even points out the big flaw in targetting Stewart heavily (especially early):

“If he just gets Foster’s ‘07 carries (247), he’s going to be a force.”

Seems like an awfully big ‘if’ to me, given the presence of Williams.  Stewart will have to come into practice and absolutely dazzle some people to get Foster’s carries–think of how long it took WIlliams to get the carries he did, when many considered him significantly better than Foster all along?

Matt Forte (Behrens, #4) - I understand that the Bears don’t really have any one else to throw back there as the primary guy.  But that doesn’t mean that Forte will put up 1,400 yards and 10+ TDs.  Two reasons that Peterson succeeded early in ‘07–first, he had a solid offensive line in front of him.  Second, early in the season, teams thought they would have to cover the Vikings receivers.  As soon as they figured out that wasn’t the case, they threw 8-9 guys in the box, and frustrated Peterson.

So how good will Forte be, given that most teams will probably (rightly so) assume that they don’t have to worry about the Bears passing attack from week 1 on, and with an average (at best) offensive line?

Rashard Mendenhall (Evans, #1) - Seriously?  Who gave this guy the title of fantasy expert?

1,000 total yards and 7-9 TDs?  “High” Five was an accurate name for this article.

Yeah, the Steelers are likely to try to reduce Willie Parker–of course, I’ve also heard reports that Gary Russell has impressed them this offseason, while Parker heals his broken leg. Granted, it’s only OTAs, and coming from local Minnesota media (Russell was a Minnesota Golden Gopher before being booted from the team), but it adds to Mendenhall’s competition to even see the field in 2008.  Not to mention Mewelde Moore, who also was decent when he got some playing time, and signed as a FA.

So if you’re looking for fantasy standouts that will help you all season long, at least in the early rounds, stay away from the rookies.  And until they come to their senses, I’d stay away from Funston, Behrens and Evans, too.

So, Pacman Jones wants to cut ties with his troubled past. How’s he going to do it? Anger management counseling? Distancing himself from some of his posse? Taking the stripper pole out of his living room (Actually, I suppose if I were him I’d leave that there, since he’s less likely to be arrested cavorting around with strippers in his own house)?

No. But Adam Shefter of the NFL Network is reporting that he’s planning to publicly ask media members not to refer to him as Pacman anymore.

Well, problem solved. What a fantastic solution to his legal problems of the past. There’s no way he’ll be getting arrested anymore now that he wants to be known simply as “Adam”.

My favorite part of this AOL posting on the subject is where the commenters say they quit calling him Pacman in favor of Douchecanoe and/or Inmate 6841324 long ago. They beat me to the punch in better fashion than I could have written it myself.

Dude. Do yourself a favor and stay as far away from the media as you can. Stay out of the spotlight. Stay away from the cameras. You’ve gotten enough chances now where people are going to bait you and they aren’t going to care about your efforts to change - especially when they ring as hollow as trying to erase everything away by changing your friggin’ name.

It appears as though you’re going to get your second, err, seventh chance to succeed in the NFL and, disappointingly enough, you are going to get to do it with the team you wanted to, the Dallas Cowboys. I don’t know that anyone is actively going to root against you and hope that you fail, but you’ve done nothing to engender anyone’s goodwill either. On ESPN a couple months ago you still looked like you were in denial and if I were in Vegas I’d be betting that you can’t do it.

You don’t want to be known as Pacman anymore? More power to you. But Adam, you’ll always be Assclown Jones to me.

Fantasy football conventional wisdom says grab running backs early and often. And in many cases that’s true. Nobody is saying pass up LaDainian Tomlinson, Adrian Peterson, Brian Westbrook or Steven Jackson if you have one of the top four or five picks. But with the increasing propensity of the running back-by-committee and the humongous passing stats being put up by teams like New England and Indianapolis, that advice now comes with an asterisk.

Let fantasy drafts come to you. It’s no longer taboo to grab a top quarterback - Tom Brady or Peyton Manning - or the top ranked wide receiver in the latter half of round one. Paul Charchian, founder of the Web site Fanball.com, has long espoused a strategy he calls “Doing the opposite” and ever since I started being more purposeful in my own scouting and rankings I’ve had much more fantasy football success.

The truth is in most scoring systems Randy Moss had more points than any running back last season except Tomlinson and Braylon Edwards wasn’t far behind. If you had grabbed the combination of Terrell Owens and Reggie Wayne and then stolen Adrian Peterson in the third round you’d have been well on your way to a championship.

I’d been planning on writing a post like this for awhile. The folks at NFL.com sort of stole my thunder. But the fact remains - there’s more than one way to win a fantasy football championship. If you go RB, RB in the first two rounds you’re as likely to go bust as you are to go boom. Take a gander at this link and then adjust your draft lists accordingly. … and if you don’t, please invite me into your league so I can get a piece of that pot.

Cheers.

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