This is sort of just a fantasy football mash-up open thread for at least this week. Considering we haven’t had any actual fantasy scoring yet, there isn’t exactly a lot to talk about. Luckily, that’s all about to change tonight. Feel free to throw out any sit/start troubles your having, or any other fantasy football related questions, thoughts, ideas you might have or even live trade negotiation. 

A couple big questions:

Is Peyton Manning going to start?

Because of this glaring issue, we’re definitely not completely void of fantasy talk. The simple answer is no, he’s not starting for at least Week 1, unless Jim Irsay and co. are running the biggest misinformation campaign in the modern day NFL. If you have Peyton Manning, you absolutely need to bench him this week. And if what I’m hearing turns out to be true, he very well may not be ready by the time the Browns come around in Week 2 as well. This is why getting a hold of a solid fantasy back-up quarterback is pretty important. It’s the highest scoring fantasy position, and your go to guy isn’t going to be out at least for one week (his bye). Considering injuries like this situation happen all the time in football, you’ve got to have a back-up plan. And generally, the waiver wire is full of shots in the dark this early.

How healthy is Arian Foster, and how much action will he see Sunday?

In the fantasy football world, this question is even bigger than the last one. This guy needs to carry teams in any normal league with more than 6 teams. A lot of people completely avoided him because of the uncertainties regarding this hamstring injury. The news hasn’t been getting any better since fantasy drafts started taken place several weeks back. This goes to show the advantage in waiting until later to hold those drafts. I think if all drafts we’re held this morning, we’d see quite a hit in Foster’s average draft position, and rightfully so. You want to get as much out of your RBs in fantasy football as possible. It’s easily the most valuable position in the game. Foster has this to say, “You can’t really expect anything with hamstrings, just taking it day by day. It’s frustrating, but injuries are part of the game. You can’t escape them, if you play this game for a long time. You just have to maintain them, and take care of them when they happen.” Houston head coach Gary Kubiak really makes it sound like it’s going to be a game day decision. Which is probably even more frustrating for fantasy owners, that are going to have to wait till Sunday morning to make that sit/start call, rather than having a definitive answer now.

Good luck all, and welcome to the 2011 NFL regular season! It’s only a matter of hours before the wait is finally over.