We will be doing a weekly fantasy football feature on Fridays from now until the end of the season. Simmsinns already does a great job stimulating fantasy football discussion early in the week, so I will ensure that these posts are differentiated by talking about the weekly fantasy value of Cleveland Browns players. When necessary, I will also try to throw in an update about the "Official" Dawgs By Nature fantasy football league.
Lucky me, for the first week of this feature, the Browns are on a bye week. With that in mind, I'll pick the players who have been worthy of a spot on your fantasy roster so far.
At quarterback, nobody should have Colt McCoy as their starter. If you have a top-tier quarterback like Aaron Rodgers though, it might not be bad to see when his bye week is and who the Browns are facing that week. McCoy has not committed a lot of turnovers and has been averaging about a steady 15 fantasy points per game.
The running back situation has been a problem so far. I had high fantasy expectations for Peyton Hillis, and to no fault of his own, the "low preseason value" that he had in preseason fantasy rankings seems to be pretty accurate. Hillis had one great fantasy week against the Colts in Week 2, but has otherwise been inactive or not productive as a fantasy threat. With that said, I don't see how there is any way you bench the guy unless he ends up facing one of the league's top run defenses. I imagine that a better effort will be made to get Hillis more involved in the game moving forward, and even if his YPC average is low, there could be more games like the one against the Colts ahead of him. Montario Hardesty really isn't worth a roster spot in my opinion unless something happens to Hillis.
Do you have any of the Browns wide receivers on your roster? I wouldn't consider any of them. Even if Greg Little has potential, he's not getting into the end zone yet. That belongs to the tight ends, where Ben Watson remains a good start if you chose not to invest in the likes of Jermichael Finley during the draft. If you are really stuck at the tight end position (i.e. you took Dallas Clark), I'd still say that Evan Moore isn't a bad option. He's still being targeted in the red zone, and that could be six easy fantasy points for you.
Strategizing about what kicker to play is an underrated aspect of the game, but if you're a Browns fan, I still don't seem significant harm in starting Phil Dawson every week. I personally don't do that because the Browns are not a team that puts up a lot of touchdowns, and his field goal opportunities are usually limited.
The Browns' defense/special teams has been good at racking up sacks, but with no production last week, the rest of the league has pretty much caught up in that department. The Browns don't post many other fantasy-related statistics on defense since they haven't had turnovers and have not had a defensive touchdown. The fact that Joshua Cribbs is on special teams makes it enticing to have the Browns if he ends up returning a kickoff one of these weeks, but how long are you willing to wait?
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Things were going terrible for me in the Official DBN Fantasy Football League...until last week. After starting the season at a dismal 0-3, I picked up my first victory last week. I could easily be a 2-2 team right now, but I believe I lost to Bernie19Kosar by a couple fractions of a point one week when I tried to be too cute with a roster decision.
My success last week stemmed from Michael Vick being a little more like Michael Vick and Dwayne Bowe starting to re-emerge as the Chiefs' best offensive weapon. Looking up and down my roster, I'm still very disappointed with the draft I had (after initially being pleased with it). That's what happens when Vick has mutliple injuries and starts complaining, the Chiefs get off to a terrible start, the issues with Hillis happen, and Peyton Manning misses games (tight end is Clark).
As for the rest of the league, here is how things have panned out so far.
| Rank | Team | W-L-T | Pct | Pts For | Pts Against | Streak | Waiver | Moves |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Vicious Geeks | 4-0-0 | 1.000 | 539.20 | 373.82 | W-4 | 7 | 4 |
| 2. | The Tuba-Taylor Wall | 4-0-0 | 1.000 | 450.32 | 376.32 | W-4 | 5 | 5 |
| 3. | Like-A-Bronie | 3-1-0 | .750 | 452.10 | 407.36 | W-3 | 12 | 8 |
| 4. | The Brown Note | 2-2-0 | .500 | 394.78 | 368.20 | W-2 | 8 | 11 |
| 5. | Columbus Flyers | 2-2-0 | .500 | 386.84 | 388.48 | L-1 | 11 | 8 |
| 6. | Dawg Nuts | 2-2-0 | .500 | 385.82 | 330.28 | L-1 | 1 | - |
| 7. | Vandelay Industries | 2-2-0 | .500 | 326.72 | 355.94 | L-2 | 3 | 11 |
| 8. | Rocksteady | 1-3-0 | .250 | 384.00 | 436.96 | L-2 | 10 | 5 |
| 9. | MIDAS | 1-3-0 | .250 | 372.88 | 420.84 | L-2 | 4 | 1 |
| 10. | Walter Sobchak | 1-3-0 | .250 | 356.44 | 454.20 | L-3 | 9 | 7 |
| 11. | AllOneNacho | 1-3-0 | .250 | 340.60 | 426.92 | W-1 | 6 | 2 |
| 12. | Pokorny Unleashed | 1-3-0 | .250 | 317.84 | 368.22 | W-1 | 2 | 5 |
Note that the league leaders are Brownsyup and Bernie19Kosar. After a disappointing 0-2 start to the season, reigning Unofficial DBN Champion "The Brown Note" has won his last two games.