I've just returned from a week at my father-in-law's house. It's a place where family is welcomed, much great food and drink is served, and arguments about politics are always heated, but not a place where blogging ("what's blogging?") about fantasy football ("what's fantasy football?") is considered a legitimate use ("why are you on the computer so much?!") of your time. So while I'm a little behind covering the very busy week of NFL Free Agent moves, this is a great opportunity for me to start the fantasy football blogging season. That's right, it's fantasy football blogging right in the middle of your fantasy baseball prep. You won't hear anything about Manny, but there's a good chance you will pick up some helpful boating safety tips.
Over the weekend I was thinking about how to make these free agent moves relevant for the next few months. Some of these transactions are going to be keystones to fantasy football success this autumn, but people are going to be distracted by a million different things ("Wait, why is Marbury wearing green?") between now and then. What I need is a way to keep the important things separate so I can refer back to them over the course of the year. Which brings me to the cleverly-named:
Skeller's Big Fantasy Football Questions
Today is the first of those Big Fantasy Football Questions, about probably the biggest NFL move of the offseason (so far). You can tell it's big because I'm using a logo. And I'm bolding things. That's big.
QUESTION: Is Matt Cassel Going To Be Matt Cassel Or Tyler Thigpen This Season?
Players Heavily Affected: QB Matt Cassel, RB Larry Johnson, RB Jamaal Charles, WR Dwayne Bowe, TE Tony Gonzalez
The Chiefs dealt a second round pick to the Pats for QB Matt Cassel, as former-New-England-current-Kansas-City executive Scott Pioli believes that Cassel is the real deal. Is he? A lot of fantasy football owners will believe it, but the 2009 Chiefs are NOT the 2008 Patriots. As just one example (there will be more later), the 2008 Patriots had the league's 6th best rushing attack and produced 21 rushing touchdowns (including two from Cassel). The 2008 Chiefs averaged almost 30 rushing yds per game less and could only generate nine rushing touchdowns. Nine rushing touchdowns. Over the entire sixteen game season!
Five of those touchdowns came from very-disgruntled RB Larry Johnson (who may not play for the Chiefs this season) and another three came from the recently-usurped QB Tyler Thigpen. Who's going to run the ball in KC? Larry Johnson? Jamaal Charles? Kolby Smith? Some guy they're planning on drafting?
There's much more to talk about on this one, but for now it's enough to say the gap in the running game alone means that Matt Cassel is going to have a much harder time this season than he had last season.
Image via nfl.com
