In Even More News That You Could Not Possibly Care About

Here's the roster for the head to head work league, which has 14 teams and 16 rounds, 4-point passing touchdowns and way too many guys who poached my picks. Positions are QB, RB1, RB2, WR1, WR2, W/R, TE, DEF and K, with six bench slots. (Yes, the waiver wire in this league bites hard.)

1. (7) Steven Jackson
2. (22) Calvin Johnson
3. (35) Aaron Rodgers
4. (50) Antonio Gates
5. (63) Darren McFadden
6. (78) Bernard Berrian
7. (91) Torry Holt
8. (106) Domenik Hixon
9. (119) Fred Taylor
10. (134) San Diego
11. (147) Steve Smith (NYG)
12. (162) Edgerrin James
13. (175) Earl Bennett
14. (190) Brett Favre
15. (203) Jacksonville
16. (218) Neil Rackers

I was trying to avoid owning the same players that I have in the keeper league; if LaDanian Tomlinson falls apart this year, I'd like to keep the damage to just one league, thank you. I was unhappy to have the seventh slot originally, but when two teams went for players outside of my top six, the slot worked well, and getting Calvin Johnson at 22 is pretty amazing, considering that you could easily make the case that he's the top WR in fantasy this year.

The problem was that by the third round, with players like Ryan Grant (18, kind of amazing) and Pierre Thomas (32) coming off the board, I just couldn't go for Thomas Jones, and wound up taking Rodgers, the last top-tier QB on my board, instead. In the fourth, I was lined up to go for the distasteful Larry Johnson when he went at 49, making the Gates or LJ conundrum a non-choice. In the fifth, LemDale White, Beanie Wells and Derrick Ward all left before I grabbed McFadden. If this league is going to work out, I need D-Mac to be the best of those backs, and by a pretty wide margin.

With a draft like this one, the problem is that while you can try to stay contrarian and reassure yourself that it's a deep draft for running backs, you're still looking down the barrel at a guy in a committee (McFadden) as an every week starter, which just eats away at whatever good feeling you might have about getting a top-flight WR, QB and TE. It just goes against the way you think a team *should* be built, and the fact that the NFL has so thoroughly discredited the RB / RB start to a draft doesn't mean that your brain is ready to accept anything else as acceptable.

A similar issue happens when you get to the bench slots. This club's bench consists of a lot of guys who dominated the league in 2005 and before, and I kind of hate that, since I love guessing right on the emerging rookie or young player. But when you are going over 240 picks into a league, you need guys with playing time, especially when you find them available when the auto-pick teams are going to kickers. But when "sleepers" like Felix Jones and Ray Rice are off the board in the sixth, it's just hard to get your hands on something young and sexy.

Anyway, I think we'll contend, and if nothing else, I've got the satisfaction of making Favre (seriously, the problem with deep leagues is that you feel like you *have* to have backups, rather than just rolling the dice with a single early stud) hold the clipboard for Aaron Rodgers. Streak, schmeak, you attention whore...