Prolong the fantasy

Before the 2009 season started, my mom had a telling comment. She said that bad football was better than no football. For the first seven weeks of the season, that theory was tested to the maximum. In the end, the season finished on an uptick. But it ended. Twelve teams made "the tournament" and the Titans were not invited. My fantasy teams fell well short of titles. What to do next?

Playoff fantasy football is another beast compared to the regular season. Since the so-called season is short and there are different rules. I used to manually score a postseason contest for my local keeper league. The first year, I just had people draft players, which naturally limited the talent pool. I had one year when I tried to get people to draft a player in a week, which meant that you could draft Kurt Warner in the wild card round and someone else could draft him for the Super Bowl. That was too complicated. We settled on a hybrid last year, where you select players and have limited replacement opportunities, which meant that you had to predict who was going to win and score well.

I set up the league on the CBS Sportsline site, since that's where we have our league. It's an eight-player league with eight allowed substitutions. I punted defense and kicker by selecting the Colts and Matt Stover. I selected Kurt Warner (yay), Marion Barber (WTF), Cedric Benson (your stay was too short), Randy Moss (never again), Larry Fitzgerald (double yay), and Jason Witten (at least your team won). Barber's the tough one. I could replace him or hope that the Cowboys don't decide to lean on their two second-year backs like they did last year. I expect that Warner and Fitzgerald will bow out this week, but there's something about those Cardinals. They're quite clutch. I have to decide which running back to select. Adrian Peterson would be the obvious choice. There really aren't "star" running backs left. Ray Rice is the top talent and probably would be a bargain. With six moves left heading into the championship games, I should be in a good spot.