Fantasy Football

The Baltimore sports scene is blessed with a bunch of talented bloggers who bring their unique perspective to the conversation. Each week, I hope to chat with one of them in a regular feature called Blogger on Blogger. This week, I exchanged emails with Dan Ciarrocchi, a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association who writes about fantasy football for Pro Football Focus and the Redskins for Hogs Haven, an SB Nation website. MV: Which rookie backs will have the most fantasy impact in 2013?

The Baltimore sports scene is blessed with a bunch of talented bloggers who bring their unique perspective to the conversation. Each week, I hope to chat with one of them in a regular feature called Blogger on Blogger. This week, I exchanged emails with Dan Ciarrocchi, a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association who writes about fantasy football for Pro Football Focus and the Redskins for Hogs Haven, an SB Nation website. MV: Which rookie backs will have the most fantasy impact in 2013?

My apologies for interruptions in this week's blog schedule. I was actually doing real reporting for a change. (I know, crazy talk.) But I still had time to stay on top of my many fantasy football leagues. I completed another draft last week, and I have three more between now and next Thursday's regular season kickoff. I've noticed some trends in the drafts I've conducted so far. Quarterbacks are flying off the board in the first few rounds. There isn't a consensus on the order of the top running backs.

The Pro Bowl, especially in recent years, has produced as much excitement and intrigue as watching somebody spackle your bathroom. But the NFL is reportedly considering shaking up the format to try to save the game. According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, one suggestion for tweaking the all-star game, which is held between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, ripped a page out of the NHL's playbook. The, in Rapoport's words, “intriguing option” is holding a draft when players arrive in Honolulu to determine who would play on each team.

The Orioles put an interesting spin on how they decided the draft order for their annual team fantasy football draft this past weekend - with the help of some Maryland blue crabs. Reliever Darren O'Day wanted to do something more exciting than just picking names out of a hat. At first, O'Day was thinking about having a snail race, but he soon found out snails aren't that easy to purchase. “It's hard to buy them,” O'Day said of the snails. “I was looking out looking in the garden, and I looked down in the harbor because I live right down by the water and I saw crabs everywhere.

There's fantasy football chatter coming up, I promise. But I've got baseball on the brain. Boston baseball, to be exact. I'm not a real Red Sox fan; never have been, never will be. For one, I snicker when I see the Buckner clip. And I never liked Jim Rice. I will admit, I think "Oil Can" is about the coolest nickname ever, but that doesn't make me a fan. I'm more of a Sox sympathizer, if you will, a late-comer to the Beantown bandwagon. But I've got the fever. Bad. For instance, I've asked my friends and family to start calling me "Papi."

You know it's going to be a strange week when your first-round pick (Clinton Portis? Ahman Green?) gets one-upped by a guy named Artose or Mewelde. That's how it went last weekend, when on-field results flew in the face of reasonable predictions, making so-called experts look so-so at best. Week 5 included the unexpected return of Deuce McAllister (so long, Stecker!) and the unexpected departure of DeShaun Foster (so much for that breakout season, huh?). It was a week in which quarterbacks Tim Rattay and Josh McCown, who play for a couple of the worst teams in the NFL, were among the best players in all of fantasy football.

For those who made an early exit from the fantasy football playoffs, Sunday's schedule played like a visit from the Ghost of Football Past. Chargers at Browns. Bah! Seahawks at Jets. Humbug! Is this what Sundays were like before fantasy football? Pretty scary. Football without the fantasy is like Desperate Housewives without the desperation - it's pretty hot and all, but you know it could be so much better. At this late stage in the season, once the fantasy has faded, most owners go back to being fans.

Ihave a friend in the newsroom who's an expert on gambling and we sometimes talk about the parallel universes formed by fantasy players and bettors. This newspaper and others cover sports as a fairly straight enterprise. Teams make moves on and off the field to try to win games. Local fans alternately take glory in or bemoan those choices. It's a tried-and-true formula for engaging with sports. But every Sunday, hundreds of thousands, probably millions, watch NFL games without any parochial interest in which team wins.

Sometimes, as I'm kicking back and watching the 'The Amazing Race,' I can't help but think: Wow, this really is an amazing race. And not amazing in the sense that 'Amazing Animal Videos' is amazing, either. It's a cat watching television. Got it. But I mean, really, truly amazing. The show, if you've never seen it, pits teams of two against one another in a race around the globe. And they really race. One day they're in Iceland, then Sweden, then Senegal. Amazing. They're darting around, frantic and flustered, catching planes and trains and haggling with angry cab drivers.

After catching 18 passes in his first three games of 2012, in the process endearing himself to fantasy football aficionados, Dennis Pitta was shut out by the Cleveland Browns last Thursday. He played 57 snaps as the Ravens continued to line up the tight end all over the field, but he had zero catches on a season-low two targets. As a result, those finicky fantasy football folks have been bailing on Pitta, but there is no reason to think he won't continue to be a big part of the Ravens offense.

The Orioles put an interesting spin on how they decided the draft order for their annual team fantasy football draft this past weekend - with the help of some Maryland blue crabs. Reliever Darren O'Day wanted to do something more exciting than just picking names out of a hat. At first, O'Day was thinking about having a snail race, but he soon found out snails aren't that easy to purchase. “It's hard to buy them,” O'Day said of the snails. “I was looking out looking in the garden, and I looked down in the harbor because I live right down by the water and I saw crabs everywhere.

As it is an annual tradition in the Vensel household every July, I picked up one of the many fantasy football preview magazines on Saturday while picking up some groceries. I went with the one from Sports Illustrated this year because the cover caught my eye most, and because it had many reality football nuggets sprinkled in. The most appealing of those was the magazine's “enemy lines” feature, where “a rival coach” gives his take on each team's offensive players for fantasy nuts like me. So what does an anonymous enemy coach think about the Ravens ?

1.  Joe Flacco might not be playing in the Super Bowl this year, but he'll get to one eventually. And he'll do it wearing a Ravens uniform. After watching him play four years of football, and seeing him both at his best, and at his worst, I feel totally comfortable saying that. He may not be the perfect quarterback, but he's your quarterback, Baltimore. I've been saying this for at least half the season, and it's worth bringing up one last time as we bring this year to a close.

Dear Joe Flacco, It's been a bizarre week, hasn't it? You're one win away from playing in the Super Bowl, and I think I've read approximately 11 million articles -- written primarily by people living outside the Baltimore metro area -- that seem eager to inform me just how truly terrible you are at playing quarterback in the NFL. Seriously, if I hadn't actually watched you play football the past four years, if I'd been locked in someone's windowless...

The Ravens get gold rings if they bring home the big prize this season, but what happens if your fantasy team wins, too? Aside from bragging rights, if you live in Maryland, you don't get squat. That's a sharp contrast with people in most other states, where winners can receive cash and prizes. Del. John Olszewski Jr., an active fantasy footballer, says he wants to put Marylanders "on the same playing field" with participants elsewhere, and has pre-filed a measure in Annapolis to allow wagers within fantasy leagues.

Lust for a man named LaDainian. Glances over your shoulder to see if the boss is staring at the mock draft on your computer screen. A surpassing interest in news reports from Charlotte (who will get those carries at tailback?). These are some signs of fantasy football addiction. But a word to the afflicted: Don't worry, you're part of an epidemic. Some 15 million Americans play fantasy sports and of those, more than 90 percent play fantasy football. The average fantasy player spends three hours a week and $150 a year on the game.

RASHOD ON DIONNE Watch a video of The Sun's pop music critic Rashod Ollison discussing Dionne Warwick's first-ever Christmas album, My Favorite Time of the Year. www.baltimoresun.com/rashodvideos FANTASY FOOTBALL Read Dave Alexander's latest fantasy football column. www.baltimoresun.com/fantasy

Assuming you are in a six- or eight-team league -- and not one of those screwy leagues that ends in Week 17 -- the fantasy football playoffs have arrived. If your team made the playoffs, give yourself a loud slap on the back. (If your team did not make the playoffs, why are you reading this and causing yourself additional agony?) We will all scrutinize our lineups more than ever going forward, and that has less to do with us wanting to win our league and more to do with us not wanting to end up losing because we benched the wrong player.

The news that Peyton Manning will miss Week 1 with a neck injury -- and that his status going forward is unclear -- is good news for the Texans, Ravens, Patriots, Steelers and the other contenders in the AFC. It's bad news for fantasy football owners who were counting on Manning or other Colts to produce for their squad this year. If you drafted Manning earlier in the summer under the assumption that the NFL's current consecutive games played leader would be good to go for Week 1, I can't really fault you for it. I'm no doctor, but I do know that it takes a lot to keep this guy off the field.