The 2013 NFL draft was ripe with talent on the defensive side of the ball, and there are quite a few guys picked that should go on to be perennial Pro Bowlers. But even the best defensive players may not start lighting up the stat sheet until the end of their first season, or even later. JJ Watt and Jason Pierre-Paul didn’t take the league by storm until their second year, Ronde Barber didn’t truly break out until his fourth season in the league, and we’re still waiting on Vernon Gholston to show us what he’s got.

From a fantasy perspective, this year’s draft doesn’t have anyone who is likely to match Luke Kuechly’s LB1 output in 2012. In fact, we’ll be lucky to see something like Vontaze Burfict’s LB24 finish. The top talent is probably at Defensive Tackle, and while the big boys are vital to a team’s defensive success, they don’t tend to have much of an impact in IDP leagues that don’t require their presence.

But that doesn’t mean we won’t have any impact rookies this year, it just may take some time to figure out who they are. Here is a look at each position and how relevant the rookies will be in 2013 IDP leagues.

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We’re two weeks into free agency, and things have pretty much been decided on the offensive side of the ball. Mike Wallace is in Miami, Reggie Bush is in Detroit, and Terrell Owens is shockingly still out there. On defense, things are still in a bit of flux.

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If you’re looking for a good way to avoid depression in the month following the Super Bowl, I recommend holding a Winter Meeting for your league. This is a perfect opportunity to meet up with your league-mates, award the championship trophy, and deliver your oft-rehearsed excuse why your team didn’t make the playoffs.

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It started off as a simple idea. We thought to ourselves ‘man, we have a lot of writers this year. Why don’t we all start a league together? Wouldn’t that be fun?’. And then a few weeks passed. And then a few more. And then a week before the season started we thought to ourselves ‘man, we have a lot of writers this year. Why don’t we all start a league together? Wouldn’t that be fun?’. Only the second time we followed through and in the end, twelve Razzball writers entered the yahoo league and only one left the victor. For your reading pleasure, we bring to you the Razzball Writers League that was, in their own words…

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It’s championship week in most leagues, so there aren’t many roster holes that need to be plugged. There are teams everywhere who rode Adrian Peterson and Drew Brees to the title game, and they aren’t too worried. But there are also teams that got this far on the backs of Russell Wilson, James Jones and Dennis Pitta, and those owners might have some issues.

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With the first week of playoffs in the books for most leagues, it’s rare that contending teams need a ton of help on the Waiver Wire. Your roster is set, and you don’t want to complicate things by creating unnecessary decisions.

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Oh yeah, we talkin’ bout playoffs. Unless you’re in a league that has its Championship during a meaningless Week 17 (which I hate), or you’re in a Total Points league (which I actually like), this week marks the start of fantasy playoffs.

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As we head into the last week of the regular season, there are three types of teams remaining. First, the top seeds. These teams clinched the playoffs weeks ago, some even clinching byes, and they have turned their eyes towards Weeks 14-16.

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In re-draft leagues, odds are that your league’s trade deadline has already passed, but in dynasty and keeper leagues, most trade deadlines are later in the year. I’m a big proponent of this, as it allows bottom-dwelling teams to sell of their top talent to playoff contenders in exchange for high-upside keepers or future draft picks, similar to the MLB trade deadline.

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At this point in the season, the emergence of high impact waiver-wire pickups is pretty rare. Unless of course you’re in a dynasty/keeper league, in which case I will have a special column just for you later on this week. But for the rest of us, there is limited upside to most of the players that remain available.

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