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Much like my high school and college grades, yea I went there, Yahoo draft software graders hit me with a big fat C+, here you go, nice try, but your team is the epitome of mediocre. What the?! I spent the last three months on mock drafting for a C+? But seriously as stated by both Sky and Jaywrong these grades are about as meaningful as the weekly projected points these sites put up to assist you during the fantasy season, so not to make excuses but I’m not putting much stock in my grade. Although I did make a few critical mistakes, I think my draft went well considering the circumstances. Let me explain…

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With the recent explosion of tight end production, fantasy football enthusiasts including dynasty owners are now concentrating on a position that would normally be disregarded in the past. On top of their emergence as legitimate fantasy targets, many leagues are transitioning to a tight end friendly scoring format assigning up to a half a point more per reception for tight ends than other positions. Predicting the future success of NFL tight ends has proven to be extremely difficult such as top tight end Jimmy Graham who was drafted in the third round of the NFL draft and Kellen Winslow II who was drafted as the sixth overall player in the 2004 draft and both players, although separated by nearly two rounds, couldn’t have had different careers with Graham emerging as the elite pro bowler and Winslow basically dropping off the face of the earth and literally becoming fantasy irrelevant. So how do you decide who to pick? Experience doesn’t seem to matter as much as athleticism and raw ability and in this draft there are plenty of elite athletes at the tight end position, in fact this year’s NFL draft, although it lacks the elite quarterback or running back, really produced some great long-term options at tight end. Lets take a look at my dynasty tight end rankings and their short-term and long-term outlook for 2013 fantasy football and beyond.

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We saw flashes of greatness from first year wide receivers last year in many players such as Josh Gordon, TY Hilton and Kendall Wright. Although there were only these flashes and these players lack consistency, patience is important with young receivers as development takes slightly longer for them than the running backs in our last post. In fantasy the wide receiver is often overlooked as a less important asset than positions like running back and quarterback and while that may be the case in re-draft it couldn’t further from the truth in dynasty. As compared to the high running back turnover in the top 10, and short shelf-life of running backs, wide receivers hold the best potential for long-term value. For running backs the age of 30, I know so old, is usually the breaking point for most players where as receivers are known to play at a competitive level far past this alleged breaking point, as seen with Reggie Wayne. I mean even Terrel Owens is begging for another chance in the NFL at the ripe old age of 39, we all know that it’s not going to happen but interesting to that a player at his age still believes he can compete, I don’t see 39 year old running backs lining up to get another chance. Regardless of TO and his off-season antics the point is that if you land a great wide receiver in your rookie draft, you might not be immediately rewarded in the 2013 season but the payoff later on down the road could be huge an that receiver could out perform any running back in this year’s current class. Lets take a look at my personal rankings and the short-term and long-term out look of some of these rookie standouts.

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It’s that time of year, rookie drafts are starting and the all important question, who do I draft? Who will be the next Doug Martin and who will be the next Mark Ingram, yuck… To be honest it really is impossible to tell who will be the next great rookie running back to break out will be and as seen by Redskins rookie Alfred Morris last year it really is as much about opportunity than as it is about talent, skill and potential. If you followed my rookie running back preview and pre-draft rankings you probably saw that I was a little higher than I should have been on my my Jonathan Franklin, what can I say, I’m no NFL scout, I’m just a guy that loves football and tried to call them like I see them. With recent news the Eddie Lacy isn’t looking great in training camp, although im not buying into it yet, it may open up the door for Franklin who I think is a perfect fit in Green Bay. Well enough about my Franklin obsession let’s take a look at my Top 20 dynasty running backs.

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Last week I was listening to a sports talk radio show that was making an argument against playing dynasty fantasy football. I know right?! Well the argument was that due to the high turnover rate of players, mostly running backs that it was too difficult to try to predict and control your team long-term. I personally think this is what makes dynasty so fun an challenging and because of the volatility we see so many different philosophies and strategies. Surprisingly I received an email the very same day from Nick Capozzi of the Razzball podcast, asking if we would like to do a write up about his new team he just drafted at MyFantasyLeague.com. If you’ve played dynasty you know all that play like to share their drafts due to the varying opinions of those that play, the same team that looks amazing to me could be regarded as unbalanced or too old by another dynasty enthusiast. So with this email I took a look at what was a very interesting draft by Nick and shot him a few questions where the “non writer” really made some great responses, land Sky was surprised by this as he says ‘Nick believes himself a bit of a celebrity and because keyboards are what he views as ‘the tool of we ignorant writing grunts who can’t croon the panties off the ladies’ Well Sky, Nick likes dynasty fantasy football so he’s ok in my book, let’s take a look at his draft and his answers to my questions.
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Well it’s bee awhile and I would personally like to thank Sky for allowing me to return after a much need break. Before you ask, I was not banished from the island of Razzball. Like a bad episode of Survivor, I was on vacation and a much needed vacation at that. Speaking of Survivor, I just joined an interesting fantasy football league that is a draft only, best ball format, but the team with the lowest points each week gets removed until there is only one left. I’ve seen lots of interesting formats but that one is above and beyond cool, looking forward to it although I will probably be out week 1, being an outcast sucks….but well enough of that, I’m writing today to bring you a perspective of a very different quarterback then that of rising star Tannehill whom I spoke of in my last post which you can find here with my Ryan Tannehill Dynasty diatribe. That player we are talking about somewhat in the hot seat is quarterback Josh Freeman of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Freeman in the hot seat?! Let’s trudge on into the ether that is the second paragraph to find out…

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With the large amount of rookie quarterback success in 2012, with names like Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III, there are several young players in Miami that should not be overlooked, one of them is 2nd year quarterback Ryan Tannehill. I will admit that I didn’t know much about Ryan Tannehill until I watched an episode of “Hard Knocks” starting the Dolphins in mini-camp. Not sure if I’m more embarrassed about not knowing much about him at that point or that I was actually watching the HBO series. Anyway the show basically portrayed Tannehill as a talented but arrogant 1st round draft pick, who was fighting veteran David Garrard and Matt Moore for a job that was basically his. There was speculation after the draft that he might not even play due to a hold out on his contract…wait, a holdout for a rookie? Yes it was true and probably where he gets the arrogant and cocky label from, well that and a hot girlfriend. Don’t believe me? Google it… Well now that I have distracted all the readers and are probably no longer reading we are going to take a look Tannehill’s 2012 season and how it compared to some of the other rookies with the hope that we can apply it to his 2013 and future potential as what we all hope will be the next Dolphin’s franchise quarterback.

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With the NFL season approaching – and by approaching I mean it’s never going to get here! – we get to finish off the dynasty rankings with what might be one of the most painful positions to try to manage in fantasy football. In the past few years, the tight end position has gone from extremely unimportant to now the focal point of many offenses, making the position in fantasy football much more relevant. Unfortunately the talent that is available is extremely top heavy, leaving only a few options that you have to spend either a lot of money on in an auction draft or a high pick in a start up. My recommendation? If you miss out on the Top 2, and with Rob Gronkowski’s health in question, maybe just the Top 1, you have to look to add multiple options and look to find the next great option to help your team become dominant. Let’s take a look at the dynasty tight end rankings and some options that could rise to the top of the rankings in the near future and long term.

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So the off-season doldrums continue and the latest headlines include Maurice Jones Drew assaulting a bouncer in Miami, and former NFL wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson chasing down Justin Beiber in a Prius….Seriously the season needs to hurry up and get here, not sure how much more NFL TMZ I can take. I mean what kind of self-respecting bouncer gets assaulted by a guy that is 5’7” coming of a Lisfranc injury? And what is self proclaimed tough guy doing driving a Prius in the first place! I’m just going to leave this to Mike Ditka and give this month a big old Stop It!

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So the dead zone strikes again as I try to filter out the unimportant sports news of baseball and the NBA playoffs, don’t even ask me who’s in the playoffs as I really have no idea. I look to what little headlines in sports intrigue me. The NFL Draft seems to be a hot topic of discussion as it was announced that the draft will be pushed two weeks later which in my opinion really doesn’t make that much of a difference although people are completely losing their minds over this. What if it falls on Mothers Day? No problem, do what you always do order some prearranged flowers from a .com florist and tune into what is the best draft in sports. The way I look at it, it gives us two more weeks to dig into our already over-analysis of the future stars in what is the greatest sport, football.

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Now that the draft has passed we are officially in what is called the dead zone of football. I feel a Top Gun remix coming soon to bring in this awful time of year. “Highway to the NFL Dead Zone, I’ll take you Right into the NFL Dead Zone“…ok that was bad and I’ll stop because Sky has already told me that my singing is not welcome in any of the Razzball platforms including the football podcast which is a bit disappointing. Speaking of singing did you hear the big news? Apparently the breaking story for the NFL is that Carrie Underwood will be replacing Faith Hill for Sunday Night Football…Not impressed but as long as it’s not Cee Lo on Thursdays I’m ok with any musical changes they make, and is that not the worst intro in the history of television? I guess it could be worse; we could have Nicki Minaj accompanied by the Screaming Spurs lady. Seriously if that happened I might have to stop watching football all together and start watching soccer. Hmm fantasy soccer…not sure how that would work. Seems like there would be a lot of ties. But enough of that, I don’t think that I could give up football so we will try to pass the time and I’ll be giving you my take on this year’s dynasty rankings by position so lets look at some of the top quarterbacks for 2013.

When compiling my rankings, I took several things into account but one thing that can’t be overlooked is the age and long term potential of a player. When building your dynasty team, it is just as important to look at your quarterback’s potential for years ahead as well as their immediate potential and find a balance between the two. For instance, Peyton Manning has the immediate potential to be the top fantasy scoring passer this year but you might not get muck more than a couple years out of the veteran. Compare that to up and comer Russell Wilson that could post similar numbers but with this being his second year you could have your franchise quarterback locked up for the next 10-12 years. You also need to observe the back up situation for aging quarterbacks and what type offense the back up will be stepping into. With this being said, there are very different opinions on how to rank dynasty players, especially quarterbacks, so lets take a look at my top 60 for 2013 and feel free to comment on players you feel should be lower or higher and why.

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