RF365’s All-Injury Fantasy Football Team

By Os Davis  |   Wednesday, October 29, 2008  |  Comments( 2 )

Fantasy Football
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With half the NFL season (and perhaps even more in the fantasy game) more or less gone, a great number of us, thanks to injuries to key players, can now surrender their chances in 2008 fantasy football and thus invest the weekly hours of toil and research into something more productive – like, say, fantasy basketball.

For commiseration purposes, then, RealFootball365.com offers our official midseason 2008 Fantasy Football All-Injury Team. How many of these guys are on your roster is most likely directly related to how deeply you are entrenched with the highs and lows of LeBron James right about now . . .

QB: Tom Brady. How dominant is Brady? Not only did the Week 1 injury pretty much take out one team in every individual fantasy league, caught in the crossfire were all those who drafted Randy Moss in the top 10. Many a fantasy owner attempting to cover his team’s deficiency at the helm with Matt Cassel instantly learned how a slow release creates more sacks, which creates negative fantasy points. Honorable mentions go to Matt Hasselbeck, Carson Palmer and just-injured-enough-to-shake-up-the-standings Tony Romo.

RB: Really so many deserve a shout out at this, the most fruitful and excruciating fantasy football position. There’s Reggie Bush, who went down after earning the NFL’s top spot in touchdowns and No. 2 overall in receptions. Joseph Addai, a fantasy first-round pick (this owner took him twice, at sixth and seventh overall), whose current absence is wounding tons of teams beyond the Indianapolis Colts. And, of course, prohibitive No. 1 overall LaDainian Tomlinson, whose toe may soon have us referring to him as “L,” because he’s playing at about half L.T.’s old capacity.

The winner, however, has to be Laurence Maroney. Projected at No. 18 overall over at CBS’ version of the fantasy game in the pre-draft, the ever-wounded never-breakout Maroney is currently listed at 1,899th best in the NFL. And falling.

WR: Though only injured for a few weeks, Anquan Boldin was a top player for innumerable fantasy teams and his painful injury made for a huge hole for his owners to dig out of (and ultimately not possibly cover). Besides, how many guys would literally have his face broken in order to introduce a fantasy wunderkind like Steve Breaston? Fill out the M*A*S*H unit’s WR corps with supposed Seattle stalwarts Deion Branch and Nate Burleson.

TE: Kellen Winslow. Usually interesting, sometimes the best fantasy TE in the game, always becomes unluckily injured at the wrong time. All the better to increase the ire of his fantasy owners, Winslow first missed games for unspecified reasons. When ready to return, he got suspended for calling out Cleveland executives, had the suspension overturned thanks to players’ union support, but was benched anyway by Romeo Crennel. Though Winslow is expected to be a part of the Cleveland offense this weekend, we’ll have to wait and see whether there actually is any Browns attack on Sunday.

Kicker: Surely we can all agree that anyone who drafted Martin Gramatica – now mercifully on the IR – should have known what they weren’t getting into.

Defense: Though not really bound by the exact rules, injuries have made the San Diego Chargers' and Jacksonville Jaguars' defenses much much worse than they would have in 2008 otherwise. Also simply not as good as advertised, by injury or otherwise: the Minnesota Vikings, Carolina Panthers and Dallas Cowboys.

Sheesh, with all these key injuries so thoroughly randomizing the fantasy game, it almost makes you wonder about all that pre-fantasy draft research. Almost.
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About Os Davis

Os Davis has taken a twisted route to get to RealFootball365.com in his nearly 17 years in professional writing, working in any number of capacities in the sportswriting, news reporting and film criticism worlds. In print media, Os has served as editor at a few publications, including Albuquerque's ...
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