By Burton Meahl

Welcome to another season of fantasy football.  We are very happy you could join us this year.  The intention of “The Red Zone” is to discuss current topics and their relationship with fantasy football.  From week to week, this topic changes with the dynamics of the league. Our hope is to get nuggets of information to you through engaging articles which provide support from our experiences.

Cuffs

The first thing that may come to mind when you read that title is how you are trying to avoid players who are in trouble with the law.  With Commissioner Roger Goodell in charge of the NFL, players in trouble with the law have limited to no value in the ranks of fantasy football.  Goodell makes sure of that by enforcing a strict policy where suspensions take place as punishments.  But that is not the direction I want to go with this article.

Cuffs is a strategy commonly used in fantasy football.  I think of it as cheap fantasy football insurance.  All you need to do in order to attain this insurance is draft, or pick up the back-up to your stud-starters at running back and quarterback.  This is only week one, but we have already seen injuries and roster moves affect major fantasy players.  Your draft has passed by now, but it is not too late to get your act together and get this strategy under way.

There are many situations where this insurance policy will come in handy.  Some of the situations are big headaches.  However, if you cuff some players together on your roster, you could cut back on the headaches.

For example, Ahman Green is listed as the starting running back for Houston.  We all know it is only a matter of time before he comes up with an injury to cut into his time of productivity.  Chris Brown has been lost for the season, so there are two backups to watch out for.  The first is Chris Taylor with Steve Slaton not far behind.  This is sort of a daisy-chain style of cuffing.  However, until the situation clears up a bit, we cannot be too sure of which back will get most of the calls this season.  If you are depending on Green for starting, or even depth, you can make yourself feel a lot better about the situation by cuffing these three together.

The award for most “Newly-Cuffed Duo” would go to Chris Perry and Kenny Watson.  With the recent departure of Rudi Johnson, Perry appears to be ready to take over.  However, in his short NFL career thus far, he has battled injury issues.  Kenny Watson also had a decent time on the field last year filling in when Johnson was not healthy.  If you need depth to your backfield and, like me, are not sure what to think of Chris Perry, then you need to cuff these two players together.

The award for “Most-Often Cuffed Duo” goes to Matt Leinart and Kurt Warner.  Owners did not dare draft one without the other this fall.  Leinart is the young gun who was recently drafted.  Warner is the veteran with presence on the field.  There is no question that the team has performed better overall with Warner on the field.  However, Leinart still has an outside chance of breaking back into the starting lineup.  He has moments of brilliance surrounded by many failures (sounds like my golf game).  Look for this soap opera to continue if Warner has any trouble at all.

Enough of the awards.  This really is not so glamorous, because in most cases, you have to sacrifice other players you have drafted because you want to guarantee depth from a certain position on a specific team.  Think of it as some sort of guarantee though.  If you get 2 or 3 guys involved in a single position on a single team, then you know you have inevitable depth.  You can drop a flier you took late in the draft and not feel bad about it because you are guaranteeing yourself a starter, through thick and thin.

Now don’t go too crazy with this insurance policy.  There really are only a handful of situations you really want to use as insurance.  Some situations could give you headaches as the players may be compliments to each other.  An example of this would be Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister.  They both are productive in their own way.  If you draft both, you will be tortured from week to week trying to figure out who you will start.  Another similar situation would be Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor from Minnesota.  These players could both be productive in their own way and may alternate weeks of success.  Don’t do that to yourself.  Stick with situations where the players are clear replacements of one another.

 

Use duos like:                                                  Avoid duos like:

Addai/Rhodes – Colts                                      Jones-Drew/Taylor - Jaguars

Young/Hall – Broncos                                     Peterson/Taylor - Vikings

James/Hightower – Cardinals                           Bush/McAllister – Saints

McGahee/Rice – Ravens                                  McFadden/Fargas - Raiders

Lynch/Jackson – Bills                                      Graham/Dunn - Buccaneers

Williams/Brown – Dolphins                             Parker/Mendenhall - Steelers

Westbrook/Buckhalter – Eagles                                   Jones/Washington - Jets

Gore/Foster – 49ers                                         Barber/Jones - Cowboys

Portis/Betts – Redskins                                                Williams/Stewart – Panthers

Green/Taylor/Slaton – Texans                        

 

That’s it for this week.  Good luck to you in week 1!  Feel free to submit questions to me this week at red-zone@fantasyinsights.com.

REMEMBER...ALWAYS live dangerously.  After all, “Danger is MY middle name!”