Strange Addiction: Fantasy Football

I didn't really like football when I was a kid. I would watch occasionally, but my family and I always felt it was a little too dull - "too much standing around," my mother would say. Couple this with the fact that I didn't play any sports in high school, focusing instead on more artistic extracurricular activities, and it shouldn't seem all that surprising that I was in my twenties when I discovered my love of the game.

I grew up around Kansas City, so this was actually a good time to start paying attention: for a few years there in the 2000s, the Chiefs were actually pretty good. Dante Hall, Priest Holmes - a lot of talent and excitement on that team... that said, I still regarded football at arm's length. I didn't warm to it until I heard of a little guy named Donovan McNabb.

Ever since I first saw McNabb play, I was an Eagles fan. He wasn't up there with Tom Brady or Peyton Manning (at least not consistently), and he could make some silly mistakes, but he was just fun to watch. You never knew what to expect. Great speed, incredible arm strength, and tough - that was what impressed me most. You knew that if McNabb was out, then it was bad. This was a guy who played on a broken ankle, who played most of a playoff season with a hernia - that just commands respect.

Shortly after that came fantasy football, now a yearly ritual. Some say fantasy football ruins the "heart" of the sport: i.e., because you're rooting for specific players, you're not really a "team" fan, but I disagree. You'll find people who genuinely love the game; there are far more die-hard fans than fair-weather fans. One of the funniest things is watching people try to justify picking a weak player from their favorite team or purposely not picking a player from a hated rival.

The last few years I've been in a keeper league, which has been an interesting challenge. For the uninitiated, that just means you can keep a few players on your roster from one year to the next. In our league, you can keep three. I have a pretty strong core of players, but my Achilles heel has always been the lack of production at RB. Check out my roster:

QB- Matt Stafford, Det / BENCH- Matt Ryan, Atl

RB- Adrian Peterson, Min / BENCH - Marshawn Lynch, Sea

RB- CJ Spiller, Buf / BENCH- Jacquizz Rodgers, Atl / LaRod Stephens-Howling, Ari

WR- DeSean Jackson, Phi, Vincent Jackson, SD / BENCH- Jacoby Ford, Oak, Danny Amendola, StL

Flex (RB/WR)- Dexter McCluster, KC, Reggie Wayne, Ind / BENCH- Steve Smith, Phi

TE- Jermaine Gresham, Cin / BENCH- Jared Cook, Ten

DEF- Ravens

K- Ryan Longwell, Min

So you see the dilemma: Really great core of young, talented players, but the back-up players are iffy at best, and the biggest problem is that No. 2 RB. Marshawn Lynch was supposed to be a stud, that never happened; and while CJ Spiller has a great skill set, he just doesn't get enough chances because Fred Jackson is running all over the place. My hope this week is that New England will be so focused on stopping Jackson and Fitzpatrick that they let Spiller do some damage, kind of like how they contained Antonio Gates last week but let Vincent Jackson do whatever he wanted. We'll see, though.

Wish me luck!