The thinking chair: thoughts from around the fantasy world

The Titans defense has been critical in guiding Tennessee to a 5-0 start in 2008. Doug Benc/Getty Images

By Matthew Greber, RotoExperts.com, Special to SI.com

Here in The Thinking Chair, it's appropriate -- indeed, mandated -- to do some pensive reflection from time to time. There's a lot to love about sports, fantasy sports, and writing about fantasy sports. I'm no complainer. (OK, except I'm totally a complainer. But not about this.) But sometimes you get ahead of yourself when you commit something to print.

Like, for instance, some idiot wrote this last week:

Brees is good and the Saints are chock full of options, but he's just simply worth less when the guys running routes for him are David Patten and Devery Henderson, not [Marques] Colston and [Jeremy] Shockey.

You may have guessed that the idiot who wrote this was me. What's bad about this is not just that it's a bit overblown for the sake of making a point, it also reads as if Brees is "worthless," not that his value, or his worth, is less now than it had been. To be clear, I don't think Brees is worthless now, a fact emphasized by his dominant performance against the 49ers in Week 4. Brees is still a top-four quarterback, but I do expect his receiving corps to depress his stats on weeks when he faces better secondaries (such as this weekend against Minnesota).

In any case, it was a bit of sloppy writing, and thanks -- seriously -- to those who pointed it out to me.

And props to Corey Livermore, who correctly identified the movies referenced in the article as Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Apollo 13. You sir, win the glorious prize of ... being mentioned in this column. (Whee!)

This is a family column, so I won't express my exact feelings about the Jacksonville Jaguars' defensive performance the last two weeks. I will say this: "Um, Jacksonville Jaguars defense? You suck." I got ZERO points from them in my main league in Week 4, and in our experts league, they actually had negative three points. Your fantasy defense should be good for a minimum of 8-10 points in most leagues, and those points can be pretty critical. Although it's still early, check out some of the defenses out there and their ranks in a standard scoring league:

San Diego: 11

Minnesota: 20

Dallas: 13

Seattle: 16

New England: 23

Those were some of the top-ranked defenses going into every draft this offseason, and for good reason.

But check out these squads and their ranks:

Tennessee: 1

Buffalo: 5

Tampa Bay: 6

New York Jets: 8

New Orleans: 12

With the possible exception of the Buccaneers, none of these defenses were probably even drafted in your league. And yes, it's early -- but there are two things to take away from this: One, you should never draft a defense before the second-to-last round, because it's impossible to know how good they'll be. And two, you can toss out judging a player against his strength of schedule for the same reason. Fantasy scoring doesn't always match up to how good defenses are on the field, but it's a decent proxy. Right now, I'm craving for my running backs to have matchups against the Colts and Broncos, two teams that seem to be futile at stopping the run. Both of those were defenses I considered to be just out of the top-10 before the season. Similarly, I would have previously been happy if my players were facing the Jets, but they're providing a tough test for offenses so far.

As always, I've also been doing a lot of thinking about the fervor in the pre-season about rookies, especially at running back. With Rashard Mendenhall gaining a net total of 58 yards on the ground before getting knocked out for the season, and Kevin Smith losing carries to the aging Rudi Johnson, it's a lesson we all should remember better before our drafts. On the other hand, I'm encouraged by how solid Jonathan Stewart looks, and I expect him to be more useful in each game as the season progresses. The gem of that bunch, Darren McFadden, has been hobbled a bit by injury but looks rock solid when he's on the field, and Matt Forte is my new fantasy football boyfriend. (In a purely platonic, man-crush kind of a way, that is.) And I'm not mentioning either Tim Hightower or Steve Slaton with the naive hopes that someone in one of my leagues will still not know enough and trade one of them to me for spare parts.

Over the last week, of course, we've had changes in two teams that have started off woefully -- the St. Louis Rams and the Detroit Lions. With the Lions, the theory is that it's addition-by-subtraction with the removal of Matt Millen, and that's probably true and shouldn't change much on the field, with the only exception that they might add more four-receiver sets. That can only benefit guys like Calvin Johnson and Roy Williams, who will see less double coverage. With the Rams, Scott Linehan made a fateful, desperate move that necessitated his firing -- he decided that Trent Green could save the season. With respect to Green, that's not really change we can believe in. I'm not sure what's going to happen with the Rams from here on out, but I suspect that Steven Jackson is going to rebound very nicely, largely becoming the offense. That's already started, but those of you who took him with a top-five pick are going to feel better about it sooner than later.

Speaking of feeling better, there's a German expression called schadenfreude. Essentially, it means taking pleasure in the misery of others, and while I certainly can't condone that, I am also guilty of it a lot. Here's another one -- from now on, each time I think I'm taking my fantasy teams a bit too seriously, I'll just think of Chet Ward, and the allegations that he threatened to kill his roommate over fantasy points. I mean, the key word here is "allegedly," of course, but that is some pretty serious fantasy addiction.

So, feel better about yourself, and keep your roommates safe. Until we meet again...

Matthew Greber is a Senior Writer for RotoExperts.com and has never even gotten into a fight over a fantasy score. He's all about the love, with a bit of hate tossed in for flavor. He'll accept e-mails indicating either at greebs@rotoexperts.com.