Doug Bernstein Posts

Sentimentality makes many a fantasy owner stupid. Nobody wants to be a cold, callous general manager, but if your goal is to win your league championship you need to separate heart from head and make the best decisions regardless of personal history. So yes, Brett Favre posters may have adorned your walls as a kid and Marvin Harrison's autographed jersey was all you wanted for Christmas in 1999, but if you owned them last season you most likely came to regret it. Below are five guys that you might love as a fan but should avoid as a fantasy manager.

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While no Kurt Warner, I consider myself to be a morally upstanding citizen. I give up my seat on the subway to the elderly (as well as shoot an annoyed look to the teenagers who do not), refrain from unnecessarily yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, and always take the side that steroid users like Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa have no place in the Hall of Fame. When it comes to fantasy football though, my competitive nature tends to go into overdrive.

In more occasions than I would like to admit I become as desperate as Nick Nolte in the first act of Blue Chips, kick the soapbox to the curve and go all out signing every player with character issues that I can find to help me win. To prevent future me from some deep soul-searching sessions, I have traversed the murky terrain of morally dubious players and separated the individuals that I am allowing myself to own this season from those that will be off-limits.

Around this time of the year, friends from college, co-workers and family members all begin to ask you the same question, "You know any good sleepers?" If you're like me, you offer a boring handful of names that the major prognosticators have divulged as their sacred hidden gems for the upcoming season and never share your own secret stash. Some of you have probably already compiled a mental list of players for the annoying guy in the adjacent cubicle. Let me guess, you got Kyle Orton, Joe Flacco, Knowshown Moreno, Ray Rice, Anthony Gonzalez, Donnie Avery and Miles Austin.

If it was a closer friend maybe you would let him or her in on Jamaal Charles, LeSean McCoy, Brent Celek and Jared Cook. The level of sleeper an individual offers you is always a good gauge of your friendship with that person. Today you can consider yourself my best friend because I am offering up my classified list, the guys I feel almost nobody is currently talking about that just might help you win your fantasy league.

'The Taylor Townsend Project' is all about finding the minor characters of today that will be the stars of tomorrow in fantasy football.

When evaluating fantasy prospects for the upcoming season there are always a handful of reserve players who appear intriguing as a result of a starter's offseason departure. Determining which of these replacements will succeed when given increased opportunity is no small feat. By Week 6, the free-agency list tends be littered with the remnants of "should have been contributors."

Remember the 2005 first overall pick for the San Francisco 49ers, Alex Smith? The bust? The franchise killer? The relic? Yeah, that guy just turned 25 last month. It sounds crazy, but Alex Smith is younger than Matt Cassel, Jay Cutler, Aaron Rodgers, Trent Edwards, Matt Leinart and Vince Young. He has only one full year on Matt Ryan, nine months on Joe Flacco, five months on Brady Quinn and most shockingly, is less than thirteen months older than the Giants' fifth-round selection in the 2009 draft, Rhett Bomar. Considering his age, could this year mark the resurrection of Alex Smith's career?