FanHouse Hines Ward

Sidney Rice, come on down! You're the next contestant on ... Who Wants to Be a WR1!

Rice, you've joined a list of relatively unheralded wideouts that have emerged as fantasy superstars in 2009, along with the likes of Steve Smith (not the one you drafted in the first five rounds in August), Mike Sims-Walker, and most recently, Miles Austin.

What brought you to this point? How about a 201-yard performance on just seven catches; does that do anything for you?

Moving forward, Rice is a clear-cut WR2 that will flirt with bouts of WR1-dom. If he can throw WR1 numbers up on a consistent basis, my Ronnie Brown-less season might be saved.

On to the rankings ...

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For a team that has had three wide receivers earn Super Bowl MVP honors and has placed two wide receivers in the Hall of Fame, the Steelers have had very few receivers put together standout rookie seasons. Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, Hines Ward and Plaxico Burress all went on to have excellent careers, but none of them finished their rookie years with 300 yards receiving.

Rookie Mike Wallace has already topped that, and he's on pace to put together one of the best rookie seasons in Steelers history. His season may not fully eclipse Louis Lipps' excellent 1984 debut and Jimmy Orr's rookie receiving record (way back in 1958) is at the outer edge of what Wallace could do this year, but Wallace is on pace to put finish with 50 catches and 874 yards, which would rank second in both categories among Steelers rookies.

It's accurate to say that there aren't a whole lot of players around the league who like Hines Ward. When he's not going over the middle to catch passes, he's always looking to lay a hit on an unsuspecting defender. Heck, the NFL even passed a new rule after Ward broke linebacker Keith Rivers' jaw last year.

So it's no surprise to learn that Ward has been voted as the NFL's dirtiest player in a survey by Sports Illustrated, topping former teammate Joey Porter. With Rodney Harrison now retired, Ward was the obvious choice, which in some way is a badge of honor for the Steelers wideout. After all, how many receivers are tough enough and physical enough to be considered dirty?

No one will ever accuse Hines Ward of being soft on the football field.

He's caught passes over the middle with busted ribs; he's been dragged off the field by the training staff only to return and put his body on the line again. He regularly blocks defensive ends that outweigh him by 70 pounds and he's somehow stayed healthy despite being every defensive back's top target. So when Hines Ward says that if he was Ryan Clark, he wouldn't play this weekend, it means something.

Here's how it works. We throw some intriguing matchups at the FanHouse staff and ask whether each player will be over or under a certain point total. The result? Fantasy Football Over/Under. Makes sense, right?

We correctly forecasted the Drew Brees explosion and Eli Manning implosion, while I hit the nail on the head with regards to Matt Hasselbeck. Not that I'm 100 percent right -- I was the only one wrong about Steve Slaton last week. We were accurate about Julius Jones and Chris Johnson, and if you want to check the rest of last week's picks, refer to this link.

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Go to your league's ranking page and sort the wide receivers by average production per game. It's probably not a shock to see two Patriots in the top six, but did you realize that there were three Giants receivers in the top 15? Steve Smith has obviously caught our attention, and Mario Manningham has caught TDs in back-to-back weeks to remain fantasy relevant. Coming up in a blaze of points is Hakeem Nicks, who has scored over 10 points in each of his last three contests by catching long touchdown after long touchdown -- in fact, he only had one catch in Week 4 and took it 54 yards for a score for an 11.4-point game. Are all three starter-worthy this week?

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Sunday Evening Wrap checks out players who increased or decreased their value during the Sunday afternoon games.

Sunday's Top Riser: We've seen this Tom Brady before, and it was in 2007 when he threw for almost 5,000 yards and totaled 50 touchdown passes. So far in 2009, he'd been good, but not great. And we drafted Brady for great in fantasy football. Enter the Tennessee Titans and the worst pass defense in football. Brady, despite playing in a quasi-blizzard, completed 29-of-34 passes for 380 yards and six touchdowns. That's all he'll need to get that swagger back. Next week against Tampa Bay, he's going to put on a show across the pond in London's Wembley Stadium, and he's a bonafide top-three fantasy QB again -- you can take that to the bank.

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Here's how it works. We throw some intriguing matchups at the FanHouse staff and ask whether each player will be over or under a certain point total. The result? Fantasy Football Over/Under. Makes sense, right?

Sure, it's the Over/Under, but let's throw some fantasy point lines out there as well:

Marshawn Lynch (-4) over Fred Jackson. Who scores the TD? I say neither, but Lynch breaks a long carry and pulls ahead in the passing game.

Leon Washington (+5) over Thomas Jones. I'll take a long TD or two from sparkplug Washington against sparkless Buffalo.

Kevin Walter (+6) over Andre Johnson. Johnson will eat up the attention while Walter does the damage.

Ronnie Brown (NL) over the bye. Not even a bye week can stop Brown.

PITTSBURGH -- He stood behind a podium dressed in a collared shirt with blue jeans. Kerry Collins, the Titans quarterback, looked more like a country singer talking about an album that just isn't selling well.

Collins, instead, was talking about missed opportunities following a 13-10 overtime loss to the Steelers Thursday night.

"Yeah, it was a shame," Collins said. "We let that one get away. But on the road, against a good football team, if you make the mistakes we made, you're going to lose more ball games than you win. So it's disappointing. It's one of those things where you have to learn from it and move on."

If you're a football fan (and who isn't), you were treated to an excellent first game of the season. We saw everything from blocked field-goals to a last-minute fumble, and you have to love any first game decided in overtime. If you're a fantasy football fan, however, there were a few things to like about Thursday's clash (Kenny Britt and Ben Roethlisberger, for example), and several things to hate. Since we have to wait a couple days for more pro football, let's analyze (and potentially over-analyze) the Tennessee-Pittsburgh game.