FanHouse Kevin Jones

For those who may use a different term or are new to fantasy football, "handcuff" is the term used when you own insurance for one of your players in the form of owning his real-life backup. It's usually a running back, but you could conceivably handcuff a quarterback. The theory is that some or all of the production is automatically replaced should you lose a high draft pick to injury, meaning you need to insure a high draft pick by grabbing his backup.

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With Fantasy Football season ready to kick in high gear, FanHouse is here to preview each and every team -- one per day until we've done them all.

Meet the ...
First Chicago Bears team with a franchise quarterback since face masks were invented. A message to non-Bears fans from Bears fans: Don't bring us down. If you want to make fun of us for being a bit overzealous about Jay Cutler, then maybe you should take a gander at the load of crap the Bears have been using at quarterback. From Cade McNown to Moses Moreno to Chad Hutchinson to Peter Tom Willis to ... whatever. You get the point. Let us also remember that having Cutler doesn't necessarily make everyone fantasy gold automatically. The tremors are more real than fantasy.

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File this under the "Cuckoo Bananas" area that can only exist during the NFL offseason, when players are jiving a little too much with their teams' offseason moves.

Detroit's second-year running back Kevin Smith, who just endured an 0-16 season if you recall, used his personal blog Smith34.com to make an eye-opening prediction.

Who moved to the head of the NFL class during the draft? Find out with FanHouse's team-by-team 2009 Draft Grades.

When the Bears made one of the biggest offseason splashes by trading for Jay Cutler, they were left without a first-round pick. Many Bears fans would argue this was a blessing in disguise, considering general manager Jerry Angelo's rocky history with first-round picks (David Terrell, Cedric Benson, Rex Grossman, Michael Haynes).

Still, there were more needs than just quarterback on this team for the near future. Would Angelo be able to fill all those holes with a bunch of second-day draft picks?

The Detroit Lions are at a turning point, no? They just shed their old regime run by Matt Millen, they drafted their franchise quarterback and, even in the darkest of times for Detroit, there appears to be some hope. Until you start reading Terry Foster's recent Lions round-up in his Detroit News column.

You see, Foster finds -- in two separate items -- the real reason why the Lions fail: as their fans are, sadly, busy caring too much about the team, the Lions are busy caring too little about their fans. How do I know this? Because Foster mentions a fan who gets a Lions tattoo on his butt, and then in the next item discusses the fact that the team is repurposing jerseys. That's right, "Kevin Jones" is suddenly becoming "Kevin Smith."

Even when the Bengals drafted Chris Perry 26th overall in 2004, there were skeptics. In addition to Kevin Jones still being on the board (he was rated higher coming out of college, although his NFL career hasn't been particularly noteworthy), there were concerns about Perry's durability and whether he could be an every-down NFL running back.

(Not to mention he was from the Big-10, which is only slightly less conspicuous that wearing an "I'm a bona fide bust!" hat on stage at Radio City Music Hall after hearing the commissioner call your name.)

As it turned out, both were a problem. He played in just two games as a rookie, and mustered nine starts over four seasons, amassing 606 rushing yards (3.4 yards per carry) and two touchdowns. And today, the Bengals released him.

Because the NFL season never ends, we present our 2009 Offseason Roadmaps for front offices to navigate through the summer.

The Bears surprised everyone by being a respectable football team in 2008. Most expected them to completely unravel, winning maybe three of four games. Instead, they took down the Colts in Indianapolis to kick off a winning season.

Along the way, though, they blew several key games and ended up severely disappointing their own fans by not winning a very winnable division -- not to mention one additional win would have garnered a wild card.

It's that time in the Fantasy Football season. The contenders in most leagues have been established, the pretenders have a few more weeks to shake themselves out, and the bottom-dwellers have probably stopped bothering to even set a weekly roster. Or said bottom-dwellers are conspiring with another owner to pull off a lopsided trade to stack one team and split the winnings. Oops - I might have just referenced some of the shenanigans that I encounter in one of my leagues year in and year out.

Anyhow, it's mid-season and so what if your call on Ricky Williams being a sleeper didn't quite pan out. Fret not my good friends, there is a wealth of untapped potential sitting on your waiver wire as we speak. Well, maybe some of these guys have been snatched off the wire by now. However, there are still a handful of players to be had that could make a slight difference. Don't get too excited since these guys probably aren't going to decide a championship. But if you're in the hunt, it doesn't hurt to take a look.

You never know, they could very well have an impact in a game or two, which could put you over the top in a critical week. The advice with all these guys is to simply monitor and play the matchups. And so, it's time to take a look at some "potential" second-half sleepers. Let's get down to business shall we?

Cheer up, Lions fans, your long national nightmare is about to end. That's right, in just three days the curse of Bobby Layne is set to run out, and your beloved football team will once again return to prominence in the NFL. What's that you ask? The Lions were cursed? Yeah, I had no idea. But apparently this explains everything from Matt Millen, to Joey Harrington, to Barry Sanders suddenly walking away from the game. The Curse Of Bobby Layne website has the full story.

In 1958, after leading the Lions to 3 NFL Championships and providing Detroit nearly decade of Hall of Fame play, the Lions traded Bobby Layne. Bobby was injured during the last championship season and the Lions thought he was through and wanted to get what they could for him. According to Legend, as he was leaving for Pittsburgh Bobby said that Detroit "would not win for 50 years"

With this news, and the fact Millen was finally relieved of his duties two weeks ago, things are really starting to look up for the Lions. But back to this curse business ...

Training camp is finally here and FanHouse breaks down the most important position battles heading into the season, team by team.

Seriously, I tried to narrow this down and actually spotlight one positional battle like all the rest. Other than just picking the offensive side of the football, where could we even begin? I could simply spotlight the anemic duo at QB like everyone else, or take the easy way out and sort through Kevin Jones vs. Matt Forte at RB.

That's just not good enough. The fact of the matter is that half the offense is up for grabs in training camp. Let's take a little stroll through Halas Hall's proud offense ...