FanHouse Mewelde Moore

Every Tuesday night, we'll give you an update on our FanHouse fantasy football league. Who hit on their sleepers? Who made the shrewd pickups? Who's practicing what they preach? In 'House Check, you'll find out.

Ryan Dembinsky made the absolute pickup of the year this week, claiming the 49ers defense off waivers in preparation for their Week 4 game against St. Louis. I was lucky enough to make the same add just minutes before game time in another of my leagues, and I can attest to the sheer dominance of the San Francisco D this week.

Cut-N-Go is Fantasy Football FanHouse's weekday roundup of the NFL news with fantasy football impact.

When Chad Pennington went down Sunday with a season-ending shoulder injury, an injury that may end his NFL career as well, the Miami Dolphins felt they had to scramble a bit.

Backup quarterback Chad Henne will step up and take the reigns, but the Dolphins felt that Pat White wasn't ready to be the backup just yet. To remedy this issue Miami made a trade for Tyler Thigpen, who will come in and be Henne's backup. Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald feels that this move may make Pat White obsolete.

Need a last-minute fill-in for this week? 4th and 26 is here to throw you a couple deep sleepers, guys available in at least 90% of Fleaflicker leagues that could give your fantasy football team a big boost.

Checked out our weekly Passed Out at Your Desk article, but still having trouble finding potential starters for today? We're here to address your problem. In 4th and 26, we scrape the bottom of the barrel looking through the most unwanted of players to try and find you some usable players for Week 2.

Remember, we're starting the Fantasy Football Tailgate at 10:30 ET this morning, so come to us with your lineup-specific questions and we'll offer our thoughts on your situation.

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.

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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Steelers fans love big running backs. From Franco Harris to Frank Pollard to Barry Foster to Jerome Bettis, there's always been a place in Pittsburgh for a big bruising back who is comfortable running over a linebacker on a snowy December day for a key yard.

But since Bettis retired after Super Bowl XL, the Steelers have been lacking a back who gives out more bruises than he takes. That's why there's such an interest in fifth-round pick Frank "the Tank" Summers, a 5-foot-10, 243-pound bowling ball who won't outrun many cornerbacks, but can make a linebacker think twice about lowering his shoulder.

As he gets ready to head to camp, the Las Vegas Review-Journal caught up with the former UNLV star and found that he seems to have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

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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...
Team with more Super Bowl titles than any other franchise in existence. Fresh off of their sixth Super Bowl title, the Steelers return in 2009 with a solid shot at a repeat performance. The stellar defense is still around and the main keys to the Pittsburgh offense are back and healthy.

While the NFL version of the Steelers is a force to be reckoned with, the Steelers, as fantasy assets, are just average.

When the NFL's compensatory picks were awarded on Monday everything went according to expectations, unless you were the Pittsburgh Steelers.

While the NFL gave out four third-round picks and four fourth rounders, it determined that losing Alan Faneca and Clark Haggans (countered by the signing of Mewelde Moore) was only worth a fifth-round pick for the Steelers.

The guru of compensatory picks, AdamJT13, is baffled as he calls it the one pick that doesn't make sense in this year's comp picks.

If you play in a playoff fantasy football league and get to reset your lineup before this weekend, worry not, we got your back. We'll just do a quick run-through of each game.

Baltimore Ravens @ Tennessee Titans
First of all, don't you dare play any defense other than the Ravens. Ed Reed might score the most points in this game. If you've been watching the Ravens' play of late, you definitely aren't laughing at that statement.

I don't see how the Titans generate much offense, outside the possibility of getting Chris Johnson in space. I'd avoid everyone other than Johnson, and I'm not even a huge fan of Johnson.

The Ravens won't be able to move the ball quite as well as they did against the Dolphins' average defense. Your best bet would be Le'Ron McClain, as the Ravens will likely try to control the clock. The Titans are more vulnerable via the pass than the run -- though they aren't really weak anywhere -- but I can't see Joe Flacco playing overly well against this defense.

You could do much worse than either kicker here, by the way. Both Rob Bironas and Matt Stover are sure to be busy, considering the defenses don't allow many touchdowns.

FanHouse fantasy positional rankings are compiled weekly by the staff in order to provide answers to possible lineup questions. These are assuming most leagues use Fleaflicker's standard scoring structure. If you need clarification, you need more players ranked, or have funky league rules, feel free to shoot us an email question.

This was a really tough week to rank the running backs, mainly because there are some question marks -- on studs, not also-rans -- due to injuries. Steven Jackson for example, returned to practice. I'm assuming all of the guys with an asterisk next to their name throughout these rankings end up playing. Obviously, if you see (*) next to the name of a player on your fantasy team, please pay attention to any news updates until his game begins. You don't wanna get stuck with a zero on your active roster ... just ask Willis McGahee owners.

The reason I ranked all the guys with the assumption they'd play is because I hate it when websites just cop out by not ranking a player when he may or may not play. Just sack up and rank him. No guts, no glory.

More analysis after the rankings.

*1. Brian Westbrook, at CIN
*2. Frank Gore, vs. StL
3. Adrian Peterson, at TB
4. Matt Forte, at GB
5. DeAngelo Williams, vs. DET