FanHouse Joeygalloway

Are you ready for some football? A Monday Night Partaaay? The NFL Monday Night Football season kicks off in grand style with a double-feature, which means double the fantasy impact. Tonight's matchups feature a lot of exciting fantasy angles, so we thought it fitting to provide a quick MNF preview to give you the key storylines.

- Arguably one of the biggest question marks of the 2009 fantasy season rests on the chest of longtime juggernaut, LaDainian Tomlinson. San Diego signed backup Darren Sproles to a mega-contract and Tomlinson posted just slightly less than fantastic numbers in 2008, so his value ground lowered this draft season. Monday night, LdT will prove to all those Forte, Slaton and Turner owners that you should never second-guess a legend.

One of my favorite moves on fantasy football draft day is taking a late-round gamble and letting everyone else laugh at me. You can have the first round, just let me pick late. To illustrate, here's an actual message board post last season after one of my drafts: "Commish Snyder purposefully did not draft a kicker so he could take a flier on yet another long shot (Steve Slaton of the Texans). I'm sure he'll say it will pay off in the long run."

My response? "I'll end up dropping Patrick Crayton (my fifth WR) for a kicker before week 1 when Slaton wins the Houston gig -- unless someone suffers a season-ending injury, in which case I'll drop that person."

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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 ...
Troops of Tom Brady. Yes, there are plenty of guys on this team who matter -- not sure if you've heard of Randy Moss, for example -- but this season it is all about the health of Tom Brady. He's going to be nearly a year removed from tearing his ACL in 2008 when the season begins. Now that Matt Cassel is gone, the weight of the team is on Brady's shoulders.

Really, the picture here is perfect. There are guys in the background wearing the same uniform, but they are a bit blurry. Brady is front and center, and the focus of the photo.

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Marvin Harrison has been out of work for six weeks now, and there's no reason to think that'll change anytime soon.

Teams have shown no interest in the 36-year-old, 13-year veteran and Hall of Fame lock. He barely cracked the top-10 in FanHouse's list of top available free agents, which is remarkable when you see such luminaries as Byron Leftwich, Cato June and Dre Bly ahead of him.

Former general manager and teevee talking head Charley Casserly seems unfazed by Harrison's unemployment.

No team has been more active in free agency than the Broncos. They've signed 12 players, including wide receiver Jabar Gaffney, who followed Josh McDaniels to Denver from New England.

And while adding Gaffney seems innocuous enough -- he's a role player and that's it -- apparently, the Patriots took umbrage at McDaniels pilfering from his former employer on the way out the door. So much so that, according to Brad Briggs' sources, they decided to send Matt Cassel to Kansas City instead of Denver, and created the whole Jay Cutler melodrama in the process. Good times.

Missing the playoffs for the first time in five years seems to have sparked a burning desire in the New England front office to bring in every available player this offseason. After already signing Fred Taylor, Joey Galloway, Shawn Springs, Greg Lewis and Leigh Bodden, NFL.com's Vic Carucci passes along the information that the Patriots may be ready to take a run at Carolina Panthers franchise player Julius Peppers.

That sound you're hearing is the opposing AFC East quarterbacks gently sobbing into their pillows.

The New England Patriots continued to re-tool their roster on Saturday by signing veteran wide receiver Joey Galloway to a one-year deal, as reported by Steve Duemig of WDAE (via PFT). Galloway, 37, was part of the offseason roster purge in Tampa Bay after catching only 13 passes in 2008.

With Randy Moss and Wes Welker cemented as starters, Galloway will be, at best, the No. 3 option in the passing game for quarterback Tom Brady, likely competing with newcomer Greg Lewis for passes.

Derrick Ward has left the band. The only current free agent member of "Earth, Wind, and Fire," the Giants' trio of running backs, signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last night, inking a deal that is reported to be worth four years and $17 million ($6 million guaranteed).

Ward joins a running back corps that now includes Earnest Graham and a broken down Cadillac Williams, the latter of whom dealt with two serious injuries in 2008. The signing by the Bucs is another interesting move in what has been an already "bizarre" offseason in Tampa Bay.

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To save some cap room prior to free agency, the Buccaneers waved farewell to five players, including wide receivers Joey Galloway and Ike Hilliard. Of course, when you cut two of the six receivers on your active roster, you leave yourself with a bit of a depth issue. To bridge the gap a bit, Tampa Bay has reportedly re-upped wide receiver Michael Clayton to a five-year deal.

You have to believe that the Bucs will guarantee as little of the contract as possible, given Clayton's rather rapid decline since a sensational rookie season in 2004. In his debut year out of LSU, Clayton put up 80 catches for 1,193 yards and seven touchdowns. Since then, over a span of four seasons, Clayton has 1,513 yards and just two measly touchdowns.