FanHouse Joseph Addai

This weekend's AFC South showdown appeared, at the beginning of the week, to be one of those strength vs. strength matchups. The Colts have the NFL's seventh-ranked pass defense and they have only allowed three passing touchdowns all season (making them the stingiest in the NFL). The Houston Texans are the NFL's third-best passing team and have thrown 16 touchdown passes in eight games.

Things this week, have, uh, changed a bit.

Steven Jackson has had a rough year, as long as you don't include rushing yards. He hasn't scored a touchdown and his team is winless. That's bad enough, but the games aren't even close most of the time. That makes it even more difficult for the Rams to justify giving the dynamic Jackson carries. Yet he's still managed to rack up 90.7 yards per game on the ground, his highest mark in that stat since his career year in 2006.

This week, things will be different for SJax. It will be a one-week hiatus from his awful fortunes, as the Rams face the slightly-less-hapless Lions. They allow 4.6 yards per carry and were porous enough to make the 2009 version of Matt Forte look like it was 2008. And they'll make Jackson look like he did in 2006.

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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?

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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Each Monday of the fantasy football season, we'll cut through the fantasy numbers put up by individuals and tell you what they really mean.

Ever since the Colts selected Donald Brown in the first round of last April's draft, fantasy players have been anxiously awaiting him to take over the No. 1 RB role for the Colts' high-powered offense. Well, they'll be waiting a while, because -- in terms of touches, goal-line carries and usage in the passing game -- Joseph Addai is still clearly the Colts' top option at running back.

Addai has 88 touches to Brown's 51. Addai has scored four times; Brown twice. Addai has 26 catches compared to just seven for Brown. This is not a changing of the guard. This is a starting running back being spelled by a backup.

On a televised report, ESPN's Adam Shefter reported the Colts are likely going to ink wide receiver Hank Baskett to a contract. Baskett is most famous for stealing Kendra Wilkinson from Hugh Hefner, but he does play a little football on the side.

The four-year veteran has caught 72 passes for 1,052 yards and six touchdowns in his career. Most notably, he has a penchant for long touchdowns -- he's caught TDs of 90, 89 and 87 yards in his career. Baskett was recently released by the Eagles.

Training camps have wrapped up, the NFL season is right around the corner, and it's still hot as sin outside. But instead of cooling you off with a warm island song, FanHouse break out ye old heat check for our 2009 NFL Season Previews. " We'll rate each club in 5 categories on a scale of 1 to 10, high score wins.

For most franchises, 12 wins is a banner year; one they can hang their proverbial hats upon. For the Colts, 12 wins is a certainly. They have won at least 12 games in each of the last six seasons. They have also had Tony Dungy as their head coach for the past seven years, but now he's gone. In 2009, the Colts will look for some continuity. Can it be provided by the Jim Caldwell administration?

As the season nears, FanHouse's fantasy football team decided to put our heads together for another set of updated positional rankings. In this installment, we'll hit up the thoroughbreds.

The thing that sticks out to me, when viewing the running backs for this season, is what a muddled mess the group is. I stared at a group of about 15 players -- those ranked from six to 20 -- for probably 45 minutes while tinkering with how to rank them. Some will pan out, and some will end up being viewed as busts. May the force be with you. (Last Updated: 8/27/09)

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Cut-N-Go is Fantasy Football FanHouse's daily gathering of links from around the web, covering the goings-on in NFL Training Camp which have an impact on fantasy value.

The Michael Vick hype train stopped in Buffalo today, with Rich Eisen mistakenly tweeting about a phantom press conference after the interweb stirred up some Vick-to-Buffalo hype. I still think it would be best for Vick to play behind an elite QB for a while and build some good faith with the NFL. At this point, you can still ignore Vick in your drafts, and keep Edwards steady as a solid QB2.

Update: Vick reportedly has signed a two-year deal with the Eagles. He'd certainly have a ton of weapons if he saw the field in Philadelphia. I don't think that'll happen, unless Donovan McNabb succumbs to the injury bug, not out of the question considering the QB's history of health issues.

What else happened on this football-packed Thursday?

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Cut-N-Go is Fantasy Football FanHouse's daily gathering of links from around the web, covering the goings-on in NFL Training Camp which have an impact on fantasy value.

At our 12-team mock draft the other night, I took an 11th-round flier on 49ers receiver Josh Morgan, one round after someone rolled with Michael Crabtree. Guess which one likely won't be the top target when San Francisco opens the season on Sept. 13? If you guessed the 10th overall draft pick, I have a rude awakening for you.

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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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