Congratulations to the 2011 Fantasy Football Champions!

However, those of you who won your league already have little, if any, reason to read this week’s column, so perhaps I should congratulate those of you who insist on continuing your fantasy playoffs into the 17^th week of the regular season, as you are the only ones who will probably be interested in my picks this week.

I don’t want to waste much time this week before getting into the picks, so let’s do a quick recap of Week 16 before we get into Week 17.

Welcome to the fantasy football championship round!

Now, I realize the championship round really only matters to two owners in each league (or possibly four, if you have a third-place game) but it’s still important because it marks the end of the fantasy season.

All the time you devoted back in August preparing for your draft has just as much, if not more, to do with how your team finished than the work you did in trades, waiver wire transactions, and setting your lineup throughout the year.

With that in mind, I wanted to take a look back at the draft guide I wrote back in August and see how my predictions held up over the course of the season.  This will give you something to go by when considering whose advice to take when draft time rolls around next year.

It can all change in a split second.

One second, the fantasy God’s giveth with the emergence of DeMarco Murray, and in one play, they taketh away with a season-ending ankle injury.

One second, the fantasy God’s taketh away Greg Jennings with a regular season-ending knee injury, and they giveth Donald Driver and James Jones as viable options in the fantasy playoffs.

Fantasy football is just as unpredictable–if not more so–than NFL football. The same way Aaron Rodgers and the Packers have to maintain their march towards perfection without their best wide receiver, fantasy owners have to find a way to replace their second-round pick with a waiver wire free agent in the middle of the playoffs.

Welcome to the fantasy football playoffs!  Or if you spent your first two draft picks on Jamaal Charles and Peyton Manning, welcome to the fantasy football offseason!

Many teams were destined for the playoffs immediately after their fantasy draft took place, while others became contenders through trades and good fortune throughout the season.  Some teams playoff chances were sunk as soon as their first round pick went down with a season ending injury, while others were made because their late-round handcuff transformed into a top-tier fantasy player.

With that in mind, I wanted to take a look back and hand out the fantasy MVPs and LVPs at every position this week.  Yes, I realize the playoffs will have some say as to who actually is the most valuable at the end of the year, but football hands out its regular season MVP award with no regard for playoff performance, so I’m going to do the same.

Remember when you drafted your team and you started looking at each player’s schedule to figure out whom you may be playing in the final weeks of the regular season as you were fighting for playoff positioning?

You were probably saying things to yourself like, “Jamaal Charles has tough matchups against Pittsburgh, Chicago and the Jets in Weeks 12-14, but I should be fine!”  Or, “Michael Vick may put up 50 fantasy points against New England in Week 12!  You guys are all suckers!”

Well, how’s that working out for you?

‘Tis the season for giving thanks, and I thought it would be fun to look around the NFL landscape at all 32 teams and reveal what each fan base has to be thankful for this holiday season. It’s done in power rankings order–as I see it–from worst to first; and while there are no surprises in where it starts or where it ends, the fact remains that everyone has something for which to be grateful.

If anyone ever asks you to explain fantasy football to them, you can do so by simply stating: Anyone who is good in real life, is good in fantasy.

It’s a generalization, but it really is true. Any QB who throws for 4,000 yards in real life is good in fantasy. Any RB or WR who has over 1,200 yards is good in fantasy. Any defense that is tough to score on is good in fantasy.

So how, then, do you explain that Tim Tebow is valuable in fantasy football?

“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ’em.”

I doubt Kenny Rogers had fantasy football in mind when he penned those famous words for his 1978 hit “The Gambler,” but let’s pretend, for the sake of this column, that that’s exactly what he was thinking about.  After all, without too much of a reach, you can draw more than a few comparisons between poker and fantasy football.

If you’ve played enough Texas Hold ’em in your lifetime, you’ve undoubtedly been dealt two aces as your hole cards.  Those aces represent the most powerful starting position one can have and elicit a feeling of ultimate confidence by their owner.  You don’t want to say anything, but you can’t help but think, “I’ve got this one.”

Stanford’s Junior QB Andrew Luck is 6’4” and 235 pounds of football perfection. The son of former Houston Oilers QB Oliver Luck, Andrew blends ideal size with terrific arm strength, pinpoint accuracy, a great attitude and an off-the-charts work ethic.

Oh, he also maintains a 3.55 GPA as an architectural engineer at Stanford University, so he isn’t exactly a dummy, either.

He’s been tabbed as the best QB prospect since Peyton Manning (and possibly John Elway), and will undoubtedly hear his name called first in next April’s draft by whichever team is Luck-y (excuse the pun, but I promise that you will hear worse throughout his career) enough to draft him.

But which team will it be?

Usually I begin the weekly START HIM! SIT HIM! column with some little tid-bit about a few players whose value is on the rise, or on the decline. I’ll point to matchups going forward or an increased role that should affect the way that player is viewed from this week on.

This week’s column is going to be a little different, however, because I really only need to bring up one person’s value, and it is on a steep decline.

Back Sports Page fantasy football columnist: Dan LaLonde.

This past week, two different owners asked me what I thought about the possibility of trading DeSean Jackson for Matt Forte.  Both owners said they needed a RB more than they needed a WR, so I told them they should do it.  Obviously, Forte has had the better season so far, and he remains the focal point of Mike Martz’s offense with the Bears.  Jackson came up small in Weeks 2 & 3, but has been outstanding in the Eagles’ other three games.  They are comparable talents, as both are undisputed RB1 and WR1’s respectively, so how do you decide who has more value?

 Most would tell you that based solely on how often the ball is in his hands, the running back is more valuable than the receiver.  After all, a starting running back touches the ball twenty-plus times per game, whereas a wide receiver only has five to ten chances to impact the box score. Also, a good running back also receives more chances to score, on average, than a wide receiver based solely on goal line opportunities.

The sheer number of chances a good running back has to impact a game puts the odds in his favor, so how do wide receivers – specifically DeSean Jackson – statistically bridge the gap?

We’ve officially reached the quarter-pole of the NFL season and chances are that by now you either love your team, or hate your team. Hopefully, you had a great draft and have made enough moves to remain competitive in your early-season matchups. However, if you aren’t where you want to be (either due to subpar performances from some of your top picks or the ravages of injuries), it’s time to make adjustments.

In last week’s column, I outlined some players whose value is plummeting, while offering some suggestions on who to possibly trade for if you have those players on your team. This week I’m going to list some players whose value has skyrocketed since the beginning of the season that I think would be great trade targets, as well as offering some insight into what it would probably take to trade for them.

Three weeks of the NFL season are in the books and it’s time to start giving more credence to what we have seen in the 2011 NFL season than what we saw in the 2010 NFL season.  Just because the names on the back of the jerseys are the same as they were last year doesn’t mean the players are the same. 

Some players start to speed up, while others begin to slow down.   It happens every year, but you have to know when to start trusting what you see and when to forget what you thought you knew.

In the world of fantasy football, the person who can most quickly identify players who are better than people expected, or worse than people expected, is destined for success.  In an ideal world, you would be able to do this before your draft, but that’s not always easy. 

For instance, if you predicted that after Week 3 Fred Jackson and Ben Tate would each have more rushing yards than Chris Johnson, Jamaal Charles and Matt Forte combined; chances are your fantasy season is off to a good start.

But if your crystal ball was broken on draft day you have to adapt.  You have to accept that some guys aren’t going to be as good as you projected, and some guys are going to be better than you expected. 

If you swallow your pride and admit that you made a mistake on draft day with a guy who looks older and slower than he did last year, you may still be able to capitalize on his name-value and trade him to someone who hasn’t caught on yet.

This week, BackSportsPage reader Kate from Boston e-mailed me asking if I thought she should start Kyle Orton over Matt Ryan. She noted that, on paper, Orton was facing the easier defense, the Cincinnati Bengals, whereas Ryan had to play the Philadelphia Eagles.

I told her I thought Ryan was the better play for a few reasons: first, Ryan is simply a better player; second, the Falcons always play great at home and, above all else, there was a high probability of a shootout.

In sports, a shootout is generally defined as a back-and-forth, high-scoring game between two teams. Sometimes it seemingly comes out of nowhere—like in the Bills vs. Raiders game this past Sunday—but other times, you just have the perfect blend of offensive firepower and defensive liabilities to see it coming before the game even kicks off.

You don’t want to overreact, you don’t want to underreact, you want to react appropriately. Good advice for life—great advice for Week 1 of the NFL season.

With Week 1 officially in the books, it’s tough not to overreact to what we saw on the field Thursday night, Sunday and Monday night. Such a small sample size makes it nearly impossible to draw strong conclusions from anything we saw over the weekend and rely heavily on it moving forward.

We’ve seen only one full week of a 17-week season.   Use your eyes, but don’t let them deceive you.

For instance, the Steelers aren’t going to go 0-16. The Bills aren’t going to go 16-0. Anyone clearing his or her schedule for Cam Newton’s 2031 Hall of Fame induction ceremony needs to take a step back. And whoever thinks they have the fantasy season all figured out after one week is in for a rude awakening.