Twitter has been getting pretty popular lately.  Even if you’re not on Twitter, there are some cool ways to use it for fantasy football.

1. NFL Draft. It’s over with this year, but it was fun to track the NFL draft in real time by doing a search on twitter for nfl draft.  Everyone from ESPN correspondents to your average Joe was sharing their reactions immediately after every pick.

2. Random Thoughts. You can do a search for fantasy football or #fantasyfootball to see what people are saying about fantasy football right now.  The interesting thing is that there are so many tweets that you can do the same search a little later and get completely different results.

3. Real Players. There are a lot of NFL players with Twitter accounts sharing what they’re doing.  Here are a few:

• Terrell Owens @terrellowens81
• Matt Forte @chitownforte22
• Champ Bailey @champbailey
• Shawne Merriman @shawnemerriman
• Matt Hasselbeck @MatthewHass008
• Steven Jackson @sj39
• Chris Cooley @thecooleyzone

You can find a full list of NFL players on twitter-athletes.

4. Fantasy Websites. There are a growing number of fantasy football websites on Twitter, and they’re all posting their thoughts, opinions, and articles.  A good list of people and websites in fantasy football is on the WeFollow directory.

5. Ask for help. See what other people are thinking by asking a question.  Yesterday I asked:

“Drew Brees is the #1 fantasy football QB right now. Should he be?”

I got two responses in a few hours.  I predict that this NFL season people will ask for lineup advice the same way.

Give it a shot

Whether or not you’re on Twitter yet, give these ideas a try.  While you’re at it, don’t forget to follow me at @FFCalculator.  It’s one more way to get your fantasy football fix.

Wide receivers are a tricky position to draft.  There’s a new article on WR strategy at the Bleacher Report detailing how to think about the wide receiver position in 2009.

Here’s a quick run-down of the top four WRs this year.  Larry Fitzgerald is leading the pack so far, with Andre Johnson, Randy Moss, and Calvin Johnson right behind him.  Here is a graph of their 12-team Average Draft Position so far this year.

There has been no movement in the top four since the draft, with everyone holding steady.  It’s definitely going to take at least an early 2nd round draft pick to snag one of the top four.

Draft strategies get interesting when it comes to wide receivers.  If you have a beginning draft spot, you’ll miss them completely.  A RB/WR/WR strategy might be a good way to get decent WR depth if you feel you can trust your #1 RB.

Even though it’s early in the year, there are still a ton of people practicing for their drafts already.  The draft boards have been filling up fast at peak times, which causes a lot of unnecessary waiting.

I’ve just increased the number of 10 and 12 team mock drafts.  If you’re curious, here is the current breakdown of drafts per hour:

• Five 10-team drafts
• Four 12-team drafts
• Two 8-team drafts
• One 14-team draft

And a partridge in a pear tree.

But seriously, the drafts now start twice as often (every 2:30 instead of every 5:00) so you should have an easier time getting into the draft you want.

There are a lot of ways to get news these days.  Fantasy football news is everywhere but it’s sometimes hard to sort through the meaningful stuff to get at real fantasy football news.

Here’s one way to view the latest news in the world of fantasy football.  Fantasy Football Chatter is a new place to talk about the fantasy news and vote on the important stories.  It now also has an RSS feed which means you can read the stories wherever you like.

If you use Google for your home page, you can add a list of the top fantasy news stories to  your home page just by clicking this button:

It will add a widget to your home page that looks like this:

Of course, if you already have a feed reader or other RSS aggregator you can subscribe directly to the feed of top stories.

Give it a shot and have fun talking with everyone else at Fantasy Football Chatter.

Donovan McNabb has been on a steadily increasing path for over a month and has settled at the beginning of the 6th round.  This is his ADP trend for 12-team mock drafts.

Philly picked up Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy with their first two picks of the draft, which will boost the offense.

The Eagles admit that they were considering trading for Anquan Boldin, but the asking price was too high.  If that deal had gone through he might have been instantly propelled into the 3rd or even 2nd round.

Philadelphia has always been a pass-first offense.  McNabb still has the drive to win a championship and knows that he doesn’t have much left in the tank.  This could be a breakout year for him, and his ADP is adjusting accordingly.

If you have a free membership that saves your mock drafts and imports your team to the Lineup Calculator (and you should, it’s free), you may have noticed that some of your mock drafts didn’t appear in your dashboard.

That problem has been fixed, and you should now see all those missing drafts in your completed draft history table.  There was a bug that was fixed and it should now automatically keep up with your drafts as you finish them.

Sorry for the inconvenience.  Send me an email (kevin@fantasyfootballcalculator.com) or use the contact page if you have any problems like that in the future.

Today I’m excited to announce the launch of a new website, Fantasy Football Chatter.  It’s a place to talk about the latest news in fantasy football.

What makes this site unique is that it is easy to follow what’s happening with individual players.  If you want to see what’s new with Brett Favre, you can check out his page here:

http://www.fantasyfootballchatter.com/brett-favre

Or if you want to browse the news for all Arizona Cardinals, you can easily do that too.

The site encourages voting on individual posts so that the most interesting content bubbles up to the home page.

The site is in it’s early stages and still has room for improvement. Feel free to leave feedback on the about page there.

Fantasy Football Chatter was developed by Fantasy Football Calculator, and it has received help and feedback from some dedicated fantasy football bloggers.  There is a list of contributors on the about page, and I’m thankful for their help.

I post on Fantasy Football Chatter under the name “bernie_kosar,” since I’m a Browns fan.  Now it’s your turn to check it out and see what’s going on in fantasy football.  Create an account and start sharing!

See you there.

The recent NFL draft has many complex effects on fantasy football, some of which won’t be known until the season gets closer.

Some effects have been immediate, however.  Both Thomas Jones and Joseph Addai have seen their ADP rankings drop since the draft on April 25-26.  Here is a graph of their ADP for 12-team leagues including before and after the draft.

The addition of Shonn Greene to the Jets has sent Thomas Jones from a 3.11 ADP down to the mid 4th round where he continues to slide.

Addai’s value is plummeting as well due to the Colts drafting Donald Brown with their first round pick.

Both of these backfields bear watching because they may end up in full-blown committees by the time the season starts.  Fantasy drafters are already starting to look elsewhere for their RB2.

Some small but useful changes were made to the site today.

The ADP Graph is Back!

First, the ADP graph is back on the ADP page.  You can select players from the list and look at how their ADP has changed over time.

For example, here is the graph of Joseph Addai’s ADP slowing dropping since the draft.

It looks like Donald Brown is already cutting into Addai’s value, and he may end up in the 4th round pretty soon.

“Remember Me” For Member Logins

One other feature that people have been asking for is “Remember Me” on the login page.  Well, now you’ve got it.  Now you don’t have to worry about forgetting to log in before joinging a draft, you’ll be automatically logged in for 6 months if you check the box.  Clicking “Log Out” at the top right will clear the cookie and log you out.

Have fun with the updated ADP graph, it’s always interesting to compare players and find trends in players’ draft values.

All of the key rookies have been in the mock draft rankings for the past several days even though most haven’t been officially signed yet.

Knowshon Moreno has shot up the draftboard since the draft.  He was previously being drafted in the middle of the 9th round, but he’s now moved up to the middle of the 6th round at 6.09 in 12 team ADP data.

Another big mover has been Beanie Wells who’s being taken at 8.03.  There seems to be a lot of buzz around him now that he’s in a fantasy-friendly environment in Arizona.

Other rookies such as Michael Crabtree, Donald Brown, Percy Harvin, and LeSean McCoy are getting a decent following in the drafts as well.

You can see the full ADP data set on the ADP page.