The top two posts from Fantasy Football Chatter right now are articles from 12-step drop on revised QB rankings with Favre back in the mix, and a great summary from Fantasy Football Fools on Broncos, Bills, Bears and Bowe.

Then there is of course the live Twitter feed of select fantasy-relevant NFL players.  Here is Matt Hasselbeck snapping a picture of one of his offensive lineman on a boat:

On the news page, you can see two things:

Fantasy Football Chatter List

The left side shows a list of the top news items directly from Fantasy Football Chatter.  Click through on the item to go to the full discussion.

NFL Players on Twitter

A brand new feature is a Twitter stream on the right of the page.  There are a lot of NFL players with active Twitter accounts, but this list only includes ones with significant fantasy value.  Sure, they don’t always talk about football, but it’s fun to see what your first round draft pick is doing right now.

Start Reading!

So check it out here!  I’m sure they’ll start tweeting more about their practices once the season gets underway soon.

Things will move fast once training camp starts later this week.  Stay on the ball by refreshing yourself with these articles:

ADP Updates and Player Analysis:

QB Showdown: Rivers or Warner?

Which Packer Do You Want?

Westbrook Drops, But Not Far

Wide Receivers Still Workhorses of the NFL

Pierre Thomas beats Reggie Bush

Romo’s Value Still Declining

Fitzgerald Leads Elite WRs

Site Updates and Other Cool Stuff:

Draft Sound Alerts and Improved Dashboard

5 Ways to use Twitter for Fantasy Football

Fantasy Football Headlines On iGoogle

New Site: Fantasy Football Chatter

Ready, Go!

There, now you’re up to speed and ready to draft smart this year.

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.

While most league hosting websites offer free live stats, Yahoo still charges for them with their StatTracker product.

Fortunately, if you don’t feel like paying for live stats, there is an alternative. It is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox called Yahoo Fantasy Football Free Stats. This is part of a screen shot from my team yesterday using the Free Stats program:

The upside is that it’s free. The downside is that it doesn’t calculate fantasy points. It just displays raw stats. That’s one big advantage StatTracker has. Still, it’s better than clicking on every game score within your team list and searching for their stats.

To use this program, you need Firefox with the Greasemonkey add-on installed. This program is not supported by Yahoo (or Fantasy Football Calculator).

If you’re a Firefox user who has decided not to buy StatTracker, give this program a try. It’s guaranteed to save you time every Sunday.

1. What were his previous stats?
2. What’s happening with him lately?
3. Can I draft him in a later round?

Typically I go to these sources to answer those questions:

1. Pro-Football-Reference
2. Football Guys News Blog
3. Fantasy Football Calculator ADP (yes, shameless plug, but it’s true)

Whether it’s a slow email draft or a live draft, I want to get the information as fast as possible.  Since I use Firefox, I wanted a way to put the first two sites as custom search engines in the Firefox toolbar.

After some searching, I found the Add to Search Bar add-on.   It’s really easy to use, and here is how I used it to add PFR and FBG to my search toolbar:

1. Install the add-on
2. Go to Pro-football-reference.com
3. Right click on the search bar at the top right
4. Select “Add to Search Bar”

Then edit the name or just hit enter and you should see PFR in the search box!  Go ahead and search for a player and you’re taken directly to their career stats page.

Then you can go to Football Guys News and do the same.  My search bar now looks like this:

Obviously, if you have other sites you prefer to use this will work for any of them that have search boxes.  I’m not associated with PFR or FBG at all.  Just sharing a tip that I’ve found useful.

For Internet Explorer users, this link should help you do the same thing: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx.  It only works for IE7 though; IE6 doesn’t have a search bar.  I don’t use IE7 so I haven’t tried it myself.

Give it a try!  I think you’ll find it easier to look up player information during those precious few moments during a draft.