I know it’s a little late to be posting a mock draft. Believe me. I know you all drafted already — well, hopefully, you drafted already.

I wish I could have gotten this one edited sooner, but the rush of preseason football and real drafts took hold of me and delayed the posting. Next time, I’ll have to conduct the mock draft on a better system, NOT through tons and tons of ‘Reply All’ emails.

Regardless, I did put together a mock draft that, if nothing else, makes for a nice discussion piece here at the beginning of the season to compare to your real draft. The draft took place several weeks ago, and it really influenced my drafting over the weekend because many of the mock drafters were my league mates (with a couple of newbies sprinkled in there).

UPDATE: Contest tweet going out at 2 p.m. (Central) on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Follow me now!

Think you’re ready to step your fantasy football game up to the next level? Want to try to best the Fools in a friendly fantasy football competition? Do you REALLY think you’re smarter than a fifth grader?

Well, I made it past the fifth grade on the second try, pal. Get ready for a challenge!

If you’ve mastered the art of playing for free and playing with your fantasy football buddies, you’re bound to be looking for a greater competition. Short of wrestling a bear out in the wilderness — exhilarating, I’m telling you — you’re only going to get your knuckles white again by putting a little more on the line than your anonymous Internet pride.

Peyton Manning has now returned to practice, but there’s still too much bad juju around old buckethead for me to consider touching him for my fantasy team.

I can’t believe that I’m actually going to say it, but this season, it’s better to pass on the definition of a stud fantasy quarterback. I have my reasons…

1)  The knee - I know he’s “on schedule” to return to start in Week 1, and truthfully, I believe he will start Week 1 against Chicago whether he is fully healthy or not. The Colts are opening a new stadium, after all, and Manning IS the franchise with a consecutive start record to uphold.

However, say the Colts get ahead early with some runs by Addai and maybe just one touchdown grab.

10 Yards Fantasy Football Trailer from Josh Caldwell on Vimeo.

…and it looks awesome. It’s called 10 Yards. Thoughts?

From Award-Winning Filmmakers, Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell (10 MPH, 2007) comes the hilarious, offbeat, and all-encompassing portrayal of fantasy football. 10 Yards captures the phenomenon of fantasy football in our society with specific focus on wacked-out j.fred’s INTERGALACTIC CHAMPIONSHIP League, where the top prize is a box of Twinkies®. As the season progresses, filmmakers Hunter & Josh (both members of j.fred’s league) travel the country interviewing a variety of diverse fantasy football leagues, NFL players, commentators, and the guys who started it all in 1963.

Q&A QB is a new head-smacking, hard-hitting, name-taking question and answer series where Jacob assists readers and his Twitter followers in perfecting their draft strategy and winning their league. This post is the first run at it. Let Jacob know what you think in the comments, and if you’d like to be featured in a future Q&A QB post, send Jacob an email or tweet him, whatever that means.

This week in Q&A QB, we’ll take a look at several questions and a walkthrough for how to draft with the first overall pick in a nine-team division.

QUESTION: I have the first pick in the draft, and there are nine teams in a point-only division.

About a month ago, I completed an expert draft with several fantasy football analysts and bloggers. The draft took almost the entire month of July because it was conducted with a 10-hour timer for each pick on MyFantasyLeague.com for those of us with day jobs. Psh, day jobs.

The results of this draft, although mentioned in passing, have yet to be fully explained for all you fools. I waited because the draft was so early in the offseason, and I thought it would be best to let my picks mature…like a fine wine.

Matured they have. Now that my roster has had some time to digest, I can safely brag about it.

Now that is one impressive looking draft board, fellas. Clearly, they are looking in awe at the brilliant pick that ended the the third round.

I did a guest post for The Hazean yesterday covering how to choose the right environment for your fantasy football draft. Read all about the pros and cons of each location at The Hazean.

Fantasy football drafts are a sacred thing, so you should always be mindful to have them on hallowed ground. With the right environment, you can establish the perfect balance of order and all out mayhem for your draft and league—assuring your name will go down in fantasy football history.

I somehow managed to reference both hookers and midgets in the same post without talking about midget hookers.

Last weekend, I asked all my Twitter followers what players ranked in the top 50 they didn’t want to touch in their fantasy football drafts.

I’m sure each one of you is hoarding some dark feelings towards one of the top 10 players in fantasy, but even knowing the hatred you hold in your hearts for some of the NFL’s best, I received a few curveballs in the responses. (Does that count as a mixed metaphor?)

So who does Twitter hate this season? Turns out they’re all running backs.

Brian Westbrook, Philadelphia Eagles RB
Current ADP: RB3, 3rd Overall

Brian Westbrook is not a hard man to dislike in fantasy football, and I am not even talking about that time he stopped short of an easy touchdown against the Cowboys last season.

If you followed along with my recent expert draft, you saw me pass on taking a lot of depth at running back (RB) in the early rounds. Only in the later rounds did I really flesh out the RB position on my team.

Taking Tom Brady in the first round certainly didn’t help me snag several elite RBs, but he fell to me at the 10 spot. Come on, I had to do it.

In the first seven rounds, I only took two RBs, Ryan Grant in the second round and Jonathan Stewart in the fifth round.

I don’t hate the idea of taking two or three RBs at the beginning of your draft this year. In fact, I have in several mocks I’ll be posting about soon.

For a week now, I’ve been participating in an ongoing expert league draft put together by JunkyardJake.com. Other than a few small mocks, this draft is my first of the 2008 fantasy football season, and it’s also the earliest I have ever tried to put a team together for fantasy football.

Drafting this early is sort of like trying to sketch a picture of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s new twins before you’ve even seen them — and no, it’s not just hard because they still always look like stick figures. You know that it’s got to be some world-ending, judgment day kind of beauty when these fantasy studs come together in training camp, but without seeing it live and in-person, there’s still that level of unpredictability.