Do yourself a favor and forget everything that happened in the first half of the season. As we’ve seen from the past two weeks, not every team is going to bow out of the season quietly. The Chiefs, 49ers and Seahawks might surprise a few top contenders before they put a nail in the 2008 season’s coffin, and the Broncos aren’t ready to fade out.

Denver’s still got it

The ‘Welcome Back’ cards are in the mail to Denver for Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, Tony Scheffler and Eddie Royal this week. It appears the potent Denver fantasy offense isn’t quite dead.

As long as the Broncos pass the ball effectively, opposing teams will be forced to pass instead of wasting time running the ball. Maybe it won’t matter that the Broncos couldn’t stop a light breeze for less than five rushing yards.

Unfortunately, the ‘Welcome Back’ cards are probably going to be slowed by all the ‘Get Well Soon’ cards I also sent to Michael Pittman, Andre Hall, Ryan Torain and Selvin Young.

As I listened to the end of the Texas-OU game while hunched over in a car on my way to a wedding this weekend, two things occurred to me: 1) people REALLY shouldn’t get married the same weekend as the Texas-OU game and 2) there could be a large amount of rookie quarterbacks coming into the NFL next year.

This season has been brutal to quarterbacks. It’s like they are the running backs this season — drafted highly by fantasy owners but very prone to season-ending injuries because of the abuse they take. Those fantasy footballers who drafted a quarterback high this year more often than not paid the price — yes, I’m looking at you Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Carson Palmer and Derek Anderson. At least we can all hate the guy that drafted Drew Brees.

On a brighter note, I thought I was going to be very clever in one of my pay leagues this past week in picking up Fred Taylor against a weak Denver run defense.

This week’s “Dude…” award was a tough call. Plenty of surprising performances tempted our hand, but in the end, you have to give it to the guy some people considered dropping last week, Braylon Edwards.

The Cleveland Browns wide receiver has had a slooooow start against some of the tougher defenses in the league and just couldn’t seem to catch the balls that did come his way. Braylon Edwards, are you who we thought you were?

See the highlights.

Edwards had his first big game of the season on the Monday night stage and against what had been a ferocious Giants defense. The pass rush and Aaron Ross couldn’t shut him down. He finished the game with 154 yards and a touchdown off just five catches. That comes out to a pretty nice yards per catch average.

The difference tonight for the Browns was that they hit big plays early in the game and kept them going throughout.

This week’s bye shouldn’t have caught you by surprise, but the characters you are left to start might. Strangely enough, many of the players that you might have drafted late or gotten on the cheap have great plays this week.

Make sure you don’t forget about these guys, and as always, any start-or-sit questions asked in the comments will be answered by Saturday night. If not, call someone! I’m missing or in Vegas.

Hot Hands

J.T. O’Sullivan vs. Saints — Another great week to start O’Sullivan. He’s got a difficult stretch after this week, but JTO should have a shootout against Drew Brees and the Saints.

Lee Evans vs. Rams — He’s a fluke-y player, but St. Louis’ defense is no fluke. It’s just bad. Lee Evans could have a big week against this horrible pass defense, and you know he wants one.

Trent Edwards vs. Rams — Well, if Lee Evans has a good week…

Carson Palmer, Chad Johnson, T.J. Houshmandzadeh vs.

Obviously, things change in fantasy football. There’s no Tom Brady, and therefore, no Randy Moss. Offenses in Seattle, Cincinnati and Cleveland are in shambles. Jacksonville keeps turning it over, and the Denver Broncos might have the most explosive offense of 2008.

Shanny, we knew you had it in you. I won’t even say that I called it. (I CALLED IT), but it was right there in front of our noses. This year might be a competition between T.O. and Baby T.O. for the top wide receiver spot.

Who else is hot this week? (Well, besides the obvious.)

Hot Hands

J.T. O’Sullivan, Bryant Johnson, Isaac Bruce vs. Lions: We are starting bold. The 49ers face off against Mike Martz’s former home. I think Detroit probably knows a lot of Martz’s schemes, but Martz also knows how to exploit the Detroit defense — not like that information is really top secret. I like this one to be high scoring and crazy. If you have J.T.

A disastrous and tragic Week 1 has left plenty of teams hurting for new talent. Was there a group shot on the cover of Madden this year?

Since Week 1 is always the best time to grab the waiver wire studs AND since this week was full of injuries and failures, this week’s waiver wire gems is pretty comprehensive. Next week, we’ll bring it down a notch. We’ll start things off at QB since I hear we lost one this week.

If these guys went undrafted in your league, make sure you correct that. Now.

Matt Cassel, QB New England Patriots

Jesus. If you don’t know why Cassel is going to be a top grab this week, GO BACK UNDER YOUR ROCK AND STAY THERE.

It’s possible if you are a Tom Brady owner — or former Brady owner, as the case may be — that you have other, better options than Cassel.