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.

Don’t get all reactionary when you are setting your lineups this week. If your stud disappointed in his first showing — and there is no evidence supporting his failure, i.e. horrible line in Jacksonville and St. Louis — just forget Week 1 happened.

This week, we’ll move into more of a Q&A mode with the start-or-sit recommendations. No matter how many people I name, you will always have a call between two players that I don’t address. Here’s your chance.

If I don’t mention one of your tough calls, or you have a follow-up question, post it in the comments (or you can send me direct messages through twitter.)

Hot Hands

Chris Johnson vs. Bengals: If you thought he looked good against Jacksonville…

Brandon Jacobs, Eli Manning, Plaxico Burress vs. Rams: Big Boy make ‘em pay.

Now that we have the explanation out of the way, let’s talk Week 1 picks.

Jacob’s Ed. Note: Note that due to some compulsive gambling this weekend, we didn’t get the Week 1 picks up before the games. If you didn’t notice, congratulations — you rock. Starting Week 2, picks should be up prior to the weekend’s festivities. Now, on with the show…

Enter the Chadam

Hi. My name is Chadam, and I’ll be half of the two-headed team that will be leading you through the crazy world of picking NFL spreads.

Make no mistake; I am hardly what you would call an “expert.” My resume consists of a gambling addiction formed in my high school years, the borderline drinking problem that graces plagues most males in their twenties and the unlawful possession of irrational reasons for loving or hating certain teams and players.

In other words, I’m might be just like you and a large majority of the fantasy football community.

This football season, our highly-respected Best Bets feature (Hint: Don’t ever start betting in Week 16) will be replaced by a column we are going to call A fool and his money… where two compulsive online gamblers will go head-to-head picking the NFL spreads for the entire regular season.

These two moderately delusional individuals will include analysis on each game to help you understand the thought process behind their decisions — including live transcripts of the voices in their head — and trash talk each other’s weekly picks and overall record.

As a teaser for the upcoming column on Week 1 and an introduction to Nick and Chadam, here are their picks for tonight’s game.

Oh, and don’t worry. They’ve already turned in their win totals to me. There will be no cheating based upon the results of the game tonight.

GIANTS (-4) over Redskins: Talk about a lack of respect for the defending champs.

Fantasy football season is upon us!

*The people rejoice*  *Crowds cheer and applause*  *Small baby thrown in air*

Someone catch that baby! *Baby caught inside beer* YES!

The defending Super Bowl Champions, the New York Giants, face off against the Washington Redskins tonight. What will the lesser Manning of the mighty Mannings do?

More than likely, he’ll look a little rough around the edges since the Super Bowl win — especially if Jason Taylor gets in there for the Redskins. Eli Manning didn’t have a good showing last time he played the Redskins — and by not good, I mean worst completion percentage of the season bad. Starting off a new season and playing at home (where the Giants were iffy last year), you might find a better option to start rather than Manning.

Guys I like tonight

Brandon Jacobs: Unless Washington’s D steps up here, they’ve been looking like Swiss cheese in the preseason.

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).

The explanations are the drafter’s own with a few editorial notes (Ed. Note!) from me.

If you haven’t drafted yet, I’m sorry. Life just isn’t fair. Cry me a river and try hosting a party in a cave or under a rock so that the rest of your league doesn’t hear this news.

If you have drafted, you just might be sitting on fantasy gold if you snagged Brandon Marshall late. His three-game suspension has just been reduced to just ONE game.

“Baby T.O.” is now back in my good graces. I was high on Brandon Marshall coming into this season — higher pre-McDonald’s rapper spillage but high nonetheless — but his suspension had made me come down a bit.

In his rookie year, Marshall stepped up for an injured Javon Walker and finished the year just beneath Marques Colston and T.J. Houshmandzadeh in standard scoring.

This year, things were looking even better for Marshall.

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. What would your team look like?

Basically, you luck out with LaDainian Tomlinson then load up on wide receivers that score a lot and a top quarterback. Once you have found your top players in each category, snag a productive second running back and another receiver.