Hello, everyone. Once again, I am flying solo as my NFFC co-owner Lori Rubinson attends to other pressing matters. Don’t forget to catch her on New York’s WFAN, the nation’s top all-sports station.

To be totally honest, I didn’t expect I would be writing a column this week, but being the self-defined second among equals in this partnership, I know my place. When Lori asked me to cover at the last minute, I hopped to it.

Being an analytical type at heart, I generally like to use these columns to make data-based observations that can be re-applied in your leagues, whether NFFC or local. Instead, in this case, with no prepared agenda, this is about managing one’s team and co-manager relationships.

For those who aren’t hanging on every word we write, here is a quick recap. Though I am an NFFC veteran, I had planned to take this season off. However, a week or so before this year’s NFFC draft, Lori asked me to be her co-manager. She explained how busy she was, how she would value the input of another and that it would actually be fun to work together!

I accepted the offer, my first-ever as a co-manager in any fantasy league at any time. Despite my trepidation over sharing decision-making with anyone, I was intrigued by drafting in the final, number 14 spot, during the first year of “3RR”, or Third Round Reversal. In this new feature, the draft is held in normal serpentine fashion except that the 14th spot gets the initial pick in the third round in an attempt to balance out the field.

I am not sure all three of Lori’s three selling points have been achieved yet, but it has been a reasonable partnership from the very start.

On draft morning, we engaged in an act I labeled “fantasy speed dating” as we sat down over breakfast in a New York diner and fired questions and answers back and forth in a fast dance step designed to merge two draft strategies into one in an accelerated manner.

During the draft, we were able to come to agreement on players fairly easily, with Lori taking the lead for many of the skill positions, with me more often steering us away from certain players I disliked (sorry, Eli Manning!).

My primary contribution was in targeting lesser players, such as tight end Kellen Winslow (seventh round) and the Pittsburgh defense (round 15). Those two became stalwarts of our team. Though not nearly as important as Peyton Manning, it is worth noting that after nine weeks, Winslow is outscoring every one of our running backs and wideouts.

As we left the draft, we felt we were strong at running back but weak at wide receiver and vowed to take action to improve ourselves at the position. Little did we know that our second wideout taken, Devery Henderson in the sixth round, would be a bust. That made Mike Furrey from round eight as our second wide receiver. Scary, huh?

Still, we got out of the gate quickly, scoring over 150 points in decisive wins in each of the first two weeks. We haven’t done as well since, enduring a 1-4 stretch in weeks three through seven before putting two more “W’s” on the board.

Our 5-4 record isn’t all that great in head-to-head action, but our point total puts us in fourth place in our league, New York 2. With the top three cashing in each circuit and the top two teams in every league making the championship round, we aren’t out of the running in either race.

Along the way, we did a decent job of building up our wide receiver corps and still have just under $300 of FAAB money in the bank for potential emergency late-season acquisitions.

Lori is proud of nabbing wideouts Brandon Stokley and Arnaz Battle, but in all honesty, she has been even better at playing hunches on extra running backs, snatching Earnest Graham and Priest Holmes for peanuts the week before the starters ahead of them went down to injury.

It hasn’t all been rosy, however. Did I note that Lori is really busy? As a result, some ideas end up not being considered until it is too late.

For example, neither of us is happy with Cleo Lemon as our backup behind Peyton Manning. (Cleo had been enlisted when my favored back-up, Trent Green, went down.) Last week, I wanted to nab J.P. Losman coming off injury. Lori didn’t respond to my idea for five days and by then, Losman was a lost cause. Oh, well. Here comes Alex Smith.

We managed to put up a very respectable 137 points in our week nine win, despite leaving a very even and whopping 100 points on our bench. Two-thirds of that was provided by two players – Jamal Lewis and the Detroit defense.

I had suggested starting Lewis at flex, liking his match-up versus Seattle. However, Lori preferred tight end Donald Lee as her second choice behind our early-season star LaMont Jordan. Coming off a poor week eight, I had a bad feeling about Jordan, but my partner knew in advance that she would not have time to check lineups on Sunday (see a trend here?) and thought the Raider was a safer Thursday pick due to questions about Lewis’ health.

In all fairness, I had been authorized to make the switch at the last minute at my discretion, but to maintain domestic tranquility, I knew I had to be 100% sure before overriding her. Didn’t do it. So, Lewis scored 36 while on the pines while Jordan contributed just three to our win.

We were both guilty in the case of Detroit. Earlier, I urged us to pick them up off the waiver wire to help us through the bye weeks. We liked the idea of playing defensive match-ups the rest of the season, so we kept them on.

However, being the ingrates we are, we sat Detroit in week nine even after they had saved our bacon in week eight with 18 much-needed points. Two defensive touchdowns helped the Lions’ D to score 33 while planted on our bench during week nine.

We still won, but leaving 100 points on the table is brutal – the potential difference between the championship ($100,000 max) and consolation ($2,500) rounds. My lesson learned is that I need to use the cell phone and not rely on email and should be more aggressive when I feel strongly.

Obviously, our fantasy honeymoon is over. I need to better adapt to married life!

Did I mention that Lori even suggested what I should write about here? Sorry, I have to go now and wash the dishes!

Lori Rubinson is a host on WFAN, New York’s leading sports talk radio station. You can listen live on the Internet at www.wfan.com. Brian Walton’s work can also be seen daily at stlcardinals.scout.com.