Each week, CREATiVESPORTS’ National Fantasy Football Championship combatants break down one aspect of the industry’s premier fantasy football contest. Two writers, Lori Rubinson and Brian Walton, share an NFFC entry in 2007 and offer up their comments here every third week all season long – if they don’t kill each other first!

With this being the first season either one of us has drafted and run a team with a co-manager, neither Lori nor I had set our expectations unreasonably high coming in. Fortunately, the reality is that we had a very fine 2007 NFFC. We finished second in our league in points, earning $2500, which also punched our ticket for the Championship Round of 56 teams. With one week to go, we are in the middle of the pack, not destined to cash out again.

In the overall regular-season standings, we came in at number 51 of 364 teams, the best showing of our three CREATiVESPORTS NFFC entries. That was no small task given J.P. Kastner’s team was strong enough to score the most points in the entire competition one week earlier in the season and Marc Meltzer is our acknowledged fantasy football guru around these parts – the honcho of our CREATiVESPORTS NFL Draft Kit.

Our focus in this report, our final one this year, will be to look back at our season, both the good and bad. Each of us will offer our views of the answers to the following seven questions: Who was…

Our best draft choice?

Brian: I am tempted to call out my pushing of tight end Kellen Winslow in the seventh round, since he scored more points than most any other player on our roster not named Peyton. However, I believe our best selection as a team was Torry Holt with the first pick in round three. Our next selection would be 28 picks away, so getting this one right was huge. The Rams’ wideout had some knee problems in camp and others were shying away as a result. During our deliberations over this selection, I recall saying something like, “We need to take calculated risks if we want to place in a league like this”. We did and we did.

Lori: Of course, I will agree with Brian, but also offer another point of view. I’m a woman, so that’s my prerogative. I remember saying to Brian, “Holt is the best value with this pick. Everyone else is nervous about picking him because of the knee.” We were lucky and Torry played every week for us. But I’d have to say that Jamal Lewis at the top of the 5th round was a better pick than Holt. Lewis averaged 15.7 points per game and Holt averaged 16.5. Lewis had the 6th highest point total of any running back, ahead of much bigger fantasy names like Willie Parker, Reggie Bush and Steven Jackson. So I would say that Jamal Lewis in the 5th round was our best pick.

Our worst draft choice?

Brian: We had plenty, but most of them were during garbage time. For me, the answer is easy. We went heavy on running backs, which meant we needed to hit home runs on wide receivers. As noted above, Holt fit the bill. Our second WR, taken in the sixth round, Devery Henderson, was just as bad as Holt was good. As a result, we were scrambling for a viable second receiver all season long, at times forced to play two tight ends.

Lori: I couldn’t agree more with Brian on this one. Devery Henderson was a disaster. Sure, it didn’t seem as stupid in preseason. But in hindsight, this pick was a killer. It was the difference between our team and first place. We cut the good-for-nothin Henderson in the middle of the season when he couldn’t beat out guys like Arnaz Battle for playing time in our lineup. Do you want to know the worst part? We left Greg Jennings on the table. He got taken a few picks later. How we missed him I really don’t know. I own Jennings in our CREATIVESPORTS experts league. I’ve owned him for the past two seasons and simply love the guy. Jennings was a page one guy. He shows up on the first page of WR rankings. After Torry Holt, we had no other WR who was better than page two in the rankings. Sad. Our runner up for worst pick might have been Peyton Manning. We took him with the first pick of the second round. If we had waited to take a QB until later and picked up Tony Romo, that would obviously have been better value.

Our best free agent pick up?

Brian: I have to give the spotlight to Lori here for anticipating Earnest Graham getting the starting running back job in Tampa Bay, but I imagine she will cover that below. My best contribution may have been the September pick up of Green Bay tight end Donald Lee for $51, a prime beneficiary of Brett Favre’s 2007 rebirth. As noted above, Lee saw considerable time in our flex position throughout the season.

Lori: I agree that Graham was the best free agent pick up. We got him before Cadillac went down for the season so we got him for very little. Then, a week or two later, Caddie goes down and we have Tampa’s starting RB. We were definitely lucky with this situation but it shows that you need to take a flyer on RB’s who show promise.

Our worst drop?

Brian: We really didn’t have any substantial muffs in this department, but the fact that we had to release early-season performer Lamont Jordan was very disappointing. Overall, we didn’t get fourth-round value from Jordan, nor did the Raiders for that matter when they benched him.

Lori: I agree with above. We really didn’t have a costly drop.

Our worst free agent pick up?

Brian: I cost us a win in week seven when we had to grab another tight end due to Winslow and Lee both being on bye. Marcus Pollard was my recommendation, but he laid a very expensive egg. Another example: Knowing we were in trouble from the get-go at wide receiver, gambling $153 on Jason Avant after week one seemed like a good idea at the time, but turned out to be wasted money.

Lori: Jason Avant was on me. I had a gut feel on him. It was the same gut that made me grab Earnest Graham for great value. We should have picked up a guy like Ike Hilliard instead. But I thought that the Eagles passing offense was going to be high-flying. My bad. Andy Reid and I were both fooled.

Our worst weekly roster decision?

Brian: I should have pushed Lori harder to start Jamal Lewis in week two. That was the game he popped for 216 yards and 27 fantasy points. Not our best moment as those points were badly needed both that week and in the total points race later on.

Lori: I can’t argue with Brian on this. I screwed up and gave Lamont Jordan one more chance.

Our biggest surprise?

Brian: At my urging, we took the Pittsburgh Steelers defense in the 15th round. While they swooned later in the season, the Steelers racked up a lot of points for us in the early weeks. Later, we added a second defense and were generally successful playing weekly matchups.

Lori: I absolutely give Brian props for the Steelers D. That was a great recommendation. My other big surprise was that playing fantasy football with a co-owner turned out to be fun and not stressful. I thank Brian for being so easy to work with.

In closing, thank you for reading our columns this season. We both enjoyed competing in the NFFC and writing about it. Greg Ambrosius and team continue to run the highest-quality high-stakes fantasy football event around.

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.