Thunderbolts are successful in a wild and wacky draft

The 2007 Fox's Fantasy Football League draft was held Friday night in Arlington and the twists and turns that occurred kept the league owners on their toes and made for a very interesting evening for those in attendance. Here's what happened for the Thunderbolts in a nutshell.

The draft started out with nine of the first eleven picks being at running back, including the Thunderbolts selection of Jerious Norwood. Taken perhaps a little bit earlier than expected, Norwood (also known as Bigg Daddy RB!) should form a very good one-two pairing at running back with LaDainian Tomlinson. Other running backs selected by the Thunderbolts included rookie Brandon Jackson, Michael Turner, and Chester Taylor. Jackson, especially, is considered a high-risk/high-reward type player.

In the second round, there were eight wide receivers taken and the Thunderbolts were no exception, selecting Andre Johnson, who led the league in receptions with 103 last season. Johnson should be a very solid wideout and the other receivers drafted by the Bolts include Reggie Brown, Darrell Jackson, and Greg Jennings. You may recall that Brown (also known as The Doll Whisperer) has an affinity for sports action figures that is so strong that he actually believes that he can communicate with them.

Chad Pennington was drafted to add some depth to the quarterback position and Vernon Davis is the lone tight end. There is some speculation that these two players may not be Thunderbolts for long.

The San Diego Chargers and Minnesota team defenses were the squads that were chosen to try and shut down the Thunderbolts opponents this season. Owner, GM, and Head Coach Tony Fox was especially excited to have Shawne Merriman, Shaun Phillips, Jamal Williams, and the other Chargers defenders on the Thunderbolts roster again for 2007. Fox's picture here is prior to the recent surgical procedure that completely altered his looks after last season's attempt to have everyone call him "Homey HC". Trust me, he looks totally different now. You wouldn't even recognize him.

Speaking of looks, it looks as though the Thunderbolts have drafted themselves a winning squad once again and should be competing for the Championship in December as always. Stay tuned.

Around The League

It would make sense that last year's champions, Rich Chemistry, would seem to be the popular choice to be the early favorite to be the team with the strongest keepers. However, with half of the league voting so far, that is not the case. So far, the fourth place Curley Wolves have been granted the distinction of currently being "the strongest team" with three out of the six votes. In fact, Rich Chemistry has not recorded a single vote.

Of course, all of this is entirely premature with the upcoming FFFL draft less than 48 hours away. It will certainly be interesting to see how the fortunes of the Chemistry, the Wolves, and the other 10 FFFL teams fare at the draft Friday night.

Thunderbolts prepare for upcoming FFFL draft

Things are beginning to get interesting again in the the land of the Thunderbolts as the 2007 FFFL season unofficially begins with the FFFL draft this Friday night in Arlington. What exactly do the Thunderbolts have in mind? Let's take a peek into the near future, shall we?

One thing that we do know is that the T-Bolts have the best player in the league lining up at the RB-1 position in 2006 MVP LaDainian Tomlinson (left). Tomlinson set all sorts of individual and team scoring records last year as the Thunderbolts finished in third-place.

It is often said that you can never have too many running backs and even though the Bolts have the very best, you can be sure that they will be drafting a couple of running backs relatively early to complement Tomlinson.

The Thunderbolts also currently have the best 1-2 punch in the league at quarterback in Drew Brees (above) and Philip Rivers (below). There are many other teams in the league can only hope to have the kind of team leadership and productivity that Brees and Rivers will provide the Thunderbolts.

Probably the biggest question regarding the 2007 Thunderbolts is who will be on the receiving end of all those passes that Brees and Rivers are going to be throwing? Your guess is as good as mine. The Thunderbolts will obviously be looking early and often at several highly-regarded wide receivers to make life a little easier in the passing game and keep that well-oiled machine that is the Thunderbolts offense rolling along.

Defense sometimes tends to be an overlooked component in the fantasy game, but you can be sure that the Thunderbolts will be looking to add just the right combination of flash and sizzle to keep opposing offenses at bay.

Oh, yeah. They'll probably draft some kicker too.

T-Bolts Season Tickets Sell Out and Loop 920 Opens

If you've waited until now to get your Texas Thunderbolts 2007 season tickets, you're out of luck. Season ticket sales have reached the preset limit of 40,000, while the remainder of the 52,500 seat capacity Thunderdome, the world's first completely underground football stadium, which is located beneath The Parks Mall at Arlington, are available for single-game ticket sales and other league required allotments.

Now that the Thunderdome is six years old, Arlington city planners have finally done something about the weekend traffic congestion that has been a continual problem on South Cooper and Matlock Streets. The newly completed tunnel Loop 920, which is 150 feet underground, completely surrounds the Thunderdome and it's two 10-story underground parking structures and offers six new extra exits from which traffic may use to reach the surface. Prior to Loop 920, the only exits from the parking structures were West onto Cooper or East onto Matlock.