When I do a fantasy football draft, I have several rules of thumb that I follow. I also have some for playing week-to-week. Most of these rules aren’t mine, and I’ve taken them from all my reading, but I can’t really attribute them to one source. (I generally read the stuff on ESPN and Yahoo.) One rule is this: Don’t get cute.

The general scenario is this: Not-so-good football player with a great matchup. Do you start him? This week, Rex Grossman has a good matchup against the excruciatingly bad Arizona secondary. Would you start him over a much better QB? What if your QB struggled last week? (Like Big Ben or Schaub?) What if your QB has a bad matchup?

Or what if your TE struggled last week? Do you pick up someone who had a good week off the waivers and play him instead? Do you play a player with a much lower ranking if you have a good feeling about him?

In general, I don’t play the good player, even if they struggled. I don’t like to get too cute. I don’t downgrade guys a lot for one bad game or get too high on a guy for one good game. (I started to panic about Schaub last week, but I didn’t pick up another QB in either of my leagues.)

I made an exception this week. I played Fred Davis over Owen Daniels. I only saw one other ranker who put Fred Davis ahead of Owen Daniels. So far, it’s working out okay. It seems crazy, but it wasn’t merely an overreaction to last week. Fred Davis is a really good player, but he didn’t have much opportunity because Chris Cooley was ahead of him on the depth chart. Plus, Owen Daniels, to me, isn’t on the same tier as a lot of the other TEs. I’d give Vernon Davis, Dallas Clark, Jermichael Finley the benefit of the doubt. But Owen Daniels gets a lot of credit for one really good, injury-shortened season. He did start to look good at the end of last year, but he hasn’t proven that much. Granted, Fred Davis hasn’t proved a lot yet either. I knew he had talent, though. So I decided to roll the dice.