If you're one of the 15-20 million people who participated in the fantasy football craze last season, we've got a brand-new game to wrap your brain around.
Welcome to the NFL Touchdown Challenge!
The object of the NFL Touchdown Challenge is to accrue the highest number of consecutive weeks in which your selected player scores a touchdown. You are allowed to choose one running back, wide receiver or tight end each week, but you can't use the same player twice during the same streak.
For example, if you pick LaDainian Tomlinson in Week 1 and he scores a touchdown against the Raiders, you are not allowed to use him again until a player you've selected fails to score a touchdown during that streak.
Once a streak is over, however, you can once again use Tomlinson in future streaks.
The goal is to accumulate fantasy points based on how many weeks the players you've selected score a touchdown. So, if you correctly pick players for five consecutive weeks (Weeks 1-5) that find the end zone, you will receive five fantasy points. If you pick a player who fails to score a touchdown in Week 6, that streak is over.
At that point you can start a new streak.
Remember, there is no accumulation of points over different streaks. You will only receive points for your longest streak. If you select players who find the end zone for the first six consecutive weeks but fail to do so in Week 7, that's a streak of six points. If you start a new streak in Week 8 and correctly choose a player who scores every week for the remainder of the season, that's a streak of 10 weeks and is worth 10 points.
That would then become your best streak.
Top 10 active TD leaders
T-1. LaDainian Tomlinson
T-1. Terrell Owens
- Randy Moss
- Marvin Harrison
- Shaun Alexander
T-6. Edgerrin James
T-6. Isaac Bruce
- Joey Galloway
T-9. Tony Gonzalez
T-9. Clinton Portis
The longest streak, of course, is 17 weeks (or the full length of the NFL regular-season schedule). If more than one participant successfully navigates the entire season without selecting a player who fails to score a touchdown, the total number of touchdowns scored during the streak will be used as a tiebreaker.
While playing the matchups will be important in the NFL Touchdown Challenge, there's far less strategy involved in this sort of game because you'll use 17 players or less (in most cases) from all 32 NFL teams.
Since you're not allowed to use quarterbacks, chances are you're going to start a lot of elite running backs and wide receivers. End-zone magnets such as Tomlinson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Michael Turner and Randy Moss are a few of the prominent players who are destined to be popular options.
Of course, even the superstars should be utilized in an intelligent fashion.
Let's take Week 1 into consideration.
The Detroit Lions allowed more rushing touchdowns (31) than any other defense in the league last season, so Saints running back Pierre Thomas becomes a very attractive option in the opening week of the season.
Despite being close in overall value to Thomas, Darren McFadden's matchup against the Chargers, who allowed just 11 rushing touchdowns, has far less appeal based on the level of his opponent. And with Shawne Merriman back in the mix, the Bolts should be much better on defense in 2009.
A better week to use McFadden, for example, would be Week 2 against Kansas City. The Chiefs allowed 25 touchdowns on the ground in 2008, and McFadden ran all over them in the second week of his rookie season with 164 yards and a touchdown.
With the help of these simple strategies, you could be on your way to winning the grand prize ... an incredible four-day, three-night trip to South Florida to attend Super Bowl XLIV!
Good luck!
Michael Fabiano is an award-winning fantasy football analyst on NFL.com. Have a burning question for Michael on anything fantasy football related? Leave it in our comments section or send it to **AskFabiano@nfl.com**, and the best questions will be answered throughout the season!