Who is the Number One Fantasy Football Pick This Summer?

The NFL season just ended, and yet I am bombarded with questions about next year's fantasy football season.

Now, I'm not exactly ready to give out my fantasy rankings this early in the game (we haven't even gotten to the 2008 NFL Draft yet), but I will touch on a subject that is sure to become hot stove material before long. That subject, or question I should say, is:

"Who should be the first pick in fantasy football in 2008?"

Look, we are almost seven months away from Week one of the 2008 NFL regular season, so it is almost impossible to engage in this discussion with free agency looming, trades yet to have been completed, and the impending draft in April.

Nonetheless, there are three guys who stand out right now, and I will go ahead and tell you who I think is the early candidate as we stand right now. But I must warn you, I thought Dennis Kucinich was going to win the Democratic nomination for the general election. That said....

3. Adrian Peterson, Running Back, Minnesota Vikings - I know a lot of you thought that Peterson was the best thing since sliced bread last season, and thus I won't be surprised to see quite a few people select him # 1 in this year's draft. However, everyone still has to remember that this man is still splitting time with RB Chester Taylor, and that will significantly cut into his attempts, especially if Taylor is healthy for the entire season, which he was not in 2007. Then there is issue of the Vikings quarterback. If the Vikings do not find a solution there, or if Tavaris Jackson can't get it together, Peterson is going to continue to see a lot of 8 and 9-man fronts, and that will give Peterson a significant disadvantage that the two players ahead of him don't have.

2. LaDainian Tomlinson, Running Back, San Diego Chargers - I'm a big LT fan. In my mind, he has been the best running back in the league since the start of the 2003-2004 NFL season. And since then, that season included, he has always entered the off-season atop my queue list for any fantasy football draft I have been a part of. He is the quintessential fantasy football running back in that, he gets all the carries, he is the first option in the red zone, and he can catch the ball out of the backfield. As we all know, he has the proclivity to have three or four 3-touchdown games in a season, and that kind of spike in production is hard find elsewhere, except for the person I have listed as my number one fantasy pick going into the 2008 NFL Fantasy Football Season...

1. Tom Brady, Quarterback, New England Patriots - It's hard to put a quarterback atop the list, but the fact of the matter is that that this man just engineered the best offense in the history of football. He threw more touchdown passes than anyone ever has, and he threw the most to a single receiver since Jerry Rice. Not to mention, you don't have to worry about Brady getting ahead and the Patriots starting to run the ball. That's not what they do. They come out throwing it, and they keep throwing it. Even in the Superbowl, the biggest game of the year, they let the running game get away from them because it is the passing game that got them where they were. Usually quarterbacks are secondary to running backs in fantasy football, but Tom Brady outscored everyone, including Mr. LT. So if you have one of the top picks in your draft this season and people keep telling you to draft running-back-running-back, back-to-back. You just sit there and smile, and let them pick the LTs, LJs, and ADs of the world, and when your turn comes around, you know who that the person most likely to score the most fantasy points this season gets his handoffs from the center and not from the quarterback.