Fantasy Football Triage: Surviving a Peyton Manning Injury

You plan. You scheme. You mock (but not mean-spiritedly). You list. You prepare.

You spend hours/days/weeks/months to get prepared for your fantasy football draft, execute your plan brilliantly and then kick back with a beer and wait to begin dominating your league.

Then Peyton Manning—you know, the guy who never misses games unless his head coach is resting him in Week 17—goes and has neck surgery, followed by a tremendously long recovery that forces you to face Week 1 without one of your most valuable assets.

It's not hard to imagine you repeatedly clicking "Urban Dictionary" for new and venomous ways to curse him, his parents and Arian Foster because he dislikes fantasy football.

None of which will make you feel better, much less save your season.

You can do one of two things.

Option 1: You can follow the advice Bluto, played by a young(ish) John Belushi, gave pledge Flounder in the movie Animal House and start drinking heavily.

Or if you didn't give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, you can take Option 2: You can fix the damned thing.

Let's face it, Option 1 is appealing, but kind of misses the point. The whole point of fantasy football is to overcome whatever disasters are thrown at you.

Option 2 is what we're all about, right?

In the 10 years I've been playing and writing about fantasy football, no season has gone completely smoothly. While that has probably added to my grey hair tally, the disasters which befall our teams are half the fun sometimes.

I mentioned Manning up top—and we'll get to his traitorous neck—but it could easily be Foster and his hammy, Chris Johnson and a holdout-related injury or DeSean Jackson starting his holdout.

No matter the who or why, somebody is likely to trip you up and this year a lot of the potential damage may be inflicted by high-profile picks.

These are generally guys who you don't expect to go down early with a lingering injury. This column will help you fix things up when they go and get themselves hurt anyway.

I mean, how many games has Manning missed due to injury? That would be—hang on, let me do the math: Carry the one, divide by pie...

Yeah, that would be none.

Even if his skills are eroding, Manning has been a top five fantasy quarterback nearly every single season of his illustrious 12-year career. As recently as a week ago, Manning was being removed from the PUP list and said he was optimistic he'd play Week 1.

Not so much now. So even had you waited to have your draft until the end of August, you could currently be in possession of a brand new non-usable elite fantasy quarterback!

What to do in this sort of dire situation? Let's stick with Manning because he's actually out, but this could apply to Foster/Johnson/Jackson or even secondary quarterbacks like Matt Cassel, whom I've seen go as a late QB1 for some folks and whose ribs are cracked.

First, hopefully you drafted for depth. Of course you never know when injury will strike, and with a guy like Manning you really never expect it to.

Let's say you aren't in a position where your backup makes you confident, maybe due to matchup, maybe due to injury or personnel issues.

If you haven't already, you hit the waiver wire. If you're in a tight spot, you know you'll have to reach. Here are a few quarterbacks to spell you this week.

Colt McCoy, CLE

 He's probably not on your waiver wire, but depending on the league he could be. McCoy worked hard to improve his arm strength this offseason and has a new toy in Greg Little to play with, as well as a strong running game to keep opposing defenses from stacking the box. He's also got a pretty solid matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals, though their defense is better than people give it credit for.

Prediction: 250 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT. He won't kill you, but he won't put you over the top. A solid Band-Aid in a pinch, though.

Kyle Orton, DEN

 This might seem super-obvious but everything I am seeing is telling me Kyle Orton is not owned in enough leagues and is tremendously undervalued. I'm not sure how that's the case, but according to ESPN, he's owned in just 59.2 percent of its leagues. Orton is probably suffering from Tim Tebow-Lag as many owners thought he would be in Miami or at least installed on the Denver bench.

That didn't happen and people seem to forget that before the Broncos decided to activate plan Tebow at the end of last season, Orton was an outstanding fantasy QB. Had he finished out the season, I feel confident he would have topped 4,000 yards and likely totaled more than 25 touchdowns, especially considering his matchups.

He faces Oakland this week, and while the Raiders aren't quite as bad as everyone makes them out to be, the secondary is missing Nnamdi Asomugha and is vulnerable. His next two games? The Bengals and Titans. Not bad. Let me be clear, Orton isn't a great NFL quarterback. He's a productive fantasy quarterback and he'll get you through the start of the season.

Prediction: 270 yards, 2 TDs. He'll have a very productive week and my only worry is what might happen with Brandon Lloyd's knee. Beyond Lloyd, that cupboard is a bit bare.

Luke McCown, JAX

 Just handed the starting quarterback gig for the Jaguars, McCown is a fairly limited quarterback who had a very nice preseason. Unlike McCoy or Orton, I think McCown is a one-week wonder. He might have success a few times this season, such as this week against the Titans or in Week 3 against the Panthers but he's not that great and his receivers are overall a bit shaky. Mike Thomas is a very good player but ill-suited for a WR1 role. Behind him are a lot of underachievers and young players.

All that being said, he has Maurice Jones-Drew out of the backfield and Marcedes Lewis at the tight end spot to match with Thomas. Those weapons should help compile some good production this week and further, he may be sitting on your waiver wire right now.

Prediction: 250 yards, 1 TD. He'll do for a week but long term McCown will struggle.

You might notice I haven't listed Kerry Collins, Manning's actual backup. While he is facing Houston, no less, a team known for its terrible secondary in 2010. The Texans have really taken strides to improve their secondary and defensive unit, and I expect this game to be a tough one for Collins and the Colts offense. While he's an easy backup if you have Manning, I'd try to avoid using him if I could.

The above quarterbacks will work for any of you who might have some issues Week 1. Luckily, Manning is the biggest problem going right now. While we have concerns about Foster, Jones-Drew or Johnson, they'll play this week.

Hopefully we won't be pulling a fantasy triage on them and their owners in Week 2.

Andrew Garda is a featured columnist for fantasy football and the NFL for Bleacher Report as well as a staff writer for Footballguys.com, one of the premier fantasy football sites on the web. This past year, Andrew was No. 18 out of 34 experts ranked for pre-draft accuracy by FantasyPros.com, and Footballguys were well represented in all categories. Check out Footballguys.com for more than 50,000 pages of content each year, including strategy articles, rankings and projections, and the site offers a money-back guarantee until Sept. 30 if you're not totally satisfied by the features.You can follow him as well on twitter at @andrew_garda.