DENVER -- I’m putting this out at the beginning of the week since the first game of the season is on Thursday night. Some leagues require your lineup to be set before kickoff of the first game and some allow you to make changes up until each kickoff of each game. Either way if you have Saints or Vikings on your roster be sure to get them in you lineup before Thursday night if you’re playing them (hopefully you don’t take Sidney Rice in the third round of an early draft).

After this week, I’ll post the column on Friday mornings before the weekend, except when we have Thursday games again. Click on my name at the top to email questions at the beginning to middle of the week, for the coming weekend, and I may use yours in the column for that week.

So you’ve had your draft and hopefully you feel good about how it went. If not, get past it and focus on managing. Things change throughout the season (i.e. Sidney Rice) and what may not look so great now, can turn into a pretty good team for you down the road. Remember this is about making the best decisions each week, and trying to optimize your team to get the most points out of it.

Along the way you need to pay attention to the waiver wire and who’s hot and who’s not. Everyone’s team is going to suffer from injuries along the way and there’s going to be guys who weren’t drafted that suddenly become a hot commodity for whatever reason. Someone gets injured and the next guy in line steps in or someone just turns out to be a stud that no one knew about. Either way, pay attention each week and look for guys that pop up out of nowhere that can benefit your team.

Now to week 1 and setting that lineup. Basically there shouldn’t be any mystery here about what to do. You drafted a starting roster first, and that’s pretty much the lineup you want to role with in the first week. There are too many unknowns about what the best matchups are yet and who’s going to perform without a proven track record. I took Ray Rice as my first pick in my league and he faces the Jets in week 1. Guess what, I not sitting him. Whatever your first few picks were, you took them for a reason and they should pretty much start each week regardless of matchup. There’s going to become some situations through the season where you may have a better option once in while compared to an every week starter but right now you got to go with the team you drafted, and that’s the philosophy you have to have.

So what can you go by if you’re on the fence over two guys? You may have a decision or two with some mid level players, maybe a third wide receiver or your RB2, if you didn’t get two your confident with to start. All we have is what we know from last year and how defenses finished the year against run and pass. Yes personnel changes a little each year but for the most part you can still pick on the really bad defenses against run and pass from last year, and figure the really good ones against each are still just that. Until we get a few weeks under our belt (around week 3 or 4) we really can’t start to figure out defensive trends on a consistent basis.

Here’s how they ranked at end of last year, best to worst, from top to bottom:

AGAINST THE RUN:-----------------------------------AGAINST THE PASS:

Green Bay.................................................................N.Y. Jets
Minnesota.................................................................Buffalo
Pittsburgh.................................................................Denver
Dallas.......................................................................Carolina
Baltimore..................................................................Green bay
San Francisco...........................................................Cincinnati
Cincinnati..................................................................Oakland
N.Y. Jets...................................................................Baltimore
Philadelphia...............................................................Washington
Atlanta......................................................................Tampa Bay
Houston....................................................................San Diego
Tennessee ................................................................New England
New England.............................................................Chicago
N.Y. Giants...............................................................Indianapolis
Seattle.......................................................................N.Y. Giants
Washington................................................................Pittsburgh
Arizona......................................................................Philadelphia
Miami........................................................................Houston
Jacksonville................................................................Minnesota
San Diego..................................................................Dallas
New Orleans..............................................................San Francisco
Carolina.....................................................................Kansas City
Chicago.....................................................................Arizona
Indianapolis................................................................Miami
Detroit.......................................................................St. Louis
Denver.......................................................................New Orleans
St. Louis....................................................................Jacksonville
Cleveland...................................................................Atlanta
Oakland.....................................................................Cleveland
Buffalo.......................................................................Seattle
Kansas City................................................................Tennessee
Tampa Bay.................................................................Detroit

Knowing how the bottom of the league defenses fared at the end of the year you can make a logical decision on starting a mid level guy against them in week one as opposed to one of the tougher defenses at the top of the list. Remember it’s about up side if you have to make a decision. Aside from that, there really shouldn’t be much decision making to be had in week one.

Here are some middle tier players to start or sit based on what we know from the end of last year:

In the starting gate

QUARTERBACK: Jay Cutler, Jason Campbell, Kyle Orton, Alex Smith,

RUNNING BACK: Ronnie Brown, Jahvid Best, Beanie Wells / Tim Hightower, Arian Foster, Carnell Williams,

WIDE RECIEVER / TIGHT END: Brandon Lloyd, Zach Miller, Johnny Knox / Devin Hester, Mike Wallace, Lee Evans, Steve Breaston, Laurent Robinson, Ted Ginn Jr.

Dog on a leash

QUARTERBACK: Chad Henne, Vince Young, Eli Manning, Jake Delhomme, David Garrard, Kevin Kolb, Joe Flacco

RUNNING BACK: Laurence Maroney, Rashard Mendenhall, Julius Jones / Justin Forsett, LeSean McCoy, Clinton Portis

WIDE RECIEVER / TIGHT END: Mike Sims-Walker, Justin Gage, Hakeem Nicks, Jeremy Maclin, Jerricho Cotchery

Good luck and if you can steal a win in the first week, great, if not, don’t get too upset, it’s only week 1. Next week we’ll review a little about what we saw in week 1 and start to try to figure out some things for week two.