Fantasy football rankings, Week 12: Tight ends

Never has a position presented so many question marks as tight end does right now.

Publishing rankings Wednesday for games that in some cases don't play until Monday is such a double-edged sword. On the one hand, getting the rankings out Wednesday means people can prepare earlier, make a framework, that sort of thing.

On the other hand, though ... so much guesswork.

I was working on my rankings of the Week 12 tight ends Monday night, and had a thought:

So I'm just going to rank two tight ends this week. Just publish a column that says "Gronk and Graham and go away."

— Daniel Kelley (@danieltkelley) November 18, 2014

Tuesday night, fellow ranker Dan Ciarrocchi was working on his own, and he had a thought as well:

Working on my Week 12 Tight End ranks and may as well have submitted a picture of Gronk and Graham standing above a pile of hot, wet garbage

— Dan Ciarrocchi (@TheSackSBN) November 19, 2014

It's not that every tight end after Rob Gronkowski and Jimmy Graham is bad for fantasy. Greg Olsen is on bye (as is Heath Miller, for whatever that's worth), and Julius Thomas and Dwayne Allen have both been fairly productive this season. But this early in the week, we haven't any kind of realistic guess as to Thomas' and Allen's status for Week 12 thanks to the injuries both tight ends suffered in Week 11.

And it doesn't end there. Will Delanie Walker return from injury in Week 12? What about Jordan Cameron? Marcedes Lewis? How did Kyle Rudolph feel after his Week 11 return? Is Jordan Reed's hamstring OK?

I talked about the insane difficulty of the tight end position in Tuesday's Ticker, but it bears repeating: Only two tight ends - Gronkowski and Olsen - have gone the whole season without presenting their owners with headaches. The position is crazy.

This is true of every position, every week, of course. But Week 12 among tight ends is perhaps the most complicated week of rankings we've ever seen.

So when you read our rankings this week, that's why there's a range of fifth to unranked for Thomas. Allen, Cameron and Reed are in the low double-digits, or they're unranked. These are helpful and good. Yay for us. But I will bet all sorts of dollars that things will change.

That doesn't mean ignore what comes next. It just means this is the first step of a full week of preparation. That's always true, really.

Oh well. On to Week 12:

Tight end rankings, Week 12

(DK: Daniel Kelley; DC: Dan Ciarrocchi; JD: John Daigle; SK: Scott Kaliska)

Rank	Consensus	Team	Opponent	DK	DC	JD	SK
1	Rob Gronkowski	NE	DET	1	1	2	1
2	Jimmy Graham	NO	BAL	2	2	1	2
3	Antonio Gates	SD	STL	4	3	9	5
4	Coby Fleener	IND	JAC	6	7	4	4
5	Larry Donnell	NYG	DAL	7	6	5	6
6	Martellus Bennett	CHI	TAM	10	4	10	3
7	Travis Kelce	KAN	2OAK	8	5	7	7
8	Jason Witten	DAL	@NYG	3	8	18	8
9	Jacob Tamme	DEN	MIA	12	17	3	15
10	Owen Daniels	BAL	@NO	9	14	11	14
11	Mychal Rivera	OAK	KAN	23	10	8	8
12	Julius Thomas	DEN	MIA	5	9	--	11
13	Charles Clay	MIA	@DEN	16	11	15	10
14	Austin Seferian-Jenkins	TAM	@CHI	21	18	6	13
15	Delanie Walker	TEN	@PHI	17	16	13	12
16	Dwayne Allen	IND	JAC	11	12	--	20
17	Jordan Reed	WAS	@SF	15	15	--	16
18	Kyle Rudolph	MIN	GB	24	13	21	17
19	Jared Cook	STL	@SD	20	19	17	19
20	Vernon Davis	SF	WAS	--	22	19	18
21	Jordan Cameron	CLE	@ATL	14	--	--	21
22	Jermaine Gresham	CIN	@HOU	--	24	12	--
23	Jace Amaro	NYJ	@BUF	--	23	14	--
24	Jim Dray	CLE	@ATL	--	21	16	--
25	Scott Chandler	BUF	NYJ	18	25	22	24
--	Zach Ertz	PHI	TEN	22	20	24	23
--	Tim Wright	NE	DET	13	--	--	25
--	John Carlson	ARI	@SEA	19	--	20	--
--	Marcedes Lewis	JAC	@IND	25	--	--	22
--	Garrett Graham	HOU	CIN	--	--	23	--
--	Niles Paul	WAS	@SF	--	--	25	--

from SBNation.com - All Posts http://ift.tt/1xPi0NN