Lance Kendricks, Or, Getting Scooped On Your Own Fantasy Football Sleeper

All this week I’ve been talking up the St. Louis Rams’ Lance Kendricks as a major sleeper pick in 2011 fantasy football. He has all sorts of things going for him—for one thing, fantasy drafts always seem to start the run on tight ends too early, so waiting on yours can give you another shot at a reserve running back or wide receiver; for another, Sam Bradford showed a propensity last year to look for his tight end no matter who it was, and Josh McDaniels’s arrival only means more looks for Kendricks and the injury prone Michael Hoomanawanui. 

Here’s the thing: If you’re going to talk up a sleeper pick all week, you should make sure you get the chance to pick him when it comes time to make your bold selection. And that, in brief, is the story of how I ended up with Marcedes Lewis as my starting tight end in my college-friends league. I was convinced I had another round or two to go when Breaston Plants swooped in and made their move.

Suddenly Kendricks’s season is a lose-lose scenario for me. If he has a great year I’ll be paying for it every week; if he has a bad one I will have talked him up all August only to be proven, once more, the internet’s worst fantasy football clairvoyant.