In most sports a fantasy owner is excited about preseason.  Their team is back playing, their favorite players are competing again and you get a first look at the fantasy sleepers, busts and keepers.  But in football most owners should pray that their players never take the field.  In a sport where the goal of the game is to hit your fantasy player as soon as they touch the ball, it is simply like watching and waiting for an injury to happen before your season even begins.

Last year the big name on the list was Clinton Portis, and he never really got his game back after missing the preseason.  This year Gore has gone out with a broken hand, Thomas Jones has limped off the field with a injured calf, and Jason Campbell has taken a direct hit to his knee which appears to just be a bruise but just as easily could have been a ligament tear ending his season.  Then in the most recent Saturday night contest, Travis Henry who has returned to fantasy prominence with his signing in Denver, sprains his MCL.  An MRI will tell us if he can play again within two weeks or in trouble for the season, but everyone who just drafted him in the last few days thinking they had a steal, is now scrambling to acquire Mike Bell cursing the couple series that Henry was actually on the field.   And this is just a few of the fantasy relevant players.  There are many more who have various degrees of injuries.  Will Gore live up to his top 5 ranking after missing preseason?  Will Thomas Jones get on track with a new team?  These are suddenly big questions you have to weigh into any fantasy draft when the preseason games are taken out of the equation.

I actually felt bad as I watched Jason Campbell limp away after getting hit in the most recent preseason game.   I recently had constructed a three way trade in our keeper league where Jason Campbell went to a team in major need of a second QB, and as I watched Campbell get hit and be potentially hurt on a play I thought to myself, uh oh, there’s a ruined offseason trade that will hurt any future moves with that team…. Campbell didn’t even take the field for him yet and he might be out.  Not what are the Redskins thinking, or damn that second year QB is hurt… everything always comes back to how it is affecting your fantasy team, not how the player or real NFL team is affected.. 

It is obvious the preseason is a necessity of the league, as there is no other way to knock the cobwebs off and begin to get the offense and defense in synch with each other.   But for fantasy team owners it seems like playing russian roulette with every game.  This fantasy owner is always glad when the preseason is complete, and the true season begins.