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Fantasy Football Rankings Week 12: Nate Burleson, Mike Goodson, Cowboys RBs

Thanksgiving Day football makes fantasy a bit difficult this week. Instead of the "normal" one Thursday game, there are three. Roster decisions have to be made on Thursday with only half the story if you're debating starting anybody involved in the Thursday games against the Sunday slate. 

Most of the players involved in Thursday's games are owned for fantasy purposes already with the Patriots, Lions, Jets, Bengals, Saints and Cowboys playing on Thursday. Nate Burleson, however, is currently owned in only 19% of Yahoo! fantasy leagues. As Yahoo! Sports fantasy guru Andy Behrens says, Burleson should be owned. He's been productive the last few weeks and has a match up against the Patriots on Thanksgiving day. The Pats are 8-2 and look like the best team in the NFL, but their pass defense does give up yards. With the focus likely being on Calvin Johnson, Burleson is worth a look.

Mike Goodson should also be owned at this point. He ran for over 100 yards again, this time against a stout Ravens defense in Week 11. With Jon Stewart's return still in the air, Goodson is worth owning and could be worth starting this week against the Browns.

As for the Cowboys and their fantasy impact this week, it's going to be tough sledding against the Saints. Dez Bryant, Miles Austin and Jason Witten all have to be started regardless - but having lofty expectations for them this week is dangerous. The Saints hold opponents to 186 passing yards per game. Austin, Bryant and Witten have too much talent to bench and you likely aren't going to have anybody worth starting over them, so if you own them, you'll just have to hope for a shootout. 

The Cowboys backfield should be a bit of a mess. Felix Jones is missing practice today with a hip injury, so we could see a heavy dosage of Marion Barber and maybe even Tashard Choice from the Dallas backfield. If Jones is healthy and plays, he's worth a flex start to me but nothing more than that. The injury could cut down on his snaps, and it's not as if he's lit up the fantasy scoreboard this year when he was healthy. I'd avoid starting any Dallas RB this week.

As for the Cowboys defense, there have to be better options out there this week, unless you're in a 32 team league.

Photographs by jamesbrandon, jdtornow, phlezk, flygraphix, mcdlttx, tomasland, and literalbarrage used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.