Fantasy Football Week 17 Sleeper Picks
It's Championship Week in most leagues and to be honest, I hope you're playing the hits on Sunday. I hope you have a roster so strong that the players essentially start themselves. I hope you've bullied everyone on the waiver wire, maybe pulled off a few winning trades.
But leagues come in all shapes and sizes, and injuries are a weekly reality in the NFL. So it's possible you might need bench or waiver options to consider for the title game.
Let's do what we do — offer up plausible options rostered in less than half of Yahoo leagues.
QB Derek Carr at Tampa Bay (44% rostered)
Generally, I trust Carr about as much as I trust a gas station sandwich, but sometimes you're on a lonely highway and there are no other plausible options. In other words, the Carr recommendation is mostly for deep-leaguers and the Superflex crowd. Carr's game has perked up of late — he's been the QB7 and QB3 the last two weeks — and although his earlier game against Tampa Bay was horrendous, it was so long ago (Week 4) that I'm willing to write it off. The Tampa Bay secondary is gettable, giving up 7.6 YPA and 284.4 passing yards per game.
RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire vs. Cincinnati (45% rostered)*
RB Zamir White at Indianapolis (40% rostered)*
Both of these calls are fairly obvious and tied to contingencies — we need to see if Isiah Pacheco (post-concussion) and Josh Jacobs (quadriceps) are able to play. CEH still might have fantasy juice even if Pacheco starts, given that Jerick McKinnon is out for the year. If Jacobs is active, it probably kills the White angle.
The Chiefs would be wise to employ CEH in the passing game no matter what, as he's averaging 11.2 yards per catch and 9.0 yards per target over his limited action. The Chiefs obviously have several offensive problems that won't be solved until the offseason, but Andy Reid still knows how to design a lovely screen game.
TE Gerald Everett at Denver (45% rostered)
The dots are connecting at the right time for Everett. He had a season-high seven catches last week (helped by the absence of healthy-scratch Donald Parham) and he's been targeted 24 times in three weeks. The Chargers have cluster injuries at wide receiver, pushing Everett into a more prominent role. And the Broncos' tight end coverage has easily been the worst in football — even Mike Gesicki got these guys for a touchdown last week. If you lost T.J. Hockenson for the year, Everett is my preferred widely available pivot.
TE Juwan Johnson at Tampa Bay (14% rostered)
Johnson is a deeper potential replacement for Hockenson, assuming you can't get your hands on higher-rostered options like Everett, Chig Okonkwo or Tucker Kraft. The tight-end numbers have been juicy against Tampa Bay — this is the fourth-easiest defense to score against at the position — and Johnson is coming off touchdowns in back-to-back weeks. Johnson also had a season-high seven targets in the loss to the Rams. Derek Carr is likely to stick with what's worked of late, and that means Johnson should be a priority at the goal line. And so often with tight end streamers, it's mostly about that goal-line equity.
WR Demarcus Robinson at New York Giants (21% rostered)
We generally think of the Rams deploying a narrow usage tree, but Robinson has crashed the party in recent weeks — he's played between 86% and 93% of the snaps in the last three games. Robinson has touchdowns in four straight weeks, and last week he collected a season-best six grabs and 82 yards. Obviously, he's unlikely to push stars like Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua out of the way, but Matthew Stafford and Sean McVay have this three-wideout offense humming right now, and the Giants present a top-five matchup for opposing wideouts.
D/ST Las Vegas at Indianapolis (29% rostered)
When you're rounding up the list of fantasy league winners, don't forget the Raiders defense, which has been the top-rated D/ST for the last two weeks (and was a respectable seventh in the week before that). Interim coach Antonio Pierce has this unit playing hard and playing smart, and it could result in Pierce getting a full chance with this team next year. The Colts offense is still a makeshift group, forced to start backup QB Gardner Minshew. I can't promise you the Raiders will be as lucky with return touchdowns as they have the last two weeks (four return scores are absurd), but Maxx Crosby and friends figure to force Minshew into some negative plays, which is where the fantasy goodies come from.
