Week 7 Fantasy Football Sneaky Starts & Sleepers

Oct 18, 2023

Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

All but the luckiest fantasy owners at some point need to find the proverbial diamond in the rough—a waiver wire or bench player capable of putting up some points in a pinch. This weekly feature is dedicated to that part of fantasy football. It's not pretty, but it's part of the game.

Our signature strength-of-schedule metric, adjusted fantasy points allowed (aFPA), is now using only 2023 data. Unlike SOS tools at other sites, we can adjust a defense’s fantasy points allowed by its schedule bias, so it provides a better “apples-to-apples” comparison. I’ll put the defense’s aFPA rank in parentheses below. The higher the number, the better the matchup.

Last week, several of my Sneaky Starts delivered moderate-to-big games, including C.J. Stroud, Dak Prescott, Raheem Mostert, Zack Moss, Chuba Hubbard, Zay Flowers, Rashee Rice, Jordan Addison, Josh Downs, and Dalton Schultz.

Let’s see who might surprise this week, with six teams on bye.

Quarterbacks

Geno Smith, Seahawks (vs. ARI, 31)

Geno Smith hasn’t had a good start, but this is a “get right” matchup against a Cardinals defense that has yielded an average of 266 yards and 1.5 touchdowns per game to enemy quarterbacks. They’ve also given up three rushing touchdowns to the position.