Week 8 Fantasy Football Sneaky Starts & Sleepers

Oct 25, 2023

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

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 (SOS) 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 Jordan Love, Joshua Dobbs, Geno Smith, Russell Wilson, D'Onta Foreman (RB1 on the week), Javonte Williams, Kareem Hunt, Jordan Addison, Rashee Rice, Michael Thomas, Kendrick Bourne, and Gerald Everett.

Let’s see who might surprise in Week 8.

Quarterbacks

Jared Goff (vs. LV, 7) is back at home which means he’s ranked as a no-brainer QB1. C.J. Stroud has a so-so matchup with the Panthers, but he’s tied with Brock Purdy (vs. CIN, 22) for QB12 in per-game scoring. Both Stroud and Purdy are solid starts this week.