Week 16 Fantasy Football Sneaky Starts & Sleepers

Dec 18, 2024

Morgan Tencza-Imagn Images

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.

I’ll put the defense’s aFPA (adjusted fantasy points allowed) rank in parentheses below. As of Week 4, we are now using only 2024 data for our signature strength of schedule metric, which makes it a great apples-to-apples comparison of each defensive matchup.

Let’s see who may deliver in Week 16:

Quarterbacks

Bo Nix, Broncos (@ LAC, 21)

I’m still getting a lot of “should I start Bo Nix” questions despite his year-to-date performance (QB9) and relatively good matchup this week. Since Week 10, the Chargers have yielded an average of 242/2.0 plus 22 rushing yards and 0.17 touchdowns to enemy quarterbacks.

Matthew Stafford, Rams (@ NYJ, 31)

The Jets' pass defense has sprung a few leaks. In the last five games, quarterbacks have averaged 274/1.4 and 7.7 yards per attempt against the Jets. Stafford stunk against the 49ers on the Thursday night fantasy debacle, but before that, he had four straight games with two or more touchdowns and has thrown for two or more scores in six of his last eight games.