Week 17 Fantasy Football Sneaky Starts & Sleepers

Dec 24, 2024

Steve Roberts-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.

Due to the compressed nature of this week with the Christmas holiday, I’ll be providing shorter write-ups for each player.

Let’s see who might surprise in Week 17:

Quarterbacks

Bo Nix, Broncos (@ CIN, 26) - I’m still getting “should I start Bo Nix or this random QB3” questions. Start Nix–he’s the QB9 on the year and has a nice matchup against the Bengals.

Justin Herbert, Chargers (@ NE, 22) - Herbert has been a little spotty of late, scoring less than 14 points in three of his last four games. But he had a good game against Denver (22.2) last week and has a favorable matchup with the Patriots, who have yielded 11 passing touchdowns in the last five games.