Fantasy Football: Week 17 Studs and Duds
If you’re in one of those week 17 championship leagues, who are the guys that probably won you, or cost you, that championship this year? Here are the most likely candidates from week 17.
Studs
Quarterback, Philip Rivers: Rivers played his a** off this week in hopes of a playoff spot, and the Chargers won. However that did not matter because so did the Titans. Rivers threw for 387 yards and 3 touchdowns on 28 completions only missing on 9 throws. It was a near perfect game but some things are just out of your hands.
Running Back, Dion Lewis: Lewis has lit it up for the Patriots without anybody there to split carries with. I believe if it wasn’t for Burkhead/Gillislee, Lewis would have been a top-5 fantasy back this year, easily. However how well your fantasy team can do isn’t what goes into the mind of the coaching staff of an NFL team.
Wide Receiver, JuJu Smith-Schuster: No Ben? No problem. That’s if you’re playing against the 0-16 Browns. I watched most of this game and I personally think the Steelers should have lost it. On 4th and 2 in the last moments of the game DeShone Kizer escaped a sure fire sack and threw a perfect pass to a WIDE OPEN Corey Coleman, and he dropped it. Right through his hands. If Coleman catches that I think the Browns go onto score and win that game. But that play is just the epitome of what happened for the Browns this season.
Tight End, Tyler Kroft: For some reason the Bengals always seem to utilize their tight ends better in the red zone that other teams. In a game where they played spoiler to the Ravens and superheros for the Bills, Kroft had 6 catches for 53 yards and 2 touchdowns.
Duds
Quarterback, Kirk Cousins: AHHHH, I know I wrote to start Cousins this week and he put up a stinker against the Giants. But in my defense, Cousins is in a year where he has to prove himself if he wants to get paid next year. Against literally the LAST ranked defense in the NFL in terms of points against fantasy quarterbacks, I thought Cousins was going to prove to the Redskins he deserves his money… Guess he doesn’t wanna get paid.
Running Back, Jordan Howard: The Vikings have been good all year vs the run and that didn’t change Sunday. Howard rushed 9 times for 9 yards and caught 1 pass for 5 yards. it was the second time this season Howard rushed for at least 9 times and didn’t reach 10 yards. I think next year Howard and Cohen are going to be a poor man’s Ingram and Kamara from this year. With a young budding quarterback in Trubisky that offense will be much better next year.
Wide Receiver, A.J. Green: Green only caught 2 balls for 17 yards on 10 targets. Yes you read that right, 10 targets. Now I didn’t watch the whole game so either Andy Dalton was off on these throws or Green just had a really bad game. Either way his production didn’t help you on the fantasy realm.
Tight End, Rob Gronkowski: Gronk was probably happy to some extent to finish Sunday’s game without a catch, because he finished the season with his favorite number in the receptions category. I have a few theories regarding Gronk’s low usage in the game but the most likely is the fact that they wanted to keep him healthy for the playoffs. Which makes the most sense because Gronk is integral to the Patriots offense right now.
Written By: Jon Tetreault ( @jtetreault13 )