Week 17 presents a unique challenge since several teams have secured their seeding in the NFL playoff bracket and will sit their biggest stars. As a result, Fantasy football rankings for Week 17 will look considerably different than other weeks. The Baltimore Ravens have already announced that Lamar Jackson and Mark Ingram, who is nursing a calf injury, will sit with the No. 1 seed locked up. Should their backups, including Robert Griffin III, be among your top Fantasy football picks? The Houston Texans can only move from the No. 4 seed to the No. 3 seed, so reportedly Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins will sit in Week 17.
Meanwhile, there will also be plenty of scoreboard-watching, which will further affect your Week 17 Fantasy football rankings. Before locking in your lineups, be sure to see the latest Fantasy football strategy, projections and rankings from the advanced computer model at SportsLine.
When it comes to ranking players, their model beat human experts in Fantasy football last season when there were big differences in ranking. And the model was closest to the hole overall, meaning it best pinpointed where every player would finish each week. Over the course of a season, that could literally be the difference between winning your league or going home empty-handed. Therefore, you should consult the Week 17 Fantasy football rankings from the proven computer model at SportsLine before finalizing your Fantasy football strategy.
Last week, the model was extremely high on Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, saying he'd finish as a top-10 player at his position despite being started in less than 25 percent of leagues. The result: Fitzpatrick threw for 419 yards and four touchdowns against the Bengals. Anybody who had him in their lineup was well on their way to a huge week.
Now the model, which simulates every game 10,000 times, has revealed its latest Week 17 Fantasy football rankings. One player the model loves this week: Cardinals running back Kenyan Drake. Since being traded to Arizona to reinforce a backfield that had been decimated by injury, Drake has become the unquestionable No. 1 option for the Cardinals.
Against the Browns in Week 15, Drake ran for 137 yards and four touchdowns. He followed that up with 166 yards and two touchdowns in an upset win over the Seahawks last week. Now, he has a solid matchup against a downtrodden Rams squad that went from NFC champions to out of the postseason. The Rams rank 22nd in the NFL in run defense and have given up at least a dozen points to opposing backs in standard Fantasy leagues nine times this season. That's why the model ranks Drake as the No. 13 running back in Week 17 despite the fact that he was started in just 63 percent of leagues last week.
And a massive shocker: Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson stumbles big-time this week against the Titans and doesn't even crack the top 20.
Watson is coming off one of his worst performances of the year. The third-year signal caller completed 19-of-32 pass attempts for just 184 yards and an interception in Houston's 23-20 victory over Tampa Bay. Watson has now thrown five interceptions in his past three games, and he'll face a Titans defense that's recorded 13 interceptions this season, the ninth-best mark in the NFL. He's a player to consider putting on the bench in Week 17 and is squarely out of the QB1 conversation.
The model is also calling for a surprising quarterback you aren't even thinking about to finish in the top 10 of the rankings. This pick could be the difference between winning big and going home with nothing. You absolutely need to see who it is before locking in your lineups.
So who should you sit and start this week? And which surprising quarterback could lead you to victory? Visit SportsLine now to get Week 17 Fantasy football rankings for every position, plus see which QB is going to come out of nowhere to crack the top 10, all from the model that out-performed experts big time last season.
