Week 16 Fantasy Football Power Rankings: Stacking all the games

Let’s put a fantasy spin on the this week’s action by ranking the games in expected order of point-producing relevance using the over/under totals from Las Vegas, specifically as listed at VegasInsider.com.

Note: Dollar values in parentheses denote a player's current week price in the Yahoo Daily Fantasy game. It is displayed for point of reference.

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The Big Five

1. Jaguars at Saints, Sunday, 4:05, O/U 52: First of all, Happy Holidays! It’s too early to know if Drew Brees ($34) will play with his foot injury. But he says he expects to. Blake Bortles ($36) should be golden against the awful Saints defense. Brandin Cooks ($26) is an interesting story in that people want to point to the emergence of other weapons as giving him the opening to thrive. I think that’s the kind of story we look for, but Cooks’ emergence is probably just random variance disguised as something more meaningful. In other words, a story that could have been divined. Watch out for this kind of thinking. 

2. Packers at Cardinals, Sunday, 4:25, O/U 49.5: I could talk about David Johnson ($21) all day. He was a zeroRB pick in my preseason column. But only zeroRB would have kept me safely away from Eddie Lacy ($21). Last week, I wrote here that the stage was set for him to break hearts because he’s a completely unreliable player and the comments killed me. I can see Lacy having a big day now, infuriating his owners whose seasons ended last week due to him. You know, just to rub it in.

3. Redskins at Eagles, Saturday, 8:25, O/U 48: I guess I have to eat some crow on Kirk Cousins ($32), who has been good in reality and is at least streamable in fantasy. Most QBs are streamable in fantasy. I want to make fun of Luck owners for blowing up their seasons but they probably don’t even see it because they replaced Luck so easily and conclude that his loss didn’t hurt him. But it was the early round pick that they deep fried due to a process era (early round QB) when it’s hard enough to walk away from a draft with good early picks even when you play the game right.

[More rankings: Quarterback | Running Back | Receiver | Tight End | Flex | All Positions]

4. Panthers at Falcons, Sunday, 1:00, O/U 47.5: The Panthers are going to play hard for history. But their schedule is the third softest in football according to Pro-Football-Reference and while winning is impressive no matter what, the idea that this is an all-time team is total nonsense. They won’t even be favored if they get the Seahawks in their first postseason game. I got a lot of heat last week for writing that Cam Newton ($35) has been a relatively ineffective runner but you all have to recognize how to separate the descriptive like that piece from the predictive like this one. 

5. Steelers at Ravens, Sunday, 1:00, O/U 47.5: I guess Vegas figures the Steelers are going to score about 35. Yeah, I know that if you extrapolate the line the expected score is 29-19. But a Pittsburgh explosion is never surprising. Markus Wheaton ($16) is absolutely playable in a championship game, say if Alshon Jeffery ($27) is out. I liked him this summer only because Ben Roethlisberger ($34) praised him. Most dismissed him as a player. And they seemed right but oddly, with all the receivers healthy, Wheaton is getting about 9 targets, 90 yards and a TD on average the last four weeks. And he looks good, too, at least to my eye. The idea that Roethlisberger had some corporate reason to unjustly praise Wheaton always seemed ludicrous to me. 

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Middle Ground

6. Bears at Buccaneers, Sunday, 1:00, O/U 46: Jameis Winston is the worst QB in the football when it comes to poor throw rate. But he is making longer throws on average and of course may be throwing more passes than average away since he’s pretty good at avoiding sacks. What do we do with Jeffery next year? I have no idea. He needs to play through these next two games or his free-agent status is going to be severely compromised and, similarly, his 2016 fantasy ranking, too. 

7. Patriots at Jets, Sunday, 1:00, O/U 45.5: Tom Brady is left with nothing on offense. He’s playing a guy who looks like a guard at running back. I can’t see Julian Edelman ($27) coming back before the end of the season. Steven Jackson is back at running back. See that preseason piece for evidence that last year he wasn’t actually that bad in play success rate. Eric Decker ($27) is amazing — 10 TDs without ever having more than one in a game. All those yards with one 100-yard game. He’s the most underrated player in football and the most projectable receiver this year in the history of fantasy football. And Ryan Fitzpatrick ($32) is like him at QB. New England is going to have big trouble scoring in this game.

8. Giants at Vikings, Sunday, 8:30, O/U 45.5: I assume Odell Beckham Jr.’s suspension will be upheld but who knows. Similarly, Adrian Peterson ($34) is going to be limited by an ankle injury, but you want him playing against this embarrassingly bad Giants defense if he’s even breathing. Forget about Teddy Bridgewater and Stefon Diggs ($13) with that kind of passing volume (20 attempts last week) and playing pace in a game like this that Minnesota should win. Volume is the only thing that’s actually bettable. If someone is hyper efficient (Diggs for example had four targets last week), you can’t have any regrets because you played right.

Defensive battles

9. 49ers at Lions, Sunday, 1:00, O/U 43: Calvin Johnson ($28) is what receiver next year? He’s the 14th now in 0.75 PPR, between Decker (13th) and Maclin. Man, the guff you guys gave me for saying that Decker was a top 20 receiver, like I’m some Jets homer (being a fan does not make you a homer). I did not think that was even some daring projection. His ADP this year was a complete joke. Scott Pianowski and most I know in the industry were on this yet it did not change. 

10. Cowboys at Bills, Sunday, 1:00, O/U 43: Sammy Watkins ($24) is WR24 this year. That’s about where I’ll rank him next year but that will never get him and that’s okay. People will look at Watkins’ draft pedigree and always see the glass as half full but you can’t make money overpaying on what guys actually did and parsing stats based on games missed or injuries that we know are predictive of future injuries. The Bills have not made the playoffs for 16 straight years, one off the post-merger record.

11. Browns at Chiefs, Sunday, 1:00, O/U 43: Johnny Manziel ($23) looked great last week until he did not. The Browns won’t learn anything about him. So this year was wasted. Duke Johnson has six points less in 0.75 PPR this full season than Jeremy Hill. Don’t pay for running backs, kids.

12. Rams at Seahawks, Sunday, 4:25, O/U 40.5: Russell Wilson ($36) the first QB in NFL history with five straight games with 3-plus touchdowns and zero picks. He and Doug Baldwin ($31) are a late-blooming passing combo to be sure. But you can’t treat Baldwin like he’s a no-talent. The guy makes plays and his lack of size isn’t that big a deal, I learned this summer to my chagrin. (Receivers are no better than average when having a huge — 4-plus-inch — height advantage and are, in fact, worse.)

13. Bengals at Broncos, Monday, 8:30, O/U 40.5: Will Peyton Manning ($26) play? I hope so. One of the worst things about this year was the joy that people took in Manning’s declining, injury-plagued play. Peyton has more than perhaps any other player made the NFL must-see TV for nearly 20 years. 

14. Colts at Dolphins, Sunday, 1:00, O/U NL: And thus continues the backup QB section of our Week 16 slate. Why don’t the Dolphins play Lamar Miller ($28) more? Well he’s the fourth-highest scoring running back this year so what did you expect? Okay, he’s 65 points behind the No. 1 back, Devonta Freeman ($32), but that’s still what six points a week? And if you want a back like Freeman you know you have to pay up…. Oh, right. (I HATED Freeman by the way.)

15. Texans at Titans, Sunday, 1:00, O/U NL: I like Zach Mettenberger ($25) as a guy you should be able to trade for cheap in the offseason. He has rare arm talent and hasn’t been bad so take a shot. Maybe the Texans can get him. We’re about to test the limits of ($31) DeAndre Hopkins’ value with Brandon Weeden ($21) throwing him the rock.