Week 17: Players To Fade

Players with sub-optimal matchups for Week 17.

Read below for a position by position breakdown of players that could disappoint based off their matchups this week. Quarterbacks will not be included here, as you could deduce which QBs I believe could bust based off the players listed below.

NOTE: Same as for the “smash” article that already came out, this article has a lot less players than normal due to the several primetime game previews that I’m writing up/have already written up separately, as there are 8 total primetime games this week. The players below are all playing on the Sunday Main Slate (1 and 4pm EST) only.

Running Backs

Rico Dowdle

Dowdle’s hot streak of 3 straight 100+ rush yard games came to a screeching halt last week against Tampa, putting up 13 carries for just 23 yards (1.8 YPC). If you’re a frequent reader here, you were ahead of that one.

This week, I suspect Dowdle’s struggles could continue. He sees the Eagles, who have been one of the toughest rush defenses in the league since their week 5 bye, coming in at 1st in EPA/Rush and allowing the 5th fewest YPC (3.99) in that time.

The Cowboys are also pretty large underdogs (+7.5) and have the lowest implied team total of any team this week (15.5), so rush attempts and scoring opportunities could be very hard to come by. This also means they could have to look to the pass game, which is not conducive to fantasy success for Dowdle. After posting back to back season high route shares, Dowdle dropped back down to 41.7% route share last week which was just 17th of 24 qualifying RBs. Rico has also been an inefficient receiver when out there, with just an 8.4% target share and 0.76 YPRR since week 9.

As the RB19 in terms of ECR and $6k on DK, he is moderately priced but still feels too expensive given the likely brutal environment.