Frigga Fantasy Football: Week 16 vs NYG

Here we are folks, the last reliable week for fantasy football.  In the vast majority of re-draft leagues your league championship is this week!  If you're playing for the league championship then you are in an even elite...er(?) club than last week.  So if you're playing for all the marbles, or money, or just for fun, congratulations!  In my five re-draft leagues, I made the playoffs in three of them and advanced to the league championship in only one of them.  But hey, that's the benefit of being in more than one league...it gives you a better chance to win!

If you're not in your league's championship game, hopefully you're having a good Christmas break and are enjoying spending the day with friends and family.  Ultimately, that's what the holidays are for...well, that and getting a ton of useless presents, drinking too much and passing out on your parents basement couch, only to wake up in the morning with flashbacks of childhood horrors and regressing back to a mental state where fruit loops, orange juice and pop tarts were the best part of the day.  But I digress.  If Santa didn't give you what you wanted today, perhaps the Vikings can fill the void in a couple of days.

In Eric's preview earlier in the week he outlined some key aspects to the game, and the Vikings should have a very good shot to win this game.  But from a fantasy perspective, we might be looking at the best week of the year.   Every position against the Giants, with the lone exception of D/ST, is a massive plus matchup, ranked 21^st or worse.  The Giants defense has been completely unable to stop anyone this year, and it sets up very well for us, but as you'll read below that doesn't mean we're suddenly going to start all the Vikings.  As always this week's stat projections come to us from Fantasy Pros and are a consensus of the following five sources: CBS Sports, ESPN, NumberFire, FF Today and Stats.com.

By just about any measure worth using Teddy had a career game last week.  And in fantasy, it was the first time he has broken 30 points in his career, and only the third time in his career that he's broken 20 points in standard scoring.  But before we go overboard and put Teddy in a starting lineup keep in mind that he only threw 20 passes, and notched under 250 passing yards.  This is still a low-volume passing offense, and his massive point total was boosted significantly thanks to four touchdown passes.  Two of those TD passes were primarily the work of the receivers in the open field, and there was also a rushing touchdown tacked on just for good measure.  The Giants do allow the 31^st most fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks, an average of 20.3 points per game.  But if you discount Drew Brees 7 TD game and Cam Newton's 5 TD game last week, this defense is not as bad as they look.  Outside of those two games, the Giants are allowing an average of only 16.6 fantasy points per game to opposing quarterbacks not named Brees and Newton.  It is interesting that Teddy is projected for more than 15 points for the first time since week 8, and it also marks only the 5^th time all year he's been projected for more than 15 points.  So the consensus projection likes Teddy's chances this week.  But I think this Giants passing defense is better than people think, and because of the low passing volume I wouldn't recommend starting Teddy in anything other than a DFS tournament.   Even with a 15-point projection, he's still only the 20^th highest ranked quarterback this week based on projections.

Well, talk about a let-down.  If you had Peterson started in your league during the fantasy playoffs last week, hopefully his meager total didn't completely sink your team.  But he left the game with an ankle injury, and while he did return briefly near the end of the game, he didn't produce much on the stat sheet.  Mckinnon racked up over 80 yards from scrimmage and a touchdown for whatever that's worth (probably nothing, sorry!).  While Peterson did not practice Wednesday, both he and Zimmer expressed optimism about his ability to play on Sunday night.  I don't think Peterson is in danger of missing any time, and since the Giants allow an average of 17.1 fantasy points per game to opposing running backs (21^st best), Peterson is obviously worth a start.  The Giants run defense is terrible, as they've allowed over 100 rushing yards seven times this season.

I feel like I'm a broken record, but there still really isn't any Vikings wide receiver I trust.  Sure Diggs found the endzone twice last week, and if you took the huge risk of starting him it paid off.  But with only 20 pass attempts last week, Diggs only got 4 targets!   It's hard to trust a receiver who is averaging just over 5 targets per game the past 4 games.  And forget about starting anyone other than Diggs. As I keep saying, Teddy spreads the ball around in a low-volume passing offense.  Despite only 20 pass attempts, Teddy still targeted 7 different players last week.  Stay away.

Kyle Rudolph hasn't found the endzone for the past four games in a row, which has made his fantasy totals completely unusable.  It would appear that Rudolph has returned to his usual self this year: catching a few passes for between 15-50 yards and not much else.  That said, the Giants do allow an average of 9.9 fantasy points to opposing tight ends, ranked 30^th in the league.  I just have a hard time trusting this passing offense to a) funnel targets to the tight end position and b) have all those targets go to Rudolph and not be shared with Ellison and Pruitt.  I'd be leaving Rudolph on the bench, despite the decent matchup on paper.

With the Giants offense still being potent, I would not start the Vikings D/ST.  The Giants offense only allows an average of 3.1 fantasy points per game to opposing D/ST units, which is the 4^th best total in the league.  Sure, Odell Beckham will not be playing, and that will certainly limit the Giants offense somewhat, but they still have plenty of weapons in the passing game, and Eli Manning is still throwing the ball.  While the Vikings backups have been playing way above their pay grade the past few weeks, it remains to be seen if we'll have the services of Harrison Smith, Anthony Barr and Lindval Joseph for this game (all of whom should have made the Pro Bowl, but ah well).  I would look elsewhere this week.  Blair Walsh is always worth a start, and he's the 9^th best kicker in fantasy this year.  It's virtually meaningless, but the Giants allow an average of 9 points per game to opposing kickers.

It's onto my league-wide picks!  I like to highlight one player that I think will outscore their consensus projection by giving them the "Well Played" designation, and then also highlight one player I think will fall short of their projection by giving them the "Oops" designation.  Here are my picks for this week:

Well Played of the Week

RB Cameron Artis-Payne vs ATL

With Jonathan Stewart still likely out this week, Artis-Payne is in line to get the majority of the running-back snaps for the Panthers.  And they get a plumb matchup against a Falcons run defense that has been repeatedly gashed week in and week out.  They are ranked 29^th overall in fantasy points allowed to opposing running backs, and I expect the Panthers to not only win the game, but use Artis-Payne to burn the clock down.  Yes, the Panthers are on the road, but with their team red-hot I would not hesitate to start Artis-Payne.  Fantasypros only has him projected for 8.5 fantasy points this week, but I think he'll easily top that.

Oops of the Week

RB Matt Forte vs TB

There are a lot of reasons not to like Matt Forte this week.  First, the Bears season is officially over as their loss to us last week knocked them out of the playoff race.  The Bucs are also out of the playoff race, so this is a game where neither team has anything to play for other than pride and experience.  It gives both teams an opportunity to see what their young players can do, and the player that might cut into Forte's workload is none other than Jeremy Langford.  But also consider that the Bucs have a solid run defense, ranked 7^th best in fantasy, and the Bears will be on the road as underdogs, giving them greater odds to fall behind and forcing them to have to throw a lot.  This just isn't a great position for Forte to be in.  Fantasypros projects him for 11.1 fantasy points this week, and while he certainly could get there with his usage in the passing game, I think he'll ultimately fall short of the projection.

Last Week: 0-2, Season so far: 16-12

Daily Norseman Fantasy League

Last week was crazy.  If I told you that I was facing Cam Newton, the New England Defense and Matt Forte in a PPR league, you'd probably think that I lost.  And in most circumstances that is exactly what would have happened, because that trio combined for 82 fantasy points.  But, you would be wrong.  Unfortunately for my opponent, I had Antonio Brown, Tyrod Taylor and Sammy Watkins to counter it and my trio scored a combined 102.3 fantasy points.  It was a nail-bitingly close win against Eric Thompson's "2 Glovez" with a score of 169 to 157.  Even stranger is that neither of those two point totals was the most of the week, as consolation bracket participant MayTheNorseBeWithYou put up 189.28 points thanks to Bortles, Cooks, Baldwin, Cooper and the Kansas City defense all topping 20 points.  We only have one week left in the DNFFL and yours truly will be facing off against the Daily Norseman's own Fearless Leader Christopher Gates' "Joe Webb Still Sucks" for the league championship.   You can check-out the playoff bracket below:

Feel free to leave your sit/start questions in the comments section for myself and others to chime in.  And be sure to tune in next week as I wrap up the fantasy season and hand out my annual fantasy football awards.