The bye-pocalypse is here. We’re missing Houston, Philadelphia, the best defense in New England, and three excellent offenses to target in Denver, Jacksonville and Washington. This means we have some unfamiliar teams with their opponents ranked as starters this week. Atlanta, Carolina and Seattle are all teams we wouldn’t normally target, but they’re all on the road and all facing good real-world defenses. With a lack of better options, that makes their opponents – New Orleans, Green Bay and San Francisco – startable defenses.

Bye week hell also means it will be hard to stash a defense for next week if your bench isn’t very deep, since you’re likely to have two or more bye week players riding your bench at other positions. There are three teams under 50% ownership I really like for Week 11, two of which are usable this week.

1. IND vs JAC, 38% owned. The Colts are my #1 start this week, so you don’t need to stash them on your bench, but another reason to pick them up is that you won’t have to worry about next week either.
2. NYJ @WAS, 9% owned. You can also use them this week vs NYG, so the Jets are a good choice if you’re tight on roster spots.
3. OAK vs CIN: 1% owned. I fully expect the Bengals to become a start-anyone-against-them team with Ryan Finley under center.

Over 50% ownership, Buffalo  (@MIA), New Orleans (@TB), San Francisco (vsARI), Minnesota (vsDEN) and of course New England (vsPHI) will be good starts next week as well. Keep an eye on who gets dropped when waivers clear, because between their bye and their season-worst fantasy performance against Baltimore, it’s possible that people will drop the Patriots. You should absolutely not do that, but if your teammates do, pick them up.

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Week 10 Ranks

With so many teams on bye our options are limited, leading to the smallest top tier I’ve had in a while. Ownership numbers are from yahoo. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up on Twitter.

Takes

1. IND vs MIA: The Colts are one of only two teams I feel good about this week, and even then, we did just see Miami fail to stink against the Jets. Miami picked up their first win, and more importantly, avoided turnovers entirely. That said, one game is not a trend. It will take a few more weeks of them looking like an NFL team for Miami to stop being a great matchup. We knew that games like that were possible when Ryan Fitzpatrick took over, but we have a lot of reason to think the interceptions disaster games are still the more likely outcome.
2. BAL @ CIN: This will be the Bengals’ first game since benching Andy Dalton for Ryan Finley. It’s hard to imagine anyone being dramatically worse than Dalton has been so far, but a fourth-round draft pick in his first NFL start is a good candidate. Brand new quarterbacks are exactly what we want for our fantasy defenses, so start the Ravens.
3. NYG @ NYJ: It’s a symptom of how bad this week is that there are two different games with both teams ranked as starters. It should be unsurprising, then, that the matchup of New York teams is one of them. The Jets have the worse offense of the two, which is why the Giants get the better rank (and Vegas line) despite being the road team.
4. CLE vs BUF: It’s week 10, and we have enough evidence. We can finally admit that the Browns are bad, but that’s really about their offense. Their defense is still average, which is more than enough to be a good start against the Bills at home.
5. CHI vs DET: The Lions offense has been fine this year, but Vegas appears to have little faith in them visiting Chicago, with an implied point total of just 20.25. If you drafted Chicago and haven’t dropped them yet, they should be safe to start this week.
6. NYJ vs NYG: While the Jets have the worse offense in this game, they also have the better defense. Combine that with being the home team, and a reasonable implied point total of 22.75, and the Jets are an OK start.
7. NO vs ATL: Perhaps surprisingly, it appears that this Vegas line does reflect and expectation that Matt Ryan plays. The Saints have turned out to be one of the better real-world defenses in the league, and have a good chance at home of extending the Falcons’ losing streak.
8. BUF @ CLE: The Browns managed to lose last night to the Broncos of all teams, and that was without the interceptions Baker Mayfield has become known for. There’s a lot of upside for Buffalo this week.
9. GB vs CAR: The Carolina Christian McCaffreys have their toughest test yet, visiting a good Packers defense with the strongest home field advantage in the league. Turnover upside is limited here because Carolina is run-focused, but Kyle Allen has been sacked pretty reliably this year. I wouldn’t normally recommend starting Green Bay in this spot, but with six teams on bye, you might have to.
10. SF vs SEA: This is another case of an excellent defense, at home, facing an offense we wouldn’t normally target. If you don’t want to drop SF and don’t have a spare bench spot, you can use them, but it’s certainly possible for Russell Wilson to go all Russell Wilson on them.

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Jacob Herlin is a Senior Data Analyst for FantasyPros. For more from Jacob, follow him @jacoblawherlin.