The 18-week season is weird. It’s already week 14, but we still have teams on bye, and for most leagues, the fantasy playoffs are still a couple of weeks away. This is the time of the year when quarterback situations are pretty stable, but this week is an exception, as quite a few things have changed. Three different teams aren’t starting the QB we thought they would a week ago:

• Bears QB Justin Fields, who has missed the bears past two games with cracked ribs, looks like he’s going to play this week instead of Andy Dalton. Despite his meltdown last week, Dalton is probably still worst for the opposing fantasy DST than Fields.
• Texans QB Tyrod Taylor went down with a wrist injury last week, which means we get a second Davis Mills era.
• The Giants are on their third-string QB Jake Fromm, thanks to Mike Glennon suffering a concussion while Daniel Jones is still out with a neck injury.

All three of those teams were already good DST matchups, and these changes just make them even better.

If you’re looking to spend a bench spot on stashing a DST for the fantasy playoffs, there are three teams I feel confident about in more than one of the Week 15-17 playoffs:

1. San Francisco 49ers (71% rostered) – vs ATL in Week 15 and vs HOU in Week 17
2. Los Angeles Chargers (26%) – @ HOU in Week 16 and vs DEN in Week 17
3. Seattle Seahawks (13%) – vs CHI in Week 16 and vs DET in Week 17

For individual weeks, these are teams I like:

• Week 15: Arizona Cardinals (@ DET), Dallas Cowboys (@ NYG), Denver Broncos (vs CIN), Minnesota Vikings (@ CHI), Miami Dolphins (vs NYJ)
• Week 16: New Orleans Saints (vs MIA), Baltimore Ravens (@ CIN), Philadelphia Eagles (vs NYG), Las Vegas Raiders (vs DEN)
• Week 17: Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@ NYJ), New England Patriots (vs JAC), Kansas City Chiefs (vs CIN), Tennessee Titans (vs MIA)

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Projections

This week is extremely weird. We once again have four teams on bye (IND, MIA, NE, and PHI). My top tier is huge because we have a whopping five teams projected for less than 18 points – a typical week will have just one or two in that category. It drops off quickly though – while my rank 3-6 teams are better than usual, ranks 8-10 are worse, so it could still be rough if you need to dig deep. Fortunately, several of those top-tier teams have pretty low rostership. Those rostership numbers are from Yahoo. You can find me on Twitter.

Matchups

1. GB vs CHI: It is unclear if Justin Fields will play this week. He’s missed the past two games with cracked ribs, during which time Andy Dalton has been a disaster. I’m currently operating under the assumption that Fields will play (I generally defer to who is higher in our Expert Consensus Rankings), and I do think that would be good news for Green Bay compared to Dalton, even after Dalton threw four interceptions last week. It’s hard to go wrong, though – The Packers are an excellent start this week no matter what.
2. NO @ NYJ: Zach Wilson has been back for two weeks now. Last week he had his second-best game of the season (statistically), but that’s a very low bar. He and the Jets will continue to be a good matchup with a potential for greatness for the rest of the season. The Saints have a top-5 defense, so starting them against the Jets is an obvious choice.
3. SEA @ HOU: Last week we saw the return of Davis Mills for Houston, in relief of an injured Tyrod Taylor, wherein they combined to get shut out by the colts. Mills will start next week, and possibly for the rest of the season. In his seven games earlier in the season, Mills averaged more than an interception per game and about 2.9 sacks. The Texans are a good matchup with Taylor and a great one with Mills.
4. LAC vs NYG: Daniel Jones is still out with a neck injury, and Giants’ backup Mike Glennon suffered a concussion last week, meaning the Chargers get third-string QB Jake Fromm in his regular-season debut. We don’t have a lot of data to go on for Fromm, but we know he was behind Glennon on the Giants’ depth chart, and they were already an excellent matchup with Glennon playing.
5. DEN vs DET: The Lions finally got their first win last week. Jared Goff did still manage to turn over the ball twice and take three sacks, which allowed the Vikings DST to score a respectable 6 fantasy points despite the Lions score 29 real points. That was Goff’s best game, and certainly not what we expect on average. Despite their overall troubles, the Broncos are solid on defense, and I feel good about theme here.
6. TEN vs JAC: Trevor Lawrence‘s modus operandi has become, well, nothing at all. He’s thoroughly past the interception troubles he had early in the season, but that doesn’t mean he’s doing anything else. In the past five games, Lawrence has had exactly one passing TD and exactly one interception. His high sack rate (20 in that same 5-game span) and inability to score points mean the floor against Jacksonville is great, even if the ceiling isn’t super high.
7. CAR vs ATL: The team facing the Falcons keeps ending up in my top ten, and I always struggle to know what to say about them. Matt Ryan leads a bad but not terrible offense, so a good opposing defense like Carolina is a good, but not great, fantasy play.
8. CLE vs BAL: At first glance, Baltimore getting just 20 points is surprising. They’ve actually failed to hit 20 points in four straight games (of which Lamar Jackson started three), and Jackson has been taking a lot of sacks – he had seven last week! The risk is obvious, but this could be a sneaky high-upside play for a Browns team whose strength against the run matches up well against Jackson.
9. KC vs LV: Honestly, I don’t feel great about starting Kansas City against the Raiders this week. 19.5 is a pretty low projection for Las Vegas, but if you believe that, you can construct an argument where that line combines with Derek Carr‘s moderately high sack rate and the fact that they’ll be playing from behind to make the KC DST a decent play.
10. SF @ CIN: This is another case of an actually good offense, that just so happens to take a lot of sacks and turnover the ball a lot, making this a better fantasy matchup than a real one. Joe Burrow is playing through a dislocated finger in his throwing hand. He suffered the injury early in last week’s game and ended up with a pretty poor stat line: 2 TDs (1 passing, 1 rushing) to 3 turnovers and 6 sacks. If it continues to bother him to the same degree, we could see a similar performance this week.

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Jacob Herlin is a Data Scientist for FantasyPros. For more from Jacob, check out his archive and follow him @jacoblawherlin.