Week 17 DFS Picks: Tournament Plays

Every Sunday in the weekly fantasy chats, I get asked about my favorite plays of the week or who is in my player pool that weekend for DFS.

This article series covers exactly that.

Every week, I will go through the players I am targeting to play in DFS for all games, tournaments, and game stacks.

The idea is that this will paint a clearer picture of framing lineups.

Week 17 DFS Content:

It is not that tournament players cannot be used in cash games.

If a player here works out for your team structure in cash games surrounding your primary core, use them.

These are just the players who come with some element of inherent risk but are the primary players I still want to be ahead of the field compared to the percentage of rosters they are projected to make this weekend.

I will analyze the player selections and game writeups, but for a detailed breakdown of the players and games, check out the Week 17 Worksheet.

Quarterback

Baker Mayfield ($6,900/$8,200)

Mayfield has put together four top-10 scoring weeks over his five games since the bye.

Getting Mike Evans back, he leads the NFL with 8.7 yards per pass attempt over that span.

The Bucs are a high-total, home favorite.

But the Bucs should have a balanced approach here since the Panthers are so awful defending the run compared to the pass.

Carolina has allowed 235 passing yards or fewer in four straight games, which includes a game against Mayfield.

They are allowing 6.8 yards per attempt since their Week 11 bye, 12th in the league.

But they have allowed a 6.5% touchdown rate over that span, which is 31st in the league.

Mayfield may not stack high yardage counts here, but he can get there via touchdown production.

Jordan Love ($6,200/$7,800)

The Packers have adopted a run-first approach on offense.

Since their Week 10 bye, Green Bay has had a 45.9% dropback rate, the lowest in the league.

It will be a test to see if Minnesota can push them out of the running game.

When these teams played in Week 4, Green Bay was forced into a 75.7% dropback rate, their highest rate in a game this season.

Minnesota faces the highest pass rate in the NFL due to playing with leads and locking up the run.

As a result, Minnesota allows 268.7 passing yards per game, 30th in the league.

They are fourth in passing points allowed per attempt (0.366) but are 20th in passing points allowed per game (14.0) since they face a league-high 38.1 attempts per game.

In recent weeks, we have seen Geno Smith (314), Kirk Cousins (344), and Caleb Williams (340) hit 300 yards against Minnesota through volume, with Williams and Smith scoring over 20 fantasy points in those games.

Bryce Young ($5,600/$7,100)

Young is coming off the best fantasy game of his career, posting a career-high 27.1 standard points.

This was Young’s third QB1 scoring week over his past five games.

Young has rushed for 29.3 yards per game over his past six starts, averaging 5.9 fantasy points per game via rushing over that span.

Over that period, only Jalen Hurts (9.9%) and Jayden Daniels (9.7%) have a higher scramble rate than Young (9.2%).

That is relevant because the Buccaneers are 23rd in scramble yards allowed to quarterbacks.

When these teams met in Week 13, Young was QB8 (23.6 points).

Running Back