Week 14 Fantasy Football Sneaky Starts & Sleepers

Dec 06, 2023

Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

All but the luckiest fantasy owners at some point need to find the proverbial diamond in the rough—a waiver wire or bench player capable of putting up some points in a pinch. This weekly feature is dedicated to that part of fantasy football. It's not pretty, but it's part of the game.

Our signature strength-of-schedule metric, adjusted fantasy points allowed (aFPA), is now using only 2023 data. Unlike SOS tools at other sites, we can adjust a defense’s fantasy points allowed by its schedule bias, so it provides a better “apples-to-apples” comparison. I’ll put the defense’s aFPA rank in parentheses below. The higher the number, the better the matchup.

Last week, we hit on three top-11 quarterbacks (Jake Browning, Sam Howell, and Gardner Minshew), four top-18 running backs (Zach Charbonnet, Ezekiel Elliott, Tyjae Spears, and Dameon Pierce), seven top-35 receivers (Christian Watson, Brandin Cooks, Rashee Rice, Elijah Moore, Romeo Doubs, Curtis Samuel, and DeVante Parker), and two top-11 tight ends (Taysom Hill and Brevin Jordan).

Let’s see who might surprise this week.

Quarterbacks

Joshua Dobbs, Vikings (@ LV, 13)

Now that he's been named the starter coming out of the Vikings' Week 13 bye, Dobbs is officially a Sneaky Start. Justin Jefferson is back, so his receiving corps gets a boost, and he's playing indoors while a number of outdoor games have wind/rain concerns this week. I do worry that he's at risk of an in-game benching, but if he avoids that he should provide low-end QB1/high-end QB2 numbers against a so-so Raiders defense.

Jake Browning, Bengals (vs. IND, 14)

I’m willing to go back to the well with Jake Browning since he played so well on Monday night (32/37 for 354 yards plus two total touchdowns) against the Jaguars. The matchup against the Colts isn’t as good, but Browning has a great receiving corps and seems to be in command of the offense.

Gardner Minshew, Colts (@ CIN, 19)

The Bengals have yielded an average of 17.8 fantasy points to the quarterback position, the eighth-most in the league. Gardner Minshew has been a little hit or miss, but he has posted at least 14.6 fantasy points in four straight neutral-to-good matchups, and the Bengals qualify as a good matchup.