Bengals vs. Broncos Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 17

The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar, breaks down everything you need to know about the Week 17 matchup between the Broncos and Bengals.

Find a breakdown of every Week 17 NFL game in our Worksheet Hub.

Trust = spike production for that player

Quarterback

Joe Burrow: Burrow has thrown for at least 250 yards and 3 touchdowns in seven straight games, the longest streak in league history.

He has thrown 24 touchdowns with 5 interceptions over that stretch.

Burrow has also completed over 70% of his passes in four straight games.

Burrow is locked in as a QB1 starter in seasonal formats. How you handle this strength-on-strength matchup in Saturday's DFS is the only factor in play here.

Denver is second in the league in passing points allowed per attempt (.0358) while Burrow is fourth in passing points per attempt (0.555).

As good as Denver has been, they have not been impervious to front-end production.

They allowed Justin Herbert 9.2 yards per pass attempt in Week 16.

In Week 13, they allowed 8.6 Y/A and 497 passing yards to Jameis Winston.

In Week 9, they allowed Lamar Jackson 14.7 Y/A and 3 passing touchdowns.

It will be intriguing to see how Denver approaches slowing down Burrow because he has shown more vulnerability to the Broncos' style of defense.

Denver is eighth in the NFL in use of man coverage (31.6%) and third in blitz rate (34.2%).

Defenses have only blitzed Burrow 19.4% of the time, which is the fourth-lowest rate in the league.

Burrow has a 9.8% touchdown rate against the blitz (4th), but his 59.8% completion rate is 22nd while his 7.6 Y/A ranks 18th.

When he has not been blitzed, Burrow has completed 71% of his passes (7th) for 7.6 Y/A (10th) and a 6.4% touchdown rate (2nd).

Denver’s three lowest blitz rates this season have come over their past three games, which is noteworthy.

Their 18% man coverage rate on Thursday against the Chargers was their second-lowest rate of the season.

The Bengals see a lot of man coverage, which may be surprising given their star wide receivers.

Burrow has seen man coverage on 30% of his dropbacks, which is ninth in the league.

He has a 10.8% touchdown rate against man coverage (6th), but his 59.9% completion rate (10th) and 6.7 Y/A (22nd) are more mortal.

Against zone coverage, Burrow has completed 73.8% of his passes (4th) for 8.4 Y/A (5th). 

Bo Nix: Nix had a tale of two halves in Week 16.

He came out on fire, completing 15-of-21 (71.4%) passes for 155 yards (7.4 Y/A) with 2 touchdowns in the first half.

In the second half, he completed 14-of-19 passes (73.7%) but for only 108 yards (5.7 Y/A).

Nix only averaged 2.9 air yards per attempt in Week 16, the fewest for any quarterback in a game this season.

87.8% of his passing yards came after the catch in Week 16, the highest rate for a quarterback in a game this season.

28% of Nix’s passes this season have been at or behind the line of scrimmage.

Only Tua Tagovailoa (31.1%) and Patrick Mahomes (30.9%) have a higher rate.

The Bengals are 25th in yards allowed after the catch per completion (5.6 yards), so we could see a similar short passing approach for another week.

No matter how they were tallied, Nix still posted 21 fantasy points last week.

This is essentially a faux-playoff game on the road for Nix.

I still cannot shake Nix’s game against the Colts two weeks ago as part of how fragile he still is as a 1QB streamer, but this is a potentially high-scoring game environment against a defense that has had a lot of variance this season.

I prefer to use Nix as a floor-based QB2 and take on any upside from the game environment getting there versus chasing it.

The Bengals are 24th in pressure rate (31.9%).

When Nix has been pressured, he has completed 46% of his passes (23rd) for 5.2 Y/A (28th).

But the Bengals have also been good against streaming QB2 types this season.

They have allowed QB1 scoring weeks to Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson (x2), Jayden Daniels, Justin Herbert, and Russell Wilson.

Wilson and Herbert are comparable top-down fantasy options to Nix for a path for an upside angle, but his career resume is not as insulated.

The one thing all of those guys can do is create with their legs, something Nix is capable of.

All of those passers above, except for Wilson, also ran for 30 or more yards against the Bengals.

Cincinnati has allowed the most rushing yards to quarterbacks this season (31.9 per game).

Nix has run more in the past two weeks, adding 23 and 25 yards on the ground.

Running Back

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