Patriots vs. Chargers 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 Chargers and Patriots.

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

Trust = spike production for that player

Quarterback

Justin Herbert: Herbert used an incredible second half on Thursday night to post his best fantasy outing in over a month. 

He threw for 284 yards (his most since Week 11), connected on 74.2% of his passes (his highest rate since Week 10) for 9.2 yards per pass attempt (his most since Week 9), and scored 22.2 fantasy points (his most since Week 11).

Herbert used play action on 45.2% of his dropbacks, his highest rate in a game since Week 1 of the 2022 season.

Off of play action, he was 11-of-14 for 134 yards (9.6 Y/A).

Herbert has been up-and-down this season for fantasy, posting four top-10 scoring weeks with nine weeks as the QB16 or lower.

That is what has made him a weekly QB2 and matchup-based streamer.

He does run into another good passing matchup if you are looking for Herbert to sustain his efficiency from last week.

New England is 26th in passing points allowed per attempt (0.463), allowing 7.3 Y/A (22nd), and a 5% touchdown rate (22nd).

To keep us honest, the Patriots just gave Josh Allen (11.2 points) and Kyler Murray (10.1 points) trouble the past two games.

New England plays man coverage 37.9% of the time, which is third in the league.

Herbert does have some unflattering metrics against man coverage.

He has completed 48.1% of his passes against man coverage, which is 31st in the league.

His 6.4 Y/A against man coverage ranks 25th, and his 3.8% touchdown rate is 33rd.

The Chargers should look to roll over the play-action rate they had last week to aid Herbert here.

New England has allowed a 71.1% completion rate (24th) for 8.4 Y/A (19th) and a 7% touchdown rate on play-action passes.

Drake Maye: Maye has been a rock-steady QB2 performer.

Coming off another 17.2 fantasy points (QB17) against Buffalo, Maye has averaged 17.1 fantasy points over his nine complete games.

He has thrown multiple touchdown passes in two of his past seven games and has thrown an interception in seven consecutive weeks, which has capped his ceiling.

But he also has rushed for 36.8 yards per game in his starts, covering up those turnovers through a fantasy lens.

He only has one week higher than QB11 in weekly scoring, so he is best used as a floor-based QB2 and a value play on the Saturday DFS slate.

This matchup looks different now from how the Chargers opened the season.

The Charger pass defense has been a bit leaky over the back half of the season.

They have allowed a 5.9% touchdown rate over their past seven games (27th) with 7.2 yards per pass attempt (18th) after allowing 6.4 Y/A (5th) and a 2.6% touchdown rate prior (4th).

They have allowed 20.3 fantasy points per game over that stretch.

They have allowed Will Levis (19.1 points) and Bo Nix (21.0 points) to have solid fantasy games as streamers, along with strong weeks for Lamar Jackson (22.6 points), Joe Burrow (29.0 points) and Baker Mayfield (28.0 points).

Running Back

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