It is peak bye season, with six teams off this week: ATL, BUF, CIN, JAC, NO and NYJ. Despite this, it still feels like a pretty good week for streaming, with most of the worst offenses still playing and some of the more borderline matchups facing good defenses. Rosterhip numbers are from Yahoo. You can find me on Bluesky.

Streaming Defenses: Waiver Wire & Start/Sit Advice (Week 12)

The bye week schedule for this season is weird. We have six teams sitting out this week, and then none for thanksgiving next week, and then six again in Week 14. I don’t know why the NFL chose to give us two different six-bye weeks in the final stretch of the fantasy regular season, but it sure makes roster management interesting. Despite this, the defense streaming landscape isn’t entirely barren, in part thanks to some quarterback situations that have continued to evolve this late in the season. So for the first time in a few weeks, let’s check in on some of the teams that have had recent changes at quarterback.

• Tennessee Titans: Will Levis has now started two games for the Titans since returning from a 3-week absence with a shoulder injury. One of those two games was his only zero-interception effort of the season, but he remains an excellent matchup for defenses with potential for turnovers and high sack totals every week.
• New York Giants: After six years as the Giants’ franchise QB, Daniel Jones‘ tenure in New York has come to an end. He was benched this week, indicating that the Giants intend to cut him at the end of the season. The Giants will be able to cut him with a relatively low cap hit of $22.2 million with two years remaining on his contract. The decision to bench him now is to avoid a potential injury, which would make more of his contract guaranteed. In the short term, Tommy DeVito will start. DeVito was an undrafted free agent out of Illinois in 2023, and rose to the top of the depth chart following multiple injuries for the Giants last year. DeVito had a couple strong performances in 7 games last year, but mostly lived up to expectations for a third-string QB. He has avoided very many turnovers but taken a lot of sacks, so the Giants should continue to be a very good defense matchup this season. We may also see Drew Lock play for the Giants this year. Lock was a second-round pick for the Broncos in 2019 but failed to secure the starting job long-term, playing just 24 games for the Broncos in three seasons.
• Dallas Cowboys: The Cowboys were already a horrible offense with the worst run game in the league before Dak Prescott suffered a season-ending hamstring injury in Week 9. Long-time Cowboys backup Cooper Rush took over, and has unsurprisingly failed to improve an extremely one-dimensional offense. In Rush’s two starts, the Cowboys have not exceeded 10 points. He is not the most sack and turnover-prone QB in the league, but the Cowboys are still an excellent matchup for opposing defenses.
• Indianapolis Colts: The Colts’ decision to bench Anthony Richardson after Week 8 was widely criticized, but they weren’t giving up on him – just putting him in time out. Richardson returned this past week and had his best game of the season as a passer and scored two rushing touchdowns. I’m still comfortable starting good defenses against the Colts, like this week’s Lions or Week 15’s Broncos. But if Richardson can build on this performance as a passer, he’s a dangerous matchup for lesser defenses that might not be able to contain him as a runner.

Matchups

1. HOU vs TEN: Last week Will Levis achieved a season-high 295 passing yards on 31 attempts, which was a best-case scenario for the opposing Vikings. This high rate of passing enabled a very healthy 5 sacks, bringing Levis to an excellent 12 sacks in two games since returning from injury. The Titans are in the category of matchups that look excellent when there’s a decent defense on the other side, and the Texans clear that standard easily. Last week they were able to bottle up a floundering Cowboys team, including achieving 5 sacks against Cooper Rush, who had been pretty good at avoiding sacks in his career and in two prior games this season.
2. KC @ CAR: The Panthers are coming off back-to-back wins before their Week 11 bye, but those came from fairly pedestrian point totals against not-particularly-good teams, with 23 points against the Saints and 20 points against the Giants. Now they have to face one of the best defenses in the league. Bryce Young has been playing the best football of his young career, but that’s not a high bar. Young might not be allowing the high sack rate we saw in his rookie season, but this should still be an extremely lopsided matchup as indicated by the lowest points allowed projection of the week.
3. PIT @ CLE: For Jameis Winston, the pendulum swung back in the direction of teammates catching his passes against the Saints last week, after throwing 3 interceptions in the prior game against the Chargers. I wouldn’t say he’s due for multiple picks this week – it doesn’t really work like that. But that kind of outcome is always on the table, especially for a strong defense like the Steelers who are capable of punishing his mistakes.
4. DEN @ LV: Last week the excellent Broncos defense completely shut down a Falcons offense that was looking like a wagon earlier in the season, holding them to just six points. Now they get to face their division rival Raiders, who have been one of the most consistently good defense matchups in the league this year. Gardner Minshew II might not have the highest sack rate in the league, but he has reached the 3 sack threshold four times this season, and I’m expecting that to happen again this week.
5. MIN @ CHI: Rookie Caleb Williams and the Bears have now lost four straight games since their bye. Last week’s loss was a blocked field goal heartbreaker, but a better offense would not have been in the situation of having only 19 points in the final seconds of the game. To his credit, Williams has avoided interceptions in that time, but he has taken an average of more than 5 sacks per game through four weeks. The Vikings will be the best defense the Bears have yet faced this season, so the good times (for the opposing defense) should continue.
6. TB @ NYG: The Daniel Jones era for the Giants has come to a close, but they will continue to be an excellent matchup for defenses this season. Tommy DeVito has been named the starter for this week, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Drew Lock in the mix later in the season. The Giants signed DeVito out of Illinois last year as an undrafted free agent. DeVito saw significant playing time last year due to injuries to Jones and Tyrod Taylor, so we have a decent idea of him as a player. He showed flashes of promise, but ultimately led the team to a 3-4 record in the 7 games where he had the majority of quarterback snaps, and did it while taking a ton of sacks. DeVito took 5 or more sacks in five of those games, making him an excellent fantasy defense target despite a general lack of turnovers.
7. MIA vs NE: Drake Maye has continued to elevate a pretty terrible Patriots offense and deserves a lot of credit for what he’s been able to do as a rookie, but one man is not a team. Turnovers are highly correlated with how often the offense elects to pass – not only is this a requirement for interceptions, but about half of all fumbles happen on sacks. This was illustrated last week against the Rams, as Maye threw 40 pass attempts and had this third multi-turnover performance in six starts.
8. WAS vs DAL: Last week was the third week of Cooper Rush as the Cowboys’ quarterback following Dak Prescott‘s season-ending surgery. I commented that Rush, despite not being a good quarterback, had avoided taking very many sacks in his career. That held true through two games this season, but the Texans blew that narrative open on monday night, getting to Rush 5 times. The Cowboys offense is extremely one-dimensional, with CeeDee Lamb being the only real threat on a team with the worst running game in the league. The Commanders defense might be mid, but they are a comfortable start in a matchup this good.
9. DET @ IND: Anthony Richardson made his triumphant return for the Colts last week, after two weeks in the dog house. Richardson had his best game of the season against the Jets, accounting for three touchdowns, an going 20 for 30 as a passer, his highest single-game completion percentage of his career so far. It’s fair to want to fade the Colts matchup with most defenses if you think this is the real Anthony Richardson, but the Lions aren’t most defenses. Even without Aidan Hutchinson they have been embarrassing opponents all season while their offense runs up the score. If you’ve been rolling with the Lions defense you can lock them in your lineup for at least two more weeks, before the decision starts to get more interesting in Week 14.
10. CHI vs MIN: Last week, Sam Darnold bounced back from two consecutive three-turnover games, in a 23-point win over the Titans. The Vikings are a good team overall, but 5 of their 8 wins have come with 23 points or fewer and we know multi-turnover games are on the table for Darnold – he’s done it four times this season. This is an upside play for a decent Bears defense at home.