Week 17 Fantasy Football Defensive Streaming: Leaning on the Steelers
Houston Texans
Owned: ESPN 59.4%, Yahoo 50%
numberFire Projected Rank: 28th
We're bending the rules with this last pick as the Houston Texans are owned in more than 50% of ESPN leagues, but if the Texans are available, they're worth a serious look.
They travel to Tennessee to take on a Tennessee Titans team that will now be starting Matt Cassel after losing Marcus Mariota to injury.
After Mariota was carted off late in the third quarter, Cassel went on to go 13 of 24 for 124 yards with 1 touchdown, 1 interception and was sacked once.
We saw Cassel in extended action last year with the Dallas Cowboys where he played in eight games and struggled mightily. During that time, he threw only 5 touchdowns to 7 interceptions and took 14 sacks. In terms of numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP) metric, which measures how many points a player adds to his team's expected point total, Cassel ranked 44th out of 46 quarterbacks to throw at least 100 passes.
Cassel (-31.24) cost the Cowboys 31.24 points and performed better only than Zach Mettenberger (-43.14) and Nick Foles (-59.52) on the year.
Even without J.J. Watt, the Texans defense has been solid this year - -they're sixth in our rankings. If they're available, you should feel confident picking them up for Week 17.
