Analyst Scott Pianowski will be answering start-sit questions on Twitter/X (@YahooFantasy) beginning at noon ET — just tag your questions with #AskFFL (consider it your fantasy Bat Signal).
The NFL and the Detroit Lions are continuing to investigate the situation involving a fan and Pittsburgh Steelers receiver DK Metcalf that happened during Sunday’s game at Ford Field.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, the league is interested in pursuing the matter following information provided to them by Metcalf during Tuesday’s appeal hearing for his two-game suspension. The investigation will focus on if the fan violated the Lions’ guest code of conduct.
The incident occurred in the second quarter of Sunday’s game. While the Lions’ offense was on the field, Metcalf approached a fan sitting in the front row and wearing a blue wig. After exchanging words with the fan, Metcalf appeared to throw a punch at the fan’s head.
While the incident was captured on the broadcast, it was not seen by officials.
Because of that, Metcalf was not penalized and was not ejected from the contest.
The fan claimed Metcalf threw a punch because the fan taunted the wideout with his full name, DeKaylin Zecharius.
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On Monday, however, sources told Tom Pelissero of NFL Network that the fan used a derogatory term when taunting Metcalf about his mother. That source also claimed the fan called Metcalf “something we both know you don’t call a Black man.”
“Ryan Kennedy categorically denies using the ‘N-word,’ the ‘C-word,’ or any racial, misogynistic, or hate-based slur during the incident that occurred on December 21, 2025 at Ford Field during the Pittsburgh Steelers-Detroit Lions game.
“These allegations are completely false.”
During his Tuesday news conference, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said that although he doesn’t condone Metcalf’s actions, he supports the wide receiver.
“He did explain to me why he did what he did, and I certainly don’t condone the behavior, but I support DK,” Tomlin said. “And I really don’t have a lot to add other than what I just told you.”
Kennedy was escorted from his seat but not ejected from the stadium. The Lions told The Athletic on Tuesday that the team did not plan to take action against Kennedy.
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Kennedy held a press conference on Friday with his attorneys, though there were reportedly issues with the Zoom audio. Per ESPN’s Brooke Pryor, Kennedy asked Metcalf to “tell people he didn’t use [a] racial slur or hate speech.”
The Steelers finish the regular season against the Cleveland Browns this Sunday and the Baltimore Ravens in Week 18. Pittsburgh can wrap up the AFC North title this week by beating Cleveland or with a loss by the Ravens to the Green Bay Packers.
Hello Yahoo! It’s been a pleasure writing each week about the players projected to play above or below their usual level, and it’s been so cool having my projection system, THE BLITZ, available to Yahoo+ users as part of Yahoo’s suite of tools. This will be the final edition of this column for the 2025 season, so if you’re still alive in your league, best of luck to you this week!
The fantasy and betting communities have been down on the Indy passing attack ever since Philip Rivers took over … but THE BLITZ hasn’t been. Others are starting to come around after a strong performance from Rivers on Monday, and THE BLITZ is expecting another one this week.
While this could apply to any of their pass-catchers, Downs is the most interesting relative to his year-to-date performance, given that his route share has risen from 62% prior to Week 15 to 88% in two weeks with Rivers. Downs has generated a 22% target share in this span, and the matchup this week is a good one at home, in a dome, with a passing game script. You could do much worse than Downs in a pinch this week.
With TreVeyon Henderson in concussion protocol and unlikely to play in Week 17, Stevenson should have the backfield almost entirely to himself. D’Ernest Johnson will mix in a bit, but this could be a very heavy workload for Stevenson, who only slid into the backup role because he got injured, and Henderson’s performance was too great to ignore.
But make no mistake, the Patriots coaching staff loves Stevenson, and he figures to see a ton of work both on the ground and through the air. And going up against a bad Jets team, the game script couldn’t get much better for him to see a heavy workload.
Brock Bowers unexpectedly went on IR this week, leaving Michael Mayer as the TE1 for Las Vegas. While the offense as a whole has left a lot to be desired (and now will be without its top pass-catcher), they’ve also experienced a good deal of bad variance on top of their poor play. With just the modest bit of regression we saw from them last week, Mayer becomes one of the most interesting tight ends on the whole slate.
In two games he played without Bowers earlier this year, his route share spiked from 36% to 85%, and his target share followed suit from 9% to 21%. This is a guy who comes with a strong pedigree (early second-round pick just two years ago) and whom the Vegas coaching staff has spoken highly of, going as far as calling him a No. 1 tight end in the league earlier this year. I am very in on him this week and next.
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Christian Watson (and other Packers pass-catchers)
Watson has been highly impressive of late and has picked up a ton of hype throughout the fantasy community, but this week sets up as a potential letdown spot. For one thing, QB Jordan Love is in concussion protocol and, as of this writing, isn’t looking likely to play. Backup Malik Willis would be enough of a downgrade, but he is also injured and has a chance to sit out as well. In two starts without Love last year, the Packers went extremely run-heavy, running the ball 38% more than the average team (context-adjusted) compared to just 5% more with Love. This game also projects as the slowest-paced of the week by far, reducing total play volume. And with a fully healthy wide receiver room, there is some risk of losing snaps for Watson and his teammates as the team juggles playing time.
Cook has been one of the best values in fantasy this season, but much of that value has come from positive game scripts with Buffalo playing from ahead. In Week 17, the Bills face off against the Eagles with just a 1.5-point spread. In a close game, Cook is less likely to see the kind of workload on the ground he’s used to (especially if the Bills aren’t leading late), and his pass-game usage has never really been impressive.
Throw in the fact that both teams play at a slow pace, and that their 21.5 implied team total would be fewer points scored than all but four of their games this year, and we have the makings of a good-but-not-great outing here for Cook.
Saquon is in a very similar boat to Cook, except for the fact that he has been a disappointment for those who drafted him, rather than a value. But on the opposite side of this close, slow-paced game, Barkley is also unlikely to be able to post a big score with Philly being forced to pass more often than usual. This is especially detrimental to Barkley because he’s gotten just two receptions over the past four weeks, with Will Shipley taking on more third-down work and Barkley’s target share being cut in half from 14% down to 7%. THE BLITZ doesn’t even call Barkley an RB1 in most fantasy leagues this week.
Though college sports is now professional in almost every sense — including players who have signed pro contracts in Europe and the NBA G League finding their way to college basketball this year — the Nnaji development feels like new territory. This isn’t someone who slipped through the cracks or got bad advice, turned pro out of high school and ran into a career dead end. Nnaji, who has been playing in Europe, was one draft slot away from being a first-round pick with a guaranteed NBA contract. He played in the NBA Summer League and has even been part of a trade.
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“Santa Claus is delivering mid season acquisitions…this s*** is crazy!!” UConn coach Dan Hurley wrote on X shortly after the news became public.
Is this really the type of player who should be part of college basketball? Who knows, maybe Arizona can get LeBron James on the bench for its Final Four push if he wants to play with his son Bryce.
That would be absurd, of course — and, to be clear, expressly against NCAA rules since these pro-to-college cases must take place within five years of high school — but you can be forgiven if it seems like anything goes these days.
And guess what? As more college programs pursue mid-year additions, some have even checked in with G League players on two-way contracts who have appeared in actual NBA games. That seems inevitable at some point, too, given where this trend seems to be headed.
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But don’t blame Baylor or any program for pursuing those players.
While you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in college sports who thinks this is a good development, schools are merely doing what the NCAA has given them the green light to do as it waits and hopes for some kind of antitrust protection from Congress that would allow for the actual enforcement of the rulebook rather than a mishmash of eligibility rulings.
It’s tempting to wail away on the NCAA’s ineffectiveness here, especially if you’re, say, a Kentucky fan who remembers when the NCAA denied Enes Kanter’s eligibility because he received $33,000 over his necessary living expenses from a pro team in Turkey. That seems picayune compared to what’s happening regularly now, where schools are arranging for far higher payments to European teams just to get players bought out of contracts so they can come to college.
At the same time, the NCAA is in an incredibly difficult spot. Its executives and attorneys understand that each time the line of demarcation moves, as it has here, it chips away at the NCAA’s ability to ensure college sports are played by college students, not people who bypassed that opportunity and want to suddenly turn back because NIL has become so lucrative.
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But the NCAA also sees a legal environment with a deluge of eligibility cases, with some judges granting sixth and seventh years to players. Gonzaga’s Tyon Grant-Foster, who will turn 26 before the NCAA tournament, was originally denied eligibility but granted a preliminary injunction in Washington to play this season — seven years after he enrolled in junior college.
NCAA officials would argue nothing major has changed from a policy standpoint; rather, what’s different is the willingness of schools to recruit and enroll those players — and, of course, the willingness of those players to come play college basketball. Before there was big NIL money involved, it just wouldn’t have been something to consider. Now, it’s often a far more lucrative path than trying to make it to the NBA from the G League.
The combination of schools looking for players outside the traditional recruiting realm and judges eroding the NCAA’s ability to enforce eligibility rules has led everyone here, whether they like it or not.
Sports attorney Darren Heitner theorized Friday in his “Newsletter, Image, Likeness” blog on the legal landscape in college sports that this could also be part a calculated strategy by the NCAA to present college basketball as “one option within a broader professional and semi-professional basketball market that includes the G League, international leagues and other alternatives” to make the argument that the NCAA isn’t a monopoly.
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“If the NCAA can establish through these eligibility decisions that college basketball and professional leagues occupy the same competitive labor market, it will fundamentally reshape the antitrust analysis in ongoing and future cases,” Heitner wrote.
The question, though, is to what end? Is the point of this enterprise now merely about legal survival while college basketball transforms into a place for guys stuck in the NBA developmental system to come and get a big payday?
That doesn’t seem right. And even if the NCAA can get some kind of protection from Congress — it’s been six years and counting since the organization started down that path, so no guarantees there — it’s hard to imagine some of this stuff just comes to a hard stop. Once the window opens this wide, it’s difficult to close.
Maybe it’s time for college basketball and the NBA to sit down and figure out a different model, one that perhaps mimics hockey’s system where players can be drafted but play in college until they decide to sign with their pro team.
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Imagine a world where nobody has to enter the NBA Draft, they’re just automatically in the pool of draft-eligible players the year they turn 18 years old. At that point, decisions about what’s best for their development would take place collectively between the NBA franchise that drafted them and their college team. Perhaps you could even construct a system where a drafted player can join the NBA or G League team on a provisional basis after the college season and then go back to college if they feel like they need another year.
Of course that would require a lot of work, cooperation and collective bargaining changes on the NBA side. But it makes a lot more sense than college coaches who need another body to bypass a high school kid and instead recruit a grown man who never intended to go to college with a six-figure payday.
If they’re simply going to wait around for Congress to deliver guardrails, Nnaji is going to be the first of many former NBA Draft picks to find their way back to college basketball and make the NCAA look like it has no rules at all.
Dallas Mavericks forward Anthony Davis is likely to miss several upcoming games after suffering a groin injury on Thursday, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.
Davis tallied 3 points, 3 rebounds, 2 blocks and 1 steal before he left the game.
Another injury for Davis
This injury for the 32-year-old Davis is the latest in a season and a career filled with them. Davis missed 14 consecutive games early in the season with a calf strain. He’s now missed 14 or more games in 11 of his 14 NBA seasons.
The Mavericks acquired Davis as the centerpiece of the return in the trade that sent franchise cornerstone and perennial All-NBA guard Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers in his prime at 25 years old. They were aware of Davis’ injury history when they acquired him.
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Davis missed 24 of a possible 33 games with the Mavericks last season due to injury following the midseason trade. He’s missed 16 of 31 games this season and now appears to be in line to miss more time. The Mavericks dropped to 12-20 with Thursday’s loss, good for 11th place in the Western Conference.
You’ll need help every week to make those tough fantasy football lineup decisions, especially now that we’re into the championship round of the playoffs. Luckily for you, the team at Yahoo has everything you need to prep for the week with updated rankings for Half-PPR and Full-PPR, as well as plenty of analysis via articles, video and audio. Below you’ll find a complete set of links to help you with all your fantasy football needs for the week.
Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones went back to the mailbag for this one.
Questions range from the Minnesota Lynx’s ideal draft strategy, to the Portland Trail Blazers’ late-game offense, to the Houston Rockets’ ideal closing five, to zone-beaters for rec league basketball teams. We bounced around quite a bit — thank you to everyone who sent in questions.
As the Indianapolis Colts prepared to face the San Francisco 49ers last week, there was reason for optimism about the Colts’ defensive potential.
Just one week prior, Indianapolis had held Sam Darnold, Jaxson Smith-Njigba and their Seattle Seahawks teammates to 18 points and no touchdowns. Why not beat up on another playoff-bound NFC West team as prime-time football beckoned?
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But the Colts failed to stop, or even slow, Brock Purdy and the Niners in a 48-point outing that featured the 49ers’ first five-passing touchdown performance in 30 years. And while Indianapolis was not the first to fall prey to the 49ers’ offensive prowess this season, the Colts’ top weakness could offer a tell as the 49ers host the Chicago Bears on Sunday Night Football this weekend.
The Colts’ defense has ranked right around league average in points allowed (18th) and has defended the run fifth-best among NFL teams. But Indianapolis’ pass defense, and particularly its pass rush, has struggled mightily to disrupt opponents.
In fact, no team has pass-rushed less efficiently this season than the Colts, who rank dead last with a 28% pass-rush win rate, per ESPN’s metric. (For context, the top-ranked Cleveland Browns are thwarting pass blocks at a 47% clip.)
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The second-worst pass-rushing defense, at a 29% win rate: the Bears.
It’s a striking weakness for a defense that in several other metrics should worry opponents.
No team ranks better in turnover differential, one of the statistics that most clearly correlates with winning, than the Bears. Their +21 turnover differential is thanks in large part to their league-best 31 takeaways including a league-best 21 interceptions.
“When the ball’s in the air, they’re aggressive, they don’t hesitate,” Purdy said this week. “Obviously their guys have length and just athletic ability across the board. And I just feel like they’re really well-coached when it comes to being aggressive and not trying to second-guess things.
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“They pop, that’s for sure, on film.”
But will their opportunism without a pass-rush threat be enough to slow Purdy and Co.?
Will Purdy’s success vs. Bears hinge on how long he has in pocket?
Since returning from a big toe injury that sidelined him six straight weeks and eight total, Purdy has been on a heater.
He’s thrown 13 touchdowns to four interceptions in his return. The 49ers have won all five of those games.
Forget their somewhat-susceptible defense retooling after season-ending injuries to five-time Pro Bowl edge rusher Nick Bosa, four-time All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner and first-round rookie defensive lineman Mykel Williams. Forget also that their offense is playing without its top receivers of recent years, following an offseason trade of Deebo Samuel and an injury-related contract dispute with Brandon Aiyuk that has led to Aiyuk missing the entire season.
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Behind running back Christian McCaffrey, as well as Purdy and tight end George Kittle when they weren’t each missing at least five weeks, the 49ers have raced to 11 wins and a chance at the NFC’s top seed.
“I think it’s tough,” Bears defensive coordinator Dennis Allen said. “I think backs and tight ends are really tough matchups on a defense. If you have an outstanding receiver, there’s some things that you can really do to try to take those guys away. It becomes more challenging inside of the tight end, running back position. … I don’t think they do anything where they say, ‘We’re going to throw it to this guy on this particular play.’
“I think [Purdy] does a great job of getting through his progressions, and he throws it to the open guy.”
When the 49ers’ Brock Purdy has time in the pocket, he looks like one of the best QBs in the NFL. (Photo by Michael Allio/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Rhythm and time in the pocket are key to those progressions.
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With an average time of 3.31 seconds to throw Monday, Purdy threw five touchdowns to one interception. Three times this season, including twice before his six-week stretch out, Purdy threw multiple interceptions. Those three games correspond with his quickest times to throw, highlighted by a three-interception game vs. the Carolina Panthers when Purdy had just 2.9 seconds to throw, per Next Gen Stats.
Without pass rushers who can win, the Bears may struggle to disrupt the timing of Kyle Shanahan’s well-schemed offense and thus struggle to disrupt the rhythm of Purdy and his targets. The 49ers’ offense is not slow, per se; rather, it efficiently works through several options as Purdy patiently awaits his routes to develop.
“Just watch the speed at which they operate, the speed at which they operate up front in the running game and how they get to their landmarks,” Allen said. “All the offensive linemen are working in unison in terms of how they run their routes. Each player will run a certain route, and no matter who the player is, it looks the same.
“That, to me, is the detail in coaching.”
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Bears, 49ers matchup feels like ‘another playoff game’ with high NFC stakes
A defensive assistant who played against the 49ers this year emphasized the power of Shanahan’s scheme in the success of both Purdy and Mac Jones, who helped the 49ers to a 5-3 record in Purdy’s absence while throwing 13 touchdowns to six interceptions.
“Mac Jones played well, too,” the assistant told Yahoo Sports. “Their run game forces defense[s] to play single-high safety coverage, giving the QB easy reads.”
In-breaking routes inside the numbers and quick passes off quick reads follow. Purdy benefits when he has time; but that doesn’t mean he’ll always take it.
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“Plays to Purdy’s skill set,” the assistant said, adding that Shanahan “is a complete stud as play caller.”
And yet, if the 49ers were put before the College Football Playoff committee, their winning streak may not merit the credit of all five-game winning streaks. None of the five teams they’ve beaten in that stretch has more than eight wins; three have already been eliminated from postseason contention, while the Colts have less than a 1% chance of advancing, per Next Gen Stats.
Only the Panthers, still battling the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the NFC South title, are on track to make the playoffs. The Panthers intercepted Purdy three times.
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And in his two September games, against the playoff-bound Seattle Seahawks and Jacksonville Jaguars, Purdy threw two interceptions in each game.
So against the 11-4 Bears, another playoff team and the league leader in takeaways, Purdy will face his toughest opponent in three months.
“I want to score a touchdown every drive,” Purdy said. “So I’m looking at myself like, ‘All right, how did we not convert there?’ The interception at the end of the [Colts] game, like tip ball, it was high. So, just watching the film and being real with myself about how I could still be better with my accuracy on certain plays and being aggressive and not second-guessing on certain plays.
“I’m getting complacent with going through my reads and stuff and making the right decisions. So definitely have learned from that, but there’s always still room for improvement.”
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The Bears will aim to disrupt that decision-making as they visit San Francisco as 3-point underdogs in the matchup of 11-win teams.
They’ll prepare for the 49ers’ pre-snap motion and their versatility; their schematic wrinkles that “force the defense to communicate and try to get guys out of position,” cornerback Kevin Byard said.
A win over the Green Bay Packers, even without Jordan Love, resonated last week in Chicago. But the Bears hope they have not peaked.
Pass rush or not, they’ll be coming for Purdy.
“The more you win games, the bigger the next game is,” Byard said. “Obviously, we just got a huge win over Green Bay [last] Saturday night. But this game is even bigger. This is a team that’s already clinched the playoffs. This will be another time to be able to measure up to a team like that.
T.J. Watt has been ruled out for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Week 17 game against the Cleveland Browns days after returning to the practice field
Just two weeks after he suffered a partially punctured lung and had to undergo surgery, Watt took the practice field for the first time on Wednesday as a limited participant, doing individual drills with the defense.
While head coach Mike Tomlin believes that Watt is fully recovered from the surgery, the four-time All-Pro won’t play this week.
“That’s a fair estimation, but again, I’ll let him speak in terms of his medical,” Tomlin said, via ESPN’s Brooke Pryor. “I think for me, to talk about injury is one thing. To talk about medical is something else. And so that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been a little bit hesitant besides my lack of expertise on the subject matter.”
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Watt was undergoing a dry needling treatment session at the team’s practice facility earlier this month when he started to feel discomfort. He was sent to a local hospital for testing, and then needed to undergo surgery to stabilize and repair a partially collapsed lung.
Watt missed the team’s last two games — wins over the Miami Dolphins and Detroit Lions — as a result. The 31-year-old has 53 total tackles and seven sacks in 13 games this season, his first after inking a then-record three-year, $123 million extension with the team.
The Steelers enter Sunday’s contest in Cleveland with a 9-6 record and can clinch the AFC North with a win over the Browns. If the Baltimore Ravens fall on Saturday night in their game against the Green Bay Packers, the Steelers will win the division, too. That would send them into their third straight postseason.
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While Watt would undoubtedly give the defense a big boost, the team won’t rush his return — especially if their playoff status is already secured come game time.
“It’s awesome to have him out there,” linebacker Alex Highsmith said. “Just seeing him back out in the field with us, he’s getting better every single day, so I think just to have him back out there, just as a leader for our group, it’s just awesome to see. Excited to see how he continues to work his way back.”
The Chicago White Sox made a surprising signing right before Christmas when they agreed to a deal with Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami. As his posting window was nearing a close, there was a thought that the big-time power bat might not find a team. However, Murakami will be taking his power stroke to the South Side.
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On this episode of Baseball Bar-B-Cast, Jake Mintz is joined by special guest host Dani Wexelman as they break down the two-year, $34 million deal that will send the two-time Central League MVP to Chicago on a very much prove-it deal. They wonder how so many in the baseball world got his posting window wrong and what it could mean when he becomes a free agent at the age of 28.
Later, Jake and Dani talk about a flurry of moves that have gone on in baseball, including the Boston Red Sox trading for St. Louis Cardinals catcher Wilson Contreras, the New York Mets parting ways with another franchise staple and a wild three-team trade. They then get into the A’s extending Tyler Soderstrom and the San Diego Padres bringing back Michael King before making their picks for The Good, The Bad & The Uggla.
Photo by Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images
(Photo by Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images)
1:28 – The Opener: Murakami to the White Sox
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20:32 – Around the League: Red Sox trade for Contreras
