The Dallas Cowboys will face the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 17. Here’s fantasy football start-sit advice for every Cowboys and Eagles skill player who has the potential to make a fantasy impact during the game.
Looking for more lineup advice? Head over to our Week 17 Fantasy Start-Sit Cheat Sheet, where we cover every fantasy-relevant player in every game.
Jalen Hurts, QB
Updated at 11:30 AM ET on Sunday, December 29
Hurts did not clear concussion protocol and was ruled out on Friday. Kenny Pickett will start.
Hurts completed 1 of 4 passes for 11 yards in Week 16 before entering concussion protocol and being ruled out for the remainder of the game. This was obviously a brutal break for fantasy managers, as there was no reason to not play him with the utmost confidence (2023 was his first season without a DNP).
Process-wise, you did nothing wrong. I understand that prioritizing process over results this time of year is irritating to hear, but you did nothing wrong.
This is pretty clearly a situation to keep tabs on and will require some creativity on your end if you still have meaningful games in front of you. Kenny Pickett isn’t the answer to your issues.
Hurts turned 14 completions into 202 yards and a pair of scores (56 rush yards and two touchdowns) in the Week 10 shellacking of the Cowboys — Pickett isn’t assuming that sort of projection.
Maybe you go to Michael Penix Jr. (at WAS) or lean into the recent struggles of the Bears and take a chance on a sporadic producer in Geno Smith.
Kenny Pickett, QB
Updated at 11:30 AM ET on Sunday, December 29
Pickett is active and will make his first start of the season today
Kenny Pickett has as many touchdown passes as interceptions for his career, and without much rushing equity, he’s not the type of backup quarterback that will walk into even reasonable fantasy value.
The Eagles have little motivation to force the issue this week, thus making Pickett far more risk than any reward as a spot-starting option.
Cooper Rush, QB
Brandon Aubrey has made more 55+ yard field goals this season (six) than the Cowboys have made 55+ yard plays during the regular season since the start of 2023 (five).
Things aren’t great in Dallas these days, but Cooper Rush does have 290 passing yards or multiple touchdown tosses in four of his past five games. Like half a dozen quarterbacks that will be gracing NFL fields this week, his value is not what we are worried about as much as it is his ability to get his top option involved.
Mission accomplished up to this point.
The Eagles’ defense is elite, and Rush isn’t likely to finish the week with top-15 or even top-20 numbers (Week 10 in this spot: 23 passes for 45 yards with zero touchdowns and zero interceptions). But if he can get CeeDee Lamb his required 10 looks, the fantasy community will give Rush a nice firm handshake and nod.
Saquon Barkley, RB
As a team, the Giants have 1,603 rushing yards and 12 touchdowns on 369 carries – Saquon Barkley has turned his 314 carries into 1,838 yards and 13 scores this season.
Barkley is nothing short of special, and while we didn’t need 109 rushing yards with two scores in the first quarter last week to remind us of that, it never hurts to get statistical proof when leagues are being decided.
If you’re scrolling through the All-Pro’s box scores and come across the less-than-ideal numbers he produced in the first matchup with Dallas, don’t worry about it. Philadelphia controlled that game and ran the ball effectively (187 yards); it just didn’t need Barkley to do the heavy lifting (36.8% carry share).
With the Eagles still holding out hope for the NFC’s top seed, I’d expect a heavy dose of their RB1 early in this game to remove all doubt from the outcome. He’s a top-five play this week and in the 1.01 conversation for redraft leagues next season.
Rico Dowdle, RB
All of the Rico Dowdle momentum (three straight 100-yard games) came to a screeching half on Sunday night against the Buccaneers, as his 13 carries picked up just 23 yards. He did, however, manage to catch multiple passes for the eighth time in 10 games to give his managers a little something. Even so, it was a big letdown, and it’s hard to project a major bounce back against the best yards-per-play defense in the sport.
Limited efficiency is one thing, but getting vultured by Ezekiel Elliott is another. Any lead-back on a below-average offense needs to control his team’s few scoring chances—we didn’t see that last week.
I’m hanging tough in there and have Dowdle as a reasonable Flex option. The versatility is something that I’m banking on – either they ride Dowdle in a major way and keep this thing close, or they are forced to pass more often than they’d like. He turned 15 touches into 56 yards during the Week 10 loss to these Eagles, the production that I think makes for a pretty good starting point.
He’s far from “safe,” but at this point, I value his role more than anything going on in Tennessee, Jacksonville, or even Kansas City.
A.J. Brown, WR
Updated at 11:30 AM ET on Sunday, December 29
Brown is active for today's game
“If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”
Jerry Seinfeld, one of the great philosophers of our time, uttered that line to George Costanza years ago. I can’t help but think it applies here. The Eagles’ instinct last season was to come out of the gates firing. Establish themselves as a powerhouse and heavily feature A.J. Brown in their attempt to overwhelm you with production.
It worked until it didn’t.
If the opposite then has to be right (assuming that the Eagles are George Costanza, the Everyman who has a hard time getting out of his own way), how does ending the season like that sound?
Weeks 3-7, 2023:
- 29.9% on-field target share
- Four end zone targets
- 25.8 PPR PPG
Weeks 15-16, 2024:
- 34.7% on-field target share
- Four end zone targets
- 24.4 PPR PPG
Included in both of those sample sizes is a game with at least 13 targets and a touchdown against the Commanders. The stars align further for the week following this data set, as Brown faced a defense that allowed over 7.5 yards per pass and a touchdown on 5% of all throws and gets the pleasure of another such spot this weekend.
In said spot last season, Brown casually dropped 33 PPR points and carried your squad. That was a Week 8 game — the stakes are higher now, with Philadelphia a win away from locking up the NFC East. I’m that much more confident in Philly’s go-to option.
Of course, the math will be reworked should Jalen Hurts sit out, but there won’t be an actionable change for season-long managers, just less bravado from your humble narrator.
Brandin Cooks, WR
Brandin Cooks’ playing time is inching up, but he’s simply going to run out of time. We saw signs of decline last season; even if you think there is gas left in the tank, this Cooper Rush-led offense doesn’t have much of a path to accessing that.
In his eight appearances this season, Cooks is averaging just 0.80 yards per route. He’s well off of fantasy radars in all formats at this point and might have a hard time finding a suitor when he becomes an unrestricted free agent after this season wraps.
CeeDee Lamb, WR
Updated at 4:20 PM ET on Thursday, December 26
Lamb has officially been ruled out for the remainder of the NFL season due to a shoulder injury.
“My shoulder is outta whack, I’m not gonna even lie to you. … It’s not fun, but I love this game that much.”
I don’t know how to spin that forward. Should we take the low-hanging fruit and drop him down the ranks, or should we go the contrarian route, using this mindset as the type of grind that we want in our starters?
The Cowboys took the decision making out of our hands on Thursday by ruling out their star receiver not only for Week 17, but for Week 18 as well. Lamb is a special talent that you should consider in the first round of your 2025 drafts, but he can safely be released in redraft formats now.
Jalen Tolbert and KaVontae Turpin are the receivers set to benefit the most from this status, but neither is a safe play. If you’re swimming upstream as an underdog, I’d swing big on Turpin, but you have to do so with the understanding that the floor is a goose egg.
DeVonta Smith, WR
DeVonta Smith went from GOAT to goat in a hurry last week after he dropped a pass that would have likely kept the Eagles in a great spot to compete for the NFC’s one seed and eventually resulted in a soul-crushing loss to the Commanders.
That series of events hurt Philadelphia fans in a significant way, but the game as a whole was fine for forward-thinking fantasy managers. Smith has cleared a dozen expected PPR points in three straight games (he didn’t have one such performance in his previous six) and has 6+ catches or a touchdown in five of his past seven.
The interesting part of Smith’s profile is that what we perceived as his greatest skill has been removed from his role. Over his past four games, his aDOT sits at just 6.7 yards, essentially half of where it was in the previous three games (13.3).
With time, that’s resulted in an increase in efficiency (85% catch rate over the past two weeks, and that includes the bad drop last week that he catches at least 95% of the time) and could well be the norm for the remainder of the regular season as the Eagles try to figure out how to best maximize their weapons.
Smith was held to just two catches in the Week 10 meeting with the Cowboys, but I’m comfortable projecting him to double or triple that output given his new target diet. This season, the Cowboys are the worst team in the league in terms of completion percentage and yards per attempt on those short passes. Philadelphia fans aren’t usually ones to forgive and forget, but I think Smith can work his way back into the good graces with a big Week 17.
Jalen Tolbert, WR
Despite limited usage, Tolbert scored in consecutive weeks and has six on the season. His nose for the end zone might be a trait we circle back to in August, but in a Cooper Rush offense that involves a banged-up CeeDee Lamb, I have no interest in betting on this passing game in any capacity.
Dallas has been putting up some points in plus matchups lately, but this Eagles defense certainly isn’t one that I’m targeting, even after a disappointing Week 16 performance.
There are two Cowboys worth your while, but Tolbert isn’t one of them.
Grant Calcaterra TE
Right idea.
Fantasy is very much a game of opportunity, and when the Dallas Goedert injury opened the door for a one-to-one replacement in terms of role, Grant Calcaterra was a pretty reasonable add.
From a process standpoint, you weren’t wrong. He’s played over 88% of the snaps and three straight games, running 92 routes in the process. The problem is that instead of keeping Goedert’s role in-house at the TE position, they’ve (logically) elected to load up their star receivers with looks.
In those three games, Calcaterra’s 92 routes have yielded just 38 yards and only a single target over the past two weeks. I could alert you that the Cowboys own the worst red-zone defense in the league (75% touchdown rate, 36-of-48) in an effort to sell you on him as a streamer, but I’m not going to do that.
Well, I guess I just did. I’m arming you with information that I’m choosing to ignore in this instance. Either Jalen Hurts is a full go, and he soaks up a ton of red-zone usage, or he sits, and this team struggles to get to the red zone at their season rate (3.9 per game, sixth most).
Jake Ferguson, TE
There was some momentum building in Jake Ferguson’s statistical profile ahead of Sunday night, but his 36% on-field target share against the Buccaneers was downright impressive.
We are well past the point where he is a lineup lock, so I don’t mind grabbing the elevated floor that he offers, even if there isn’t much of a ceiling to chase. Last week against Tampa Bay, his nine targets netted just 12 air yards, but that role resulted in six catches and a double-digit performance, which will work with regularity.
The idea of Ferguson is strong. He’d slide into the back end of my TE1 rankings in a neutral matchup, and I’d pick him over all waiver wire options. Sadly, this week is not that.
The Eagles allow the lowest completion percentage and the fewest yards per pass attempt on those short throws, which puts Ferguson managers in a bind. They have to rely more than they want to on a touchdown, a tough ask for a player who hasn’t earned an end-zone target since Week 1.
He currently sits outside of my top 12 at the position and is more likely to fall outside of my top 15 by kickoff than move into that TE1 tier.