The Tennessee Titans will face the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 17. Here’s fantasy football start-sit advice for every Titans 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.
Mason Rudolph, QB
Bar trivia time: Entering Week 17, how many players have an active streak longer than Mason Rudolph in terms of multi-touchdown pass games?
Four.
Rudolph has done it in three straight, a mark that ranks behind only Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff, and Jayden Daniels.
I could just leave that note there and let you get in your own head about getting creative with Rudolph in deep leagues or DFS formats, but let’s not do that.
The Jags own the lowest blitz rate in the league, and you might assume that means that Rudolph won’t be forced into bad decisions this week. But as it turns out, he’s plenty capable of making those bad throws all by himself.
It’s almost like the Titans have a type.
Rudolph hasn’t just thrown a pick in each of his five starts; he’s thrown a pick when not blitzed in each of them, including three last week in Indianapolis.
If you want to label Rudolph as this game’s most valuable fantasy QB, you have my blessing. If you want to have exposure to him in any capacity, I have questions.
Tony Pollard, RB
Game flow was a mess last week after the Titans allowed the Colts to score 24 points in the second quarter, so I’m not exactly ready to say that this is a split backfield.
First Quarter, Week 16
- Tony Pollard: 73.3% of snaps, 4.2 points, five routes
- Tyjae Spears: 26.7% of snaps, 0.1 points, two routes
The Jaguars are the league’s worst yards-per-play defense, and that would have opened up the door for Pollard to find the form he had prior to the two recent duds.
I don’t think it would have been overly likely that Pollard would repeat the 23 touches he got in the first meeting with Jacksonville, but another close game that allows for enough usage to land him as a viable RB2 was very much a reasonable expectation.
Tyjae Spears, RB
Spears has set a season-high in snap share in consecutive weeks (55.4% in Week 15 against the Bengals and 59.6% on Sunday in Indianapolis), clearing 21 PPR points (and 15 expected) in both of those contests.
Predictive?
I’d be careful. Both of those games saw north of 50 points scored, and, as of this writing, you’d get +280 odds to see this game do that. Without such a positive game-script environment, I have my doubts that a Titans committee can give fantasy managers usable production, even against a soft defense.
Spears isn’t out of the question if you’re lacking an option; he’s sitting at RB30 in my rankings, but if it came down to him or a Darnell Mooney type, I’d side with the pass catcher.
Calvin Ridley, WR
Calvin Ridley is the third Titans receiver over the past 20 years to have seven receptions and three touchdowns, gaining 30+ yards in a single season. The others? A.J. Brown (2019-20) and DeAndre Hopkins (2023).
That’s pretty good, and his 37.5% target share in the first edition of this matchup with his former employer is a nice feather to have. Of course, the fact that he had more catches in that game (seven) than Tennessee had points (six) is the elephant in the room fantasy managers are forced to deal with.
I’m more in than out on Ridley this week, with the thought being that any quarterback who has managed to hang around the NFL for six seasons should be able to have his moments against a defense that not only ranks bottom-five in deep pass touchdown rate and yards per pass on those deep throws but also is the worst unit in the league when it comes to slowing receivers after the catch is made.
What the future holds for the Titans at the QB position remains to be seen, but if Ridley is under contract for the next three seasons, they will likely want to keep him happy heading into the offseason. He was able to salvage a three-catch game last week; if he continues to serve as a field stretcher, this is about as good as the spot gets.
Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, WR
Nick Westbrook-Ikhine had the scoring run earlier in the season, and that was fun while it lasted.
Wait, no it wasn’t. Very few benefited from that binge run; if you’re a mathematically inclined person who writes about this stuff, you were forced to eat your words on a weekly basis.
Not fun. But the past three weeks have been more like it. Yeah, he scored last week, but with just 45 yards on 104 routes over that stretch, I feel vindicated when it comes to the process-based fading of NWI.
Westbrook-Ikhine has a career target rate of 13.7%, a number that is well below my threshold for getting any part of my interest.
Chig Okonkwo, TE
This is why we love fantasy. And why we hate it.
Chig Okonkwo, the same Chig Okonkwo who did not account for a single one of the 707 performances in which a player had 20+ receiving yards in a game through Week 6, is the top-scoring tight end over the past two weeks.
I’ll take the pain to another level and let you know that his 33 PPR points that could have been had for free on the waiver wire are more than Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce combined, a duo you could have used the first two picks of your draft this summer to acquire.
Of course, I don’t think this is sticky, but he does lead the team receptions with Mason Rudolph under center – one more than Calvin Ridley on 41 fewer routes. The bar is low at the position and the matchup is right (the Jaguars are the only team allowing 8+ yards per pass this season) for Okonkwo to move onto the TE1 radar and be trusted as the premier streaming option if he is still available.