Check out which teams take on pass or run funnel defenses in Week 16, and what it might mean for your start-sit decisions.
Every week of the 2025 NFL regular season, I’ll use this space to highlight teams facing various funnel defenses and fantasy options who could benefit.
What’s a Funnel Defense?
A funnel defense, in case you’re wondering, is a defense that faces an unusually high rate of pass attempts or rushes. I’ll take a close look at how opponents are playing these defenses in neutral game script — when the game is within a touchdown either way — and how good or bad these rush and pass defenses have been of late.
Identifying funnel defenses is hardly an exact science, and whacked-out game script can always foil our best-laid plans. It happens. I’ve found it useful in recent seasons to analyze matchups through this lens to see if there are any useful additions to the always-agonizing start-sit process we put ourselves through every week.
With more data, this analysis will improve. It happens every season. We are eyeball deep in data headed into Week 16.
Patrick Daugherty▶ Pass Funnel Matchups
Broncos vs. Jaguars
You won’t believe this but the Jaguars remain the NFL’s most extreme pass funnel defense. Or maybe you’ve ready this column all season and you are the opposite of shocked. Maybe you, like me, have been asked not to talk at the dinner table about the 66 percent neutral pass rate Jacksonville’s defense has faced this season. My wife and kids don’t want to talk about neutral pass rate on taco night apparently.
You know the drill: No team has faced a higher pass rate over expected or neutral pass rate than the Jaguars, mostly because their defense has snuffed out all rushing attacks. Probably that won’t change in Week 16 against the Broncos.
Expect inflated drop backs for Bo Nix and company, barring, of course, weird game script. It’s not as if the Broncos have shied away from the pass in 2025. They’ve been above their expected pass rate in eight straight games. Only four teams have been more pass heavy this year.
A bunch of Nix drop backs — and subsequent pass attempts — would benefit a few guys, but no one more than Courtland Sutton, who over the past three weeks has 23 percent of the Broncos’ targets and 44 percent of the team’s air yards. No Broncos pass catcher has a higher targets per route run (TPRR) than Sutton over those three games, and now he faces a Jacksonville defense that has been generous to boundary wideouts (while shutting down slot pass catchers all season). Sutton is a must-play in Week 16.
Pat Bryant, who appears ready to return after missing Week 15 with a hamstring issue, would also benefit in a pass-heavy script. He had taken over Troy Franklin’s WR2 role before the hamstring injury. That Bryant has run 59 percent of his routes from the slot concerns me a little, however.
RJ Harvey should remain in 12-team league lineups despite the horrid matchup. He leads the backfield in routes over the past four games, though his route rate has hovered around 40 percent. Harvey should be PPR viable as a flex play against the Jags.
There’s also Evan Engram, who (in a revenge game no is talking about) is facing a Jacksonville defense allowing 8.9 tight end targets per game, the second highest mark in the league. Engram is only running about 55 percent of the routes in the Denver offense, but a spike in pass volume against a pass funnel defense could counteract that relative lack of route participation for Engram and make him a desperation streamer. Engram over the past three weeks is (a distant) second among Denver pass catchers in first-read targets to Sutton.
Chargers vs. Cowboys
I was very much ready to dismiss LA pass catchers as viable 12-team league options over the next couple weeks until I saw they were facing the Cowboys in Week 16. It’s the one outcome that could force the Bolts out of their run-first ways.
The Chargers without left tackle Joe Alt have shifted radically toward the run over the past three weeks. They have the league’s fourth-lowest pass rate over expected over that stretch, and only the Panthers and Bills have a lower pass rate. If that trend holds — if the Bolts refuse to open it up against Dallas — then we’re in for another game in which all LA pass catchers are thin bets.
That’s the thing, though. The Chargers this week are facing a Cowboys defense that has faced the NFL’s third-highest pass rate over expected. Since Week 10, only the aforementioned pass-funnel Jaguars have faced a higher neutral pass rate than the Boys.
This is a welcome development for Ladd McConkey, Keenan Allen, and Oronde Gadsden II. McConkey, for one, leads the team with a 31 percent air yards share over the Chargers’ run-heavy stretch while Allen leads the way with a meager 18.5 percent target share. No Bolts pass catcher has an astounding targets per route run rate, making it hard to pinpoint one guy as a beneficiary of a (potentially) pass-heavy script against Dallas. But any of these guys could see the spoils of an increase in Justin Herbert drop backs.
The Cowboys are especially vulnerable on deep shots. Through Week 15, Dallas allows the league’s third-highest completion rate and the second-highest adjusted yards per attempt on downfield throws. That’s Quentin Johnston’s music. If QJ guts it out and plays through his groin injury, he becomes interesting as a high-variance WR3/4 option.
We don’t usually ignore fantasy-relevant players in a game sporting a 49.5-point total. Don’t swear off Ladd and the rest of the LA passing attack just because they’ve been the most disappointing thing in your life over the past month.
▶ Run Funnel Matchups
Giants vs. Vikings
Tyrone Tracy had absurdly good usage in Week 15 against the Commanders. He easily led the Giants backfield with 15 carries and ran 30 pass routes on 43 drop backs while seeing three targets from Jaxson Dart.
If the Giants can keep this one somewhat close — they enter as 2.5 point home underdogs — they will run the ball. Under interim head coach Mike Kafka, the Giants have become an ultra run-heavy offense, with a 49 percent pass rate. New York is 27th in pass rate over expected over the past four weeks. This should, assuming neutral or positive script, fuel another 20-or-so touches for Tracy against a middling Minnesota rush defense.
Tracy’s pass game involvement gives him a nice little out in case the Giants fall behind J.J. McCarthy and the suddenly machine-like Minnesota offense and Dart is forced to throw more than usual. Tracy is an excellent flex option in Week 16.
While we’re on this game, I’d be remiss — and I’m never remiss — if I didn’t mention what a great spot it is for the Vikings running backs. The Giants are allowing a league high rate of missed tackles per rush and second highest rate of rush yards before contact since Week 8. Teams are doing whatever they want against New York on the ground.
Aaron Jones leads Jordan Mason in carries over the past two weeks, 26-21, but Mason has been the goal line back in those two games. Jones is a must-play against the G-people. Mason is certainly in play considering his per-rush efficiency against a miserable Giants defense.
Bears vs. Packers
Another week, another write-up telling you the Bears will establish the run as if every kid in America wants a pet rock for Christmas.
Chicago’s offense, as you know by now, has gone wildly run heavy over the past six weeks — to great effect. Ben Johnson’s run-first offense is top-seven in EPA per play and top-four in offensive success rate over those six weeks. The Bears are running the ball at a 53 percent clip in neutral situations since Week 9. This has created unspeakable rushing volume for D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai, as the Bears over this stretch are averaging 34.6 rushing attempts and 179 rushing yards per game.
This week the Bears go up against a Packers defense that has been mentioned here more than a couple times because, well, teams go hard on the ground against Green Bay. In fact, no team has seen a lower neutral pass rate against them (44 percent) since Week 9.
This should lead to another game in which Swift and Monangai share somewhere between 30 and 40 touches out of the Bears backfield. Over the past three games, Swift has 49 carries to 47 carries for Monangai. The rookie has been far less efficient than the veteran, however. I think both Bears backs can be used in 12-team league lineups assuming somewhat normal game script against the run-funnel Packers.
What this means for Chicago pass catchers isn’t as clear as one might think. Rome Odunze and Luther Burden are out for Saturday’s game against Green Bay. That leaves DJ Moore as the team’s No. 1 wideout. I wrote about Moore’s unimpressive receiving/fantasy profile in this week’s Regression Files. That might not matter with Odunze and Burden — a true target commander — on the shelf in Week 16.
Colston Loveland could (should) see a bump in routes against the Packers with Burden out. He’s run 30 percent of his routes from the slot, and could share that role with Olamide Zaccheaus in Week 16. Loveland’s 26 percent TPRR over the past three games suggests (strongly) that he won’t need a full route participation rate to prove playable in 12-team formats.
Category: General Sports
