Risky Daily Fantasy Football Playoffs Starts

Jonathan Stewart (RB, CAR)

First up, an obvious choice with Jonathan Stewart. Although having already played a great game against the Seahawks earlier in the year, he's coming back into the lineup after dealing with injury in the last few weeks. In his previous matchup with the Seahawks, he managed one of his bottom YPC performances on the season with 3.9.

Stewart was able to grind out the points entirely from two goal line touchdowns and a volume that may have been undeserved in that game. In fact, Stewart's game this year was the highest amount of points the Seahawks have allowed to any RB - and while that may sound like an endorsement for Stewart in the vein of "he figured them out!", it's actually me telling you that seems like much more of an outlier than normal. They ended the fantasy season as the #1 fantasy defense against RBs, and if last week's game against Adrian Peterson says anything (23 carries, 45 yards) - they're not the type of defense you want to test.

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Martavis Bryant (WR, PIT)

Bryant has fallen into a lull to end the 2015 season, struggling to make an impact in the yardage category and only scoring one touchdown in his last five weeks during a pivotal time in the Steelers season. Bryant's full of talent but he's not a safe bet in any sense against the Broncos secondary, one of the best in the league.

In their previous matchup together, it took 14 targets for Bryant to put up 10 catches for 87 yards - and that kind of volume seems hard to expect again with Ben Roethlisberger currently injured. The Denver defense finished the fantasy season allowing only 40 yards per game to opposing WR2s, and that seems to be in line with Bryant's average since Week 14 of the regular season. Like the Seahawks, the Broncos finished the regular season as the #1 fantasy defense against opposing WRs, so this is a tough buy.

Ronnie Hillman (RB, DEN)

Denver's been using a platoon of Ronnie Hillman and C.J. Anderson for nearly the entire season, making both of them hard to trust on a weekly basis. Well, this week seems like an easy choice to me. The Steelers finished the season as the league's 2nd best fantasy defense against RBs, and only allowed six runs of over 20 yards the entire year (5th best in the league). That's bad news for Hillman, who seemingly lives off of these big runs as he's lacked the play-to-play consistency that someone like C.J. Anderson once had.

Without anything to add in the passing game on top of that, Hillman becomes a big risk depending on a touchdown to likely save what will be a low yardage fantasy day. However, one saving grace is that Roethlisberger's injury (and maybe Antonio Brown's too) might cause the Broncos to be so in control that they have an excuse to run the ball all game.

The Entire Packers Offense

From Aaron Rodgers to Randall Cobb to James Starks to Eddie Lacy, they're all on the road this week facing a team that completely dismantled them just three weeks ago in the same stadium - an insane whipping that ended 8-38, and still seemed to be even more dominant than that. I don't think Rodgers is used to losing this soundly in the NFL.

This Green Bay team has struggled to protect Rodgers, struggled to gain separation against inferior DBs, struggled to find room to run - this isn't an offense to buy into at all. Especially against one of the league's best defenses, sitting at home with a mostly clean bill of health. The risks sits incredibly high for any player here with the entire team not even strong enough to be a shadow of it's 2014 self.

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