Week 16 is upon us. Championship champagne bottles are being put on ice. If you're still here with us, congratulations on making it this far. Or maybe you're a masochist who just likes reading these still despite being eliminated. Hi buddy.

While we'd all like to think we have a grasp on player and team trends, each week of football serves to remind us that "any given Sunday" is a real thing. We have upsets, expectations that are exceeded, injuries and so on. For some of you the championship is here, for some others you're fighting in your semifinal matchup, and for others the dream is dead, but perhaps you are in a keeper or dynasty league and can make some moves based off of the changes we're noting.

Let's look at players who are on the rise heading into the week of all fantasy weeks, Week 16.

• 2025 fantasy football rankings
• Running back (RB) fantasy football rankings
• Wide receiver (WR) fantasy football rankings
• Tight end (TE) fantasy football rankings
• Quarterback (QB) fantasy football rankings
• FLEX fantasy football rankings
• Defense (D/ST) fantasy football rankings
• Kicker (K) fantasy football rankings
• Dynasty fantasy football rankings

Championship Week's Fantasy Football Risers

Blake Bortles - QB, JAC

Last week Bortles led the Jaguars to 21 points in both the third and fourth quarters each for a blowout win over the hapless Colts defense, throwing for 250 yards and three touchdowns while also sneaking one into the endzone on the ground. This week he wasn't as impressive, scoring as the QB11 with 297 yards passing, one touchdown, and one interception along with 44 yards rushing, including a touchdown.

The Jaguars are currently without T.J. Yeldon who is questionable with his MCL woes, Denard Robinson has a sprained foot, Toby Gerhart is on the IR, and so Jonas Gray is the only totally healthy one left (Joe Banyard too, but...well yeah). So the rushing attack is hurting and was already really not the emphasis of the Jaguars' offense. All of Bortles' passing weapons are healthy and putting in work right now with Allen Robinson the headliner. Bortles now gets a dream date with the Saints defense in Week 16. He is a rock solid QB1 option for your championship game. Jeezy says it well: "ARs over here, they pop like gold Bortles." Okay that isn't quite the line, but it's close enough where it still hypes this up.

David Johnson - RB, ARI

Look, Philadelphia did David Johnson all the favors in the world in giving themselves all zero tackle ratings in Madden before the game started, but Johnson still absolutely shredded them, running strong and showing why he deserves to be taken seriously in the NFL. It's sad that Chris Johnson was ahead of him for so long, but hey, we're living in the now right? David Johnson is the now. Rushing for 187 yards and three touchdowns on 29 carries while catching all four of his targets for 42 yards. Beautiful.

Now he and the Cardinals get to square off against the Green Bay Packers who, while they won by 10 on Sunday, are definitely looking like a shell of their reputation right now. The rub here is that the Packers rushing defense is still actually playing pretty well since being throttled by both Denver running backs in Week 8, though both Dallas running backs did alright in Week 14 as well. To be fair Detroit and Oakland don't really have strong rushing attacks to gauge defenses with. With the way Johnson and Arizona have been operating though, my concern level is pretty minimal here. He's a strong play the only real worry is that Carson Palmer's arm does all of the scoring instead of letting Johnson get a piece.

Danny Woodhead – RB, SD

Welcome back to the land of the living Danny Woodhead! I actually thought about benching you in my semifinals matchup but I couldn't really find anyone with the upside he had. He managed to punch in a short rushing TD (he had 10 yards on eight carries) while catching all six of his targets for 50 yards and two more touchdowns. Melvin Gordon is out for the year and while Donald Brown did come in and take over the between the tackles work, Danny Woodhead got the redzone carry (as he was responsible for in the early going) on top of his passing game work.

The Chargers now face the Raiders, who have actually performed admirably against the run lately. Of course, the Chargers (and notably Danny Woodhead) were able to have their way with Oakland's defense the last time they played each other, with Woodhead catching 11 of 12 targets for 75 yards and two touchdowns. He's on the rise and he's got a good matchup. In standard you're tempted at the flex position, and in PPR he's absolutely in.

Emmanuel Sanders – WR, DEN

The Broncos were engaged in all out warfare with the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday, with the Broncos firing shots early and then the Steelers storming back in the second half. In the frenzy Emmanuel Sanders came back to life with 16 targets, catching 10 of them for 181 yards and a touchdown where he was left entirely unguarded down the middle of the field. That's a good way to resuscitate your value.

Brock Osweiler has shown flashes of brilliance, but it's been bogged down with plenty more moments of mediocrity and poor decisions. Emmanuel Sanders and Demaryius Thomas both did very well on Sunday as the situation called for attacking through the air, and Brock was able to deliver for the first 30 minutes. Denver will go to war with the Bengals on Monday night, and with A.J. McCarron at the helm for Cincinnati the Broncos might just try to control the game with their defense and running game like earlier games. The plus here is that the Bengals' secondary is beaten up and the Broncos might be ableot to attack them early just as they did with Pittsburgh. Either way, Sanders has some momentum now at least given that his previous two games saw him post under 20 yards.

Stefon Diggs - WR, MIN

Zombie Diggs! Seriously, I wonder how many people really started him, and how many saw him have a good day on their bench. It would have been very tough to trust him, but he caught two touchdowns on three catches for 55 yards. Now he gets to build on this with a date against the sieve known as the New York Giants defense. You know, the one is getting carved up like John Madden's turducken week in week out. There's not much to say here, it's still a difficult situation to trust as Diggs only saw four targets, he just made them really count this time around and Teddy Bridgewater was in rare (read: good) form on Sunday. In the end, positive momentum is great to see and the spot against the Giants is as good as you're going to get outside of maybe facing the Saints. Diglett digg yo.

Zach Ertz - TE, PHI

You want a guy on the rise who is available in nearly two thirds of leagues on Fleaflicker, well here you go. The Eagles are finally coming around to the fact that they have a great athlete in Zach Ertz who can convert for them in big opportunities. Last week he turned seven targets into five catches for 98 yards, including one big catch and run where he leveled a tackler with a hard shoulder and then stiff armed another defender for an extra ten yards or so. This week he saw 13(!) targets, catching eight of them for 78 yards and a touchdown. The Eagles take on the Redskins this week. The Redskins are bad against the tight end, ranking 25th in FootballOutsiders DVOA metric. Then they face that horrid Giants defense, so if you play into Week 17 you can enjoy that one. It's hard to rely on the Eagles for anything consistent, but things are trending up for Ertz.

Other Risers to Note: Tyrod Taylor (QB, BUF), Bilal Powell (RB, NYJ), Rashad Jennings (RB, NYG), Amari Cooper (WR, OAK), Brandin Cooks (WR, NO), Jordan Reed (TE, WAS).

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