As I mentioned in last week’s rankings, this will be my last IDP post on Razzball for the foreseeable future. And fittingly, the only people it really applies to are the die hard IDP fans that are reading a weekly rankings article during Week 17. If your league is still holding it’s championship this week, I strongly urge you to change that next year. However, this year you’re in luck because no team looks to be resting its starters. So unless you lost guys like Eric Weddle or Barry Church last week, you’re most likely good to go with your typical starters again in Week 17.

So without further ado, here are my final rankings of 2015. Happy New Year everyone, and good luck with your championship games!

If you’re reading this, then you’re in your league’s championship game. Either that or you play in one of those weird leagues that end in Week 17, in which case I’ll still have rankings for you next week, but my thoughts here essentially still apply: Don’t get cute. You’re still playing because you have a dominant roster that has likely caught a few breaks here and there en route to a successful season. Remember who got you here, and don’t overthink things. That’s not to say that every lineup decision is going to be easy, but don’t let a good matchup for a guy like Justin Durant blur the fact that Bobby Wagner is still the correct play.

Here are a few things to watch for in Championship Week:

We all remember the truly transcendent performances that single-handedly win playoff weeks for us. Names like Drew Bennett and Jerome Harrison come to mind on the offensive side of the ball, but the IDP world doesn’t really have an epic game to point to in the playoffs. That all changed on Sunday, as Khalil Mack wrecked Brock Osweiler’s world en route to 7 tackles, 5 sacks and a forced fumble. He led the way for all IDPs in standard scoring leagues, but in big play leagues, he potentially put up the biggest individual game of the season. If you started Mack last week, congratulations on what was likely a huge victory. Moving forward, things get complicated. In general, Mack’s positional eligibility has been a hot topic all season, with some sites listing him as a DE, some as an LB, and some with dual eligibility. As a DE, he’s been a no-doubt starter in big play leagues, and a fringe starter in standard scoring, due to his heavy reliance on sacks. As an LB, he’s not really startable unless you’re in a deep big-play league. To complicate things further, Green Bay is likely to game plan for Mack more so than usual this week after his coming out party, and they’re in the middle of the pack in terms of sacks allowed this year. So if you started him last week, I’d keep rolling him out because your league’s setting likely make him a viable starter. But if you’re in a more standard league, and he’s listed as an LB only, then I’d keep him on the bench.

The playoffs start this week in the vast majority of leagues, so it’s time to forget about the last three months and focus on the next three weeks. That can sometimes mean cutting bait on some players that carried you to a successful season, whether due to injury, tough schedule, or suspension. The latter unfortunately applies to Kwon Alexander, who will drop his appeal and serve his 4-game PED suspension over the last month of the NFL regular season. This is poor timing for owners that have benefitted from his unexpected LB8 production over the first 13 weeks, but all is not lost. The LB position is extremely deep right now, and Alexander’s replacement in Tampa’s lineup might be a good fit for your lineup as well. Bruce Carter has had an injury marred career, but when he’s on the field he has put up stats including 96 tackle season and an admittedly fluky 5 interception season. He’s already recovering from a concussion, so we’re not off to a great start health-wise, but if he’s cleared to play, I like him as a low end LB2. The same applies for Danny Lansanah if Carter can’t go either, but it appears that Carter will get the first crack at it.

The biggest news coming out of Sunday Night Football is that the Patriots finally lost. The second biggest news is the fortunately non-serious injury to Gronk. But for IDP purposes, the news that matters the most is that Dont’a Hightower went down with an MCL sprain and is likely out for the rest of the fantasy season. He joins Jamie Collins (still out with a mysterious illness) on the shelf, which leaves a lot of opportunity for stats in New England. Jonathan Freeny has stepped in nicely so far, and is very possibly owned in your league. But the more intriguing name to me is Jerod Mayo, who is thrust back into the spotlight after an extremely disappointing season so far. It will be interesting to see how he reacts to a large increase in snaps, but he’s got one of the highest ceilings of any available LB in most leagues.

There is a lot to keep track of this week. A short work week, travel, seeing your family, eating copious amounts of food, not killing your family, and responsibly partaking in the beverage of your choice. But amidst all that chaos, don’t forget about your fantasy team, because Week 12 can be one of the more influential weeks of the season. We’re done with byes, so all 32 teams have games this week, and you can drop “bye week fillers” for the best player available. Games also start early on Thursday, so setting your lineup and handling potentially injured players can be tricky. And finally, given where we are in the season, this is a must win game for any team that is not eliminated. So enjoy yourself this week, but not at the expense of a playoff spot or a potential bye.

Here’s what I’m thankful for heading into Week 12:

A week after seemingly everybody got hurt, the IDP community collectively had a nice bounce back. Several guys had huge weeks in the tackle department, and there were no major injuries on the defensive side of the ball. Additionally, due to injury or subpar play, there was a general QB shakeup across the league, so defenses will get to feast on the likes of Mark Sanchez, Case Keenum, Brock Osweiler, and potentially T.J. Yates. Backups can take some time to get comfortable with the speed of an actual game, so that opens up opportunities for big plays, and they tend to rely heavily on the run game, which obviously leads to more tackles. So while your NFL team may now be in the hands of a overqualified clipboard holder, your IDP team can potentially benefit.

Weeks like this are the worst. Injuries are a daily occurrence in the NFL, but a week with so many big injuries to players who had been feel-good stories makes you want to reset your XBox and start the week over. We can start at the top with Jordan Hicks, a trendy DROY pick who’s now out for the year, but still managed to finish as LB2 for the week. Next is Henry Anderson, who cooled off after a hot start but was still a solid weekly DL option, now done for the year with a torn ACL. Despite the surprisingly successful return of JPP, the Giants lost two IDP contributors for the year in Jonathan Hankins and Jon Beason, who can unfortunately never stay healthy enough to be a reliable contributor. Finally, though he’s not done for the year, Sean Lee, got yet another concussion and is likely to miss this week’s game. Injuries can sometimes open up opportunities for clutch waiver pickups (and I would definitely look closely at Kiko Alonso, Uani’ Unga and Anthony Hitchens), but it’s never fun to say goodbye to players like this.

Here’s what I’m looking at heading into what will hopefully be a much healthier Week 10:

Before the season, I ranked Lavonte David as my #1 LB (over Luke Kuechly) with the logic that he had no internal competition from other LBs on Tampa Bay. While David has had an up-and-down season, he’s still a weekly LB1 on the season. But the big surprise out of Tampa has been rookie Kwon Alexander, who is currently neck-and-neck with David for the season. As a fourth round pick, Alexander was supposed to split snaps with free agent Bruce Carter, but after a stellar preseason he straight up beat him out for the job. I’ve mentioned Alexander in this space before, but after Sunday’s game with 11 tackles, an interception and a forced fumble that he recovered, he’s a household name in the IDP world. I would imagine he’s owned in most, if not all, leagues, but I would still target him if possible, especially in dynasty leagues.

Here’s a look around the rest of the IDP world after Week 8:

Sometimes it takes players a few years to find their footing in the NFL. Whether it’s experience, a new coach, or a change of scenery, some guys just need a little extra something to jumpstart their careers. In the case of Mark Barron, he checked pretty much all of those boxes. He played a lot as a rookie, got traded to the Rams in his third year, and had two very different coaching situations in Greg Schiano and Jeff Fisher. Oddly enough, it took a drastic position change to give him his biggest game from an IDP perspective. With Alec Ogletree out for the foreseeable future (and finally officially on IR!), the Rams moved Barron to the WLB slot full time last week, and he responded with a whopping 16 tackles. The fact that he’s still listed as a Safety on all sites means that Barron immediately becomes a must own top 10 DB. My biggest concern is consistency, as he’s never shown it in the past, but his two biggest issues – allowing big plays and missing tackles – become less of a concern at WLB, where he’ll have plenty of help, as opposed to being the last line of defense. This could definitely go poorly, but the upside is impossible to ignore.

As far as the rest of the IDP news heading into Week 8, we start in a familiar spot…

By all accounts this has been a weird year for Fantasy Football. On the offensive side of the ball, the combination of high profile injuries and disappointments, as well as the Devonta Freeman Experience, have pre-draft rankings looking like shots in the dark at best. In the IDP world, we had our share of surprises over the first five weeks as well. Some of the unexpected results so far will hold true through the season, but we finally saw some positive regression in Week 6, and that was most evident in Miami. I’ll cover the Ndamukong Suh situation at a different time, but Cameron Wake and Olivier Vernon were the stories of the week to me. Prior to playing Tennessee, these two preseason DL1s had put up a total of 5 tackles, with only one coming from Wake. In one game, they flipped the script and put up a whopping 8 tackles and 5 sacks between them. This is obviously great news for those who held on for that terrible first month, but if for some reason either of these guys were dropped, pick them up immediately.  The same goes for Cameron Jordan, who wasn’t nearly as disappointing as the Miami duo, but finally exploded with 6 tackles, 3 sacks, and a forced fumble that he recovered. I say it every year, but it bares repeating: Don’t panic if a highly drafted IDP isn’t producing in the first few weeks (especially a DL). You drafted them for a reason, and unless there is significant injury, your patience will likely pay off.

Here at Razzball, we try to stay away from social commentary. We pretty much stick to fantasy sports, puns, pop culture references and a whole lot of Game of Thrones without veering into the more serious side of sports. That said, it’s difficult to separate a guy like Ray Rice from some of the stuff we’ve seen and heard about him. I’m a huge Rutgers fan, and was a die-hard Rice supporter until everything came out last year, but since then, it’s impossible to look at him in the same light. The same applies to Greg Hardy. I mentioned him in the lede last week, and he exceeded expectations with 5 tackles, 2 sacks, a forced fumble and general chaos caused in the New England backfield. I completely understand if you’re disgusted by Hardy, and refuse to root for him or have him on your team. However, if you’re just in it to win it, he’s a top-10 option for the rest of the season at DL after his bye.

On that note, let’s take a look at what happened elsewhere in Week 5…