Fantasy Football Week 13: Titans vs. Jaguars, Steelers vs. Bills, and other matchups to exploit
Each 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 13.
Follow the latest injury news for fantasy football lineups in Week 13.
▶ Pass Funnel Matchups
Titans vs. Jaguars
I wouldn’t have tormented you, dear reader, with analysis of the Titans passing offense if they had not shown a little structural feistiness over their past couple games. After being crushingly run heavy in the season’s first half, Tennessee’s offense was 8 percent over its expected pass rate in Week 11 and nearly 5 percent over in Week 12.
Their 65 percent neutral pass rate in those games is well north of their pre-Week 11 rate of 51 percent. The Titans seem to be interested in finding out what they might have in Cam Ward. Imagine that.
Ward’s metrics have perked up up over his past two outings, as has his rushing production: Ward had a mere 50 rushing yards going into Week 11; he has 70 rushes on nine attempts over the Titans’ past two games. It’s not nothing, per the analytics.
The Jaguars, as any reader of this column knows by now, are the NFL’s most pronounced pass funnel defense. Teams are passing at an absurd 68 percent neutral pass rate against Jacksonville, and only two Jags opponents have been below their expected pass rate in 2025. The Cardinals — featured in this space last Friday — were a cool 14.5 percent above their expected pass rate against these Jags in Week 12. Arizona passed on 74 percent of their neutral script plays. That’s … a lot.
A drop back-heavy game for Ward and the Titans could once again make the rookie viable in superflex formats after he was totally unusable in all fantasy formats for the season’s first two and a half months. It could also be quite good for Chimere Dike, who last week led the Titans with a 30 percent first-read target share (six first read targets). He tied for the team lead in air yards with WR Xavier Restrepo, Ward’s teammate at Miami who was active for the first time this season in Week 12 (and who tells Ward every day that he’s the best quarterback alive).
That the Titans seem intent on feeding Dike targets is a big plus for the speedy rookie. That the Jaguars have shut down all opposing slot receivers in 2025 is an inconvenient part of this matchup analysis. Dike is running about half of his routes from the slot, so he would be able to escape the strength of the Jacksonville secondary some of the time in Week 13. Dike, especially if Elic Aoyomanor remains sidelined, would be a primary beneficiary of inflated pass volume for the Titans in Week 13.
Restrepo has some sneaky appeal too if he’s active and if his rapport with Ward leads to a playing time bump (he ran a route on 30 percent of Ward’s drop backs in Week 12). I don’t think we can totally ignore that Restrepo was targeted on 36 percent of his pass routes in his first NFL game, demonstrating a connection with the Titans’ struggling rookie passer. It wouldn’t be all that shocking to see Restrepo get some run as the Titans enter evaluation mode in the next month.
Gunnar Helm could be part of that evaluation. The rookie has consistently run behind Chig Okonkwo this season — last week he had a route participation rate of 40 percent — but his peripheral numbers are sparkling. Against the Seahawks in Week 12, Helm commanded a target on 35 percent of his routes on his way to six catches for 51 yards on seven looks from Ward. Helm has a target per route run of 25 percent since seeing a more consistent role in the Tennessee offense in Week 5. Okonkwo has a pedestrian 16 percent TPRR over that span.
A bunch of Ward drop backs could put the ultra-efficient Helm in play for deep league purposes. I should mention that the Jackonsville defense is allowing the second most targets per game (9.2) to tight ends through Week 12.
Cardinals vs. Bucs
Analyzing a potentially Baker-less Bucs game is not so easy. Teddy Bridgewater, a seemingly upstanding guy and a shockingly good actor on those backup QB commercials, is the caliber of passer that could tank an offense and change game script for those teams. Teddy, in case you missed it, looked like the worst quarterback in football during the second half of last week’s blowout loss to the Rams.
But the Tampa defense is a major pass funnel and Jacoby Brissett and the Cardinals are the league’s pass-heaviest team since Kyler Murray quiet-quit in October. Arizona is 10 percent over its expected pass rate over the past five weeks, passing at a 72 percent rate in neutral situations. This week they face a Bucs defense that has seen opponents pass the rock at a 62 percent neutral clip in 2025, the third highest rate in the NFL.
There will (likely) be passing for Brissett and the Cards, and possibly lots of it if Bridgewater and the Bucs can keep up and push the pace a little bit (Bucs head coach Todd Bowles conceded the team would have to completely change its offense for Teddy the TV ad man). I’m a lot less confident that Brissett will log 40-plus drop backs this week than I was last week against the pass-funnel Jaguars.
Cardinals offensive coordinator Drew Petzing said this week that Michael Wilson will remain a part of the Arizona passing attack even if Marvin Harrison Jr. is able to return from his appendectomy in Week 13. “When you produce in this league, we’re gonna give you more opportunities to continue to do that,” Petzing said. Wilson, who leads the league in air yards and real, edible yards over the past two games, should remain in 12-team lineups if MHJ returns to action. There should be enough to go around, and I’m not discounting a scenario in which Wilson is just way better than the deeply uninspiring Harrison and takes over as Arizona’s No. 1 wideout.
MHJ should be a flex option here if he suits up, and of course Trey McBride will continue to cook. Just know that Teddy’s presence under center could sink this whole beautiful thing. If Baker Mayfield (shoulder) starts, a back-and-forth affair is back on.
Ranking and evaluating all of Week 13’s top plays at quarterback, running back, receiver, tight end, kicker and defense.
▶ Run Funnel Matchups
Rams vs. Panthers
Carolina has surged into the run-funnel defense category over the past month. Since Week 8, Panthers opponents have a lowly 48 percent pass rate in neutral game script. Four of the past five Carolina opponents have been below their expected pass rate.
The Rams should be next, considering they enter Week 13 as 10.5-point road favorites against the Panthers. LA’s 27.75-point implied total is the highest of the week, and while the west-coast Rams might be a little sleepy for their 1 p.m. eastern time start on Sunday, they should have no problem scoring a bunch of points against an undermanned Carolina defense that has put on a brave face for most of the past month.
Kyren Williams was a big old bust in Week 12 against Tampa’s pass-funnel defense. The Rams were 16 percent above their expected pass rate against the Bucs, leading to a humble 19 running back rushes. Williams had 12 of those carries for 46 scoreless yards. Don’t be too put off by that down performance. The Rams decided to wax the Bucs through the air. So it goes.
Though Blake Corum will continue seeing 20-30 percent of the Rams’ rushes, Williams has a clear path to a nice bounce back game in Week 13. The Rams have passed the ball at a 52 percent clip when leading in 2025 — it’s not particularly low but it shows that Sean McVay is willing to establish it (to some extent) when his team holds the lead.
Williams is in a good spot against a Carolina defense giving up the NFL’s seventh highest rate of rush yards before contact and the eighth highest rate of missed tackles per carry. Corum, with 55 rushing attempts over the past six games, might be in play if you think the Rams will run away with this one and bleed the clock in the second half.
Steelers vs. Bills
Buffalo being a massive run funnel defense puts both Jaylen Warren and Kenneth Gainwell in play this week. Maybe you knew that or were banking on that if you are down bad at running back and trying to summon some cope with Gainwell as your clear RB1 in Week 13. Or maybe I’m just projecting, it’s hard to say.
No team has faced a lower neutral pass rate (49 percent) than the Bills in 2025, and no team has faced a lower pass rate over expected. Regular readers of this column know the drill: You assume a bunch of rushing attempts for whoever is facing the Bills defense.Even the Texans, who have been one of the NFL’s pass heaviest teams since the start of October, had 23 running back rushes against the Bills in Week 12.
Gainwell’s role in the Pittsburgh offense is usually that of a pass catcher. He’s seen 22 targets over the team’s past four outings to just six targets for Warren. Gainwell’s raw rushing opportunities largely hinge on game script: In Steelers wins, he’s seen 8.2 rushes per game, in losses that number dips to 4.5 rushes. Though the Steelers are 3.5-point home dogs here, I’d be surprised if the struggling Bills ran them out of the proverbial gym on Sunday. Game script should be at least somewhat normal here. Even if script goes sideways for the Steelers, Gainwell will be the one running routes and seeing targets. He has an out.
It’s difficult to exaggerate how awful the Bills have been against the run. They’re allowing the league’s fifth-highest rate of rush yards before contact and the second highest rate of missed tackles per rush. We can expect Arthur Smith, with a banged-up Aaron Rodgers under center for some reason, to lean hard on the run game in Week 13. That could very well lead to a dozen touches for Gainwell, maybe more.
