ClutchPoints
It’s going to be a challenge for fantasy football managers to deal with what clinched or eliminated NFL teams will do in Week 18. This includes the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles. Lineup choices could greatly impact defensive performance, but here are the fantasy football defense and special teams rankings for Week 18 of the 2025 NFL season.
Still, there will be good units to use in the final games of the 2026 NFL regular season.
And it starts, not surprisingly, in Houston.
The Texans are set up for a giant fantasy performance. They still have a possible division title to play for, so they shouldn’t rest anybody.
And they get the Colts, who won’t have Philip Rivers at quarterback. Therefore, the Texans will face Riley Leonard. That will give them a chance to unleash this beast of a defense and put up fantasy points.
The Texans have been good against everybody. They’ve given up over 20 points only twice all season. This is one studly unit.
It began its foundation in the 2023 NFL Draft, according to ESPN. That’s when they put their pick on Will Anderson Jr.
“I knew we had to get a dynamic edge point,” DeMeco Ryans said. “That’s why it was so important to get Will Anderson. If you want to play coverage how we play, you have to be able to speed the quarterback up. You speed it up with the rusher.”
Getting Azeez Al-Shaair through free agency for the linebacker group made a difference, too.
“[Al-Shaair] knows what I expect,” Ryans said. “He knows I’m always going to push him to perfection. Him knowing my message, and I know what he was going to be able to spread to the other guys as well. We were missing a glue piece, missing a true leader of our locker room, especially on the defensive side.”
Lean on the Texans this week.
But there’s another standout possibility with the New England Patriots. They’re still seeking that No. 1 overall seed, and they get the Dolphins at home.
Miami QB Quinn Ewers has been serviceable thus far, but this looks like a place for him to falter. The Dolphins are fish out of water when traveling to New England for a late-season matchup. This could get ugly.
Plus, the Patriots would love a dominant defensive performance to carry them into the playoffs. They’ve only had one top 10 fantasy finish over the last eight weeks. And they need their best guys to be their best guys, according to The Athletic.
“I mean, we expect that in this league — we’ve said this — that your best players have to play good for you to win, and we consider him one of our better players, just like our quarterback,” head coach Mike Vrabel said of Barmore. “We expect the quarterback’s going to have to play good for us to win. Whoever we consider to be our best players,...
