Fantasy Football: 4 Unexpectedly Great Week 12 Performances

Ben Roethlisberger, QB, Pittsburgh Steelers

NFL.Com Start Percentage: 37.6%
Fantasy Points: 30.54

Ben Roethlisberger was this week's top overall fantasy quarterback. Throwing for 351 yards and 4 touchdowns will rocket you up the leaderboard, but fewer than 38 percent of Big Ben's owners enjoyed the ride. Why is that?

Roethlisberger now has consecutive games with more than 28 fantasy points, but those two games are the exception, not the rule, for his 2017 season. In every other game, he's been under 18 points. That explains why his start percentage was so low, despite appearing in this column last week. So what can we expect going forward?

As our Jim Sannes noted prior to Week 12, Roethlisberger and the Steelers are very capable of taking advantage of inferior pass defenses. In Week 13, Roethlisberger faces the Cincinnati Bengals. They're only marginally better against the pass than last week's opponent, the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers are 25th against the pass, per our schedule-adjusted metrics, while the Bengals are 22nd. In his last four games at Cincinnati, Roethlisberger has averaged 292 passing yards and 1.25 passing touchdowns. That's lower than what he's done the last two weeks, but it's still better than his seasonal averages. We project Roethlisberger as the seventh-best fantasy quarterback for Week 13, so it's a good week to start him.