Fantasy Football Week 6: Commanders vs. Bears, Chargers vs. Dolphins, 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. Through Week 5, we now have enough information to understand which teams are shaping up as funnel defenses.

RotoPat’s Week 6 Fantasy Football Rankings

Ranking and evaluating all of Week 6’s top plays at quarterback, running back, receiver, tight end, kicker and defense.

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▶ Run Funnel Matchups

Commanders vs. Bears

I’m here to bravely tell you to play the guy who went wild in Week 5. The spreadsheets leave me no choice.

Jacory Croskey-Merritt, leading the league in all the fancy rushing metrics, last week totaled 150 yards and two scores and this week has a salivary gland-activating matchup against the NFL’s most pronounced run funnel defense. Chicago opponents this season have run the ball at a league-high 52 percent clip in neutral game script and been 5 percent below their expected pass rate when the game is within one score. The shorter version: Chicago’s front seven can be bullied and opponents know it.

The Bears through five weeks are allowing the highest rate of rush yards before contact in the NFL, just as they did in 2024. They’re also exceptionally bad at tackling; no one averages more missed tackles per carry this season.

JCM is what the zoomers are calling a smash play. You need to find a way to get him into your lineups. Deebo Samuel likely won’t be impacted by a relative lack of drop back volume for Washington, though everyone else — including Zach Ertz, who I wrote about this week — should be considered desperation options in 12-team leagues against Chicago.

Chargers vs. Dolphins

We have the rare Double Run Funnel Matchup here: Two defenses being relentlessly attacked on the ground because, well, they can’t stop anyone.

We’ll start with the Chargers, who have seen opponents pass the ball at a 52 percent rate this season in neutral situations. That’s the fourth lowest in the NFL. LA opponents are slightly above their expected pass rate in neutral script, so I wouldn’t describe the Bolts as anything close to an extreme run funnel. Still, De’Von Achane should be in for a big workload and pass volume might not be there for anyone not named Achane or Jaylen Waddle. Darren Waller is commanding targets at a weirdly-high rate, however, as I wrote about in this week’s Regression Files.

Now to the Dolphins, facing a 48 percent neutral pass rate, tied with the Bears for the lowest in the NFL through Week 5. Only three defenses have faced a lower pass rate over expected in 2025. If you have a sense of who might operate as the Chargers’ lead back in Week 6 — Hassan Haskins or Kimani Vidal — that guy could benefit from inflated rush volume against Miami.

Chargers offensive coordinator Greg Roman made a concerted effort to establish the run in Week 5 against the Commanders, perhaps because the team lost pass protecting stud Joe Alt. The Bolts going into Week 5 led the league with a 66 percent neutral pass rate. Against Washington, that rate was a humble 52 percent.

A more run-centric Chargers offense could mean quite a lot to Haskins or Vidal as they go up against a Dolphins defense giving up the highest rate of rush yards after contact thanks in part to letting Rico Dowdle look like Jim Brown in Week 5.

▶ Pass Funnel Matchups

Seahawks vs. Jaguars

The computers, as RotoPat said on our Week 6 preview show, love Sam Darnold. I won’t bore you with the metrics, but I have confirmed the computers indeed love the guy who was cast out from Minnesota after two bad games.

Darnold in Week 6 squares off against the pass-funnel Jaguars, whose opponents have passed the ball 66 percent of the time in neutral script this season. A mere five teams have seen a higher neutral pass rate over expected against them. Just last week we saw the Seattle offense adjust to a pass-funnel matchup: Against Tampa, the Seahawks were 1 percent above their expected pass rate. Going into that game, they were 5 percent below that rate. It led to a season-high 34 pass attempts for our analytics darling, Sam G. Darnold VII.

Obviously this means JSN will cook once again in Week 6. Cooper Kupp could benefit from a bunch of Darold throws too. Since Week 2, he’s second on the team with a 21 percent target share. Kupp is being targeted on a surprisingly high 26 percent of his routes. AJ Barner, fresh off his seven-catch, two-touchdown performance against the Bucs, could be viable in another pass funnel matchup. His 60 percent route participation rate in Week 5 was a season high.

Bengals vs. Packers

I remain deeply skeptical that Joe Flacco represents anything close to an upgrade over Jake Browning. The Bengals offensive line is a disaster, Flacco is a statue, and this week they’re facing one of the NFL’s most ferocious pass rushes. So it goes.

You should know, however, that the Packers through Week 5 have faced the league’s highest neutral pass rate (67 percent) and the eighth highest neutral pass rate over expected. Green Bay opponents are taking to the air way more often than not.

It’s the sort of trend that could produce something in the range of 50 drop backs for Flacco, who’s expected to start in Week 6 for some reason. Short-area targets are most likely to benefit from such volume. That probably means Ja’Marr Chase can get away with it like he did last week against the Lions, and maybe Chase Brown — who is being targeted at an eye-watering rate — can get by with a bunch of check downs from Flacco, our elder millennial quarterback king.