Fantasy football hedge?

[Nate tha\\\' Great]

Okay, I'm headed into the last week of the regular season at 8-5; my division rival is 7-4-1. If my rival loses, I'm in the playoffs, but the scenario I have to worry about is if he wins, in which case I need to win as well.

Fortunately, I'm due to play the worst team in the league next week.

The question is who to go with as my starting defense. The format I play in (CBS Sportsline) is fairly favorable to defense, so this is somewhat important.

I don't really have an "incumbent" defense but instead change from week to week based on matchups. I went with the Raiders this week, who did great for me. The options I'm looking at for Week 14 are as follows:

* Bengals, at home versus Oakland.
* Raiders, at Bengals.
* Seahawks, at home versus Cardinals.

Now, here's where it gets (somewhat) interesting. My quarterback position is a mess, since McNabb got hurt and Bledsoe got benched, so my available choices are Matt Leinart and Aaron Brooks. I also have Rudi Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh in my starting lineup, so I'm pretty Bengals-heavy.

What I'm tempted to do is start Leinart at QB and go with the Seahawks defense. The idea is that there's a pretty strong inverse correlation between the performance of Leinart and Seahawks D, so I minimize variance by playing that combination. This is probably desirable because my opponent is bad. I could also accomplish this to some extent by playing the Raiders defense, or by playing the Bengals defense and starting Aaron Brooks.

Given this information, what combination of D and QB would you go with?

[toohigh]

Without going into detail on your individual matchups, this is generally a bad idea in FF. Play your best players/matchups.

[Jack of Arcades]

Bengals D, Leinart QB.

Seriously, starting whoever plays the Raiders is just a no brainer. And there's no way you can start Aaron brooks.

[Victor]

easily bengals d vs oakland. oak sux and bengals create turnovers vs bad teams. for qb go with leinhart but see if you can grab vince young off waivers.

[Triumph36]

Nate - while I see what you're getting it, it's also very possible for both of them to [censored] the bed - i.e. the Arizona team finding a running game against the awful Seahawks D, and Leinart not getting sacked/turning the ball over. Starting the Bengals D isn't exactly high variance against the Raiders. If you had more questionable matchups I can see why you'd do this, but again - the Raiders are plain awful.

[Nate tha\\\' Great]

[ QUOTE ]
easily bengals d vs oakland. oak sux and bengals create turnovers vs bad teams. for qb go with leinhart but see if you can grab vince young off waivers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Vince Young not available.

Joey Harrington is, but he's up against the Pats next week.

I'm not sure I hate the Leinart matchup, though. Seahawks pass defense almost made Jay Cutler look good tonight.

[CharlieDontSurf]

AZ WR's and TE are >>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>Denver's.

Start Matt and Cinci's D. No brainer.