Start em or sit em? Fantasy football start or sit decisions can be excruciating. While it feels great to make the right call and cruise to fantasy glory, it hurts just as much when you have someone erupt while on your bench. You can use our Who Should I Start? tool to gauge advice from fantasy football experts as you make your lineup decisions. And you can also sync your fantasy football league for free using our My Playbook tool for custom advice, rankings and analysis.
Let’s take a look at a few polarizing players and what fantasy football expert Derek Brown advises. And you can find all of DBro’s fantasy football outlook in this week’s fantasy football primer.
- Waiver Wire Picks
- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
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Fantasy Football Start’em, Sit’em Lineup Advice
Calvin Ridley walked away from Week 1 with the results I pretty much expected. He got shut down by Patrick Surtain II in shadow coverage. Surtain II followed him on 87.1% of his routes, limiting him to three receptions (six targets) and 26 receiving yards. Ridley’s market share metrics are still a positive takeaway despite the poor results. He had a 28.6% target share and 26.3% first-read share. Ridley will be Cam Ward‘s clear number one target this season, and he’ll have better fantasy days. Ridley should have a better day in Week 2, but the Rams also are no pushover secondary. In Week, they allowed the 11th-fewest PPR points per target to perimeter wide receivers. Akhello Witherspoon (only five receiving yards allowed and a 70.1 passer rating) and, surprisingly, Emmanuel Forbes were quite strong. We’ll see if Forbes can continue this level of play.
Keenan Allen proved he still has it in Week 1 as the WR10 in fantasy. Among 77 qualifying wide receivers, he ranked 23rd in separation and tenth in route win rate. He had a 26.5% target share, 2.13 yards per route run, and a 28% first-read share (tied with Ladd McConkey for the team lead). He had one end zone target. Allen should post another nice stat line in Week 2 against a secondary that allowed the eighth-most fantasy points and ninth-most receiving yards to wide receivers in Week 1.
Keon Coleman had a monster Week 1 as the WR2 in fantasy football. He tied for the team lead in red zone targets (two) with Khalil Shakir and Josh Palmer. Coleman had a 23.9% target share, 33.7% air-yard share, 2.60 yards per route run, 34.6% first-read share, and 0.140 first downs per route run. Last week, Buffalo faced the fourth-most man coverage (40.4%), and they will see plenty of it again this week. Last week, the Jets had the second-highest man coverage rate in the NFL (50%). Last week, against man coverage, Coleman had a 30% target share and an insane 38.5% first-read share. Coleman will likely see shadow coverage from Sauce Gardner this week, who followed D.K. Metcalf on 89% of his routes last week, allowing only one of his four targets to be secured for 11 receiving yards. Josh Allen will test Gardner, but I don’t know if this is a matchup that Coleman wins this week. If he can consistently, he will be headed for a big week, though.
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