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.
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Fantasy Football Start’em, Sit’em Lineup Advice: Tight Ends
Dalton Kincaid dealt with injuries last season (knee/shoulder) that derailed his season after Week 9. Last year, in Weeks 1-9, he was the TE15 in fantasy points per game, which is a massive disappointment for a player with his talent in a scoring-rich environment in Buffalo. During that stretch, among 38 qualifying tight ends, he ranked sixth in target share (19.2%) and first-read share (21.3%), 18th in receiving yards per game (36.9), 17th in yards per route run (1.71), and 15th in first downs per route run. His market share in the Bills offense is encouraging, but his per-route efficiency is concerning, as well as his 64.9% route per dropback rate (19th). I don’t know if we see a role change for Kincaid in 2025, but Kincaid could see a heavy workload in Week 1 against a defense that allowed the ninth-most receiving yards and the tenth-most receptions to tight ends last year.
I’m frightened to death about Kyle Pitts‘ season-long outlook in 2025, but he is worth considering as a streamer/YOLO upside play in Week 1 (if ya need the upside). Last year, Pitts was the TE20 in fantasy points per game. Among 47 qualifying tight ends, Pitts ranked 24th in target share, 19th in receiving yards per game, 26th in yards per route run, and 39th in first downs per route run. That is all bone-chilling, but his boxscore numbers against Tampa Bay were mouthwatering. He posted arguably his best two games against this defense last year, averaging 5.5 receptions and 89.5 receiving yards with TE2 and TE6 weekly scoring finishes. Last year, Tampa Bay had the sixth-highest single high rate (59.5%). Last year, against single-high, Pitts had a 17% target per route run rate and 2.03 yards per route run, but he also logged a 9.3% first-read share and only 0.064 first downs per route run. He’s a boom or bust play for Week 1. It could also help him, though, that Tampa Bay gave up the fourth-most receiving yards per game and yards per reception to tight ends.
Last year, in Drake Maye‘s full starts, Hunter Henry had a 19.2% target share, averaged 49.9 receiving yards per game, had 1.70 yards per route run, a 22.7% first-read share, and 0.098 first downs per route run. I’ll also add on top that he averaged 11.3 PPR points per game in that sample. Last year, among all tight ends with 25 targets, those marks would have ranked seventh, sixth, 14th, fifth, eighth, and the points per game production would have made him the TE8 in fantasy. Last year, the Raiders allowed the fifth-most receiving yards per game and the seventh-highest yards per reception to tight ends.
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