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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- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
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Fantasy Football Start’em, Sit’em Lineup Advice: Wide Receivers
Ricky Pearsall has had a wonderful offseason and is primed to spread his wings in his second season. Pearsall’s rookie season was derailed early by camp injuries and then off-the-field circumstances that were out of his control. All of these factors delayed Pearsall flashing his immense talent, but eventually, the cream rose to the top. In the final two weeks of the regular season, Pearsall finished as the WR7 and WR14 in weekly scoring while seeing a 21.7% target share and 30.4% first-read share and producing 2.84 yards per route run. Pearsall will face a Seattle secondary that last year allowed the ninth-most fantasy points per game to perimeter wide receivers (Pearsall 85.7% perimeter in the preseason). Pearsall will line up against Riq Woolen (2024: 55.2% catch rate and 83.7 passer rating allowed) and Josh Jobe (2024: 60% catch rate and 82.8 passer rating allowed) for most of the game.
Last year, after Bo Nix took off, Courtland Sutton was the WR20 in fantasy points per game. In Weeks 5-18, Sutton had a 22.7% target share while ranking 17th in yards per route run, 22nd in receiving yards per game, 19th in first-read share, and ninth-best in first downs per route run. Overall, he was the WR24 in fantasy points per game, but he was the WR9 in expected fantasy points per game. If L’Jarius Sneed is fully healthy, he could shadow Sutton in Week 1. Last year, in Weeks 1-4, Sneed followed D.J. Moore, Garrett Wilson, Romeo Doubs, and Tyreek Hill on 50-66.7% of their routes, holding all of them to 35 or fewer receiving yards in his coverage. If Sneed follows him in Week 1 (which is what I’m expecting), Sutton could have a quiet game.
Jameson Williams finally broke out last year as the WR23 in fantasy points per game. He did so while only commanding a 17.6% target share, having a 20% target per route run rate, and 11 red zone targets. Those are solid but not overwhelming numbers. Williams did rank 15th in separation, 23rd in yards per route run, and 35th in first downs per route run, so there’s also some hope that he can take another step in 2025. The Green Bay corner room could yield a big day to Williams, but the coverage he will see most of the day doesn’t really play to his favor if his role stays the same as last season. Last year, in Weeks 11-18, Green Bay utilized two high at the tenth-highest rate (52.6%). Last year, against two high, Williams had a strong 2.20 yards per route run, but he wasn’t the team’s go-to option against two high, which was Amon-Ra St. Brown (30% target per route run rate). Williams had only a 20% target per route run rate and 0.075 first downs per route run. He could eat into St. Brown’s workload against two high this year if he can continue with that strong per-route efficiency, so it’s not inconceivable that he takes another step in this department in 2025. Williams should have no issues shredding Keisean Nixon (2024: 66.3% catch rate and 97.5 passer rating allowed) and Nate Hobbs (2024: 67.4% catch rate and 96.3 passer rating allowed) this week.
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If you want to dive deeper into fantasy football, check out our award-winning slate of Fantasy Football Tools as you navigate your season. From our Start/Sit Assistant – which provides your optimal lineup based on accurate consensus projections – to our Waiver Wire Assistant, which allows you to quickly see which available players will improve your team and how much – we’ve got you covered this fantasy football season.