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
Well…Tank Bigsby is gone, and Travis Etienne crushed in Week 1. This isn’t how I saw this backfield unfolding, but kudos to everyone who drafted Etienne. In Week 1, he finished as the RB6 for the week, playing 61% of the snaps and finishing with 19 touches and 156 total yards. He had a 19% missed tackle rate and 5.31 yards after contact per attempt (both strong marks). He should continue his hot start this week against a Bengals run defense that, in Week 1, allowed the tenth-highest missed tackle rate and the 12th-highest rushing success rate.
I’m just as flummoxed as everyone else by Kenneth Walker’s Week 1 usage. Yes, there were reports that he was dealing with a foot issue in camp, but those dissipated near the end of camp with him practicing and the team preaching a plan for his usage. I took the team and coaching staff at their word, and I guess shame on me, but I share everyone’s frustration with how this situation unfolded in Week 1. Walker played 40% of the snaps with a 45.4% rushing share. He had a 32% route share and 13% target share. His per-rush metrics weren’t Walker-esque at all as he forced zero missed tackles and had only 2.10 yards after contact per attempt (Charbonnet 1.67). The Seattle backfield could remain a committee while Walker gets up to 100% or this could be the ugliness that we are forced to stare at this season. With only one game under the belt, no one truly knows. Walker had two red zone carries in Week 1 (Charbonnet had four). Maybe Walker gets on track this week…I don’t know, but the matchup is a good one for him to do so. Last week, Pittsburgh allowed the fourth-highest missed tackle rate, the sixth-most yards before contact per attempt, and they had the tenth-lowest stuff rate. Walker is a risky flex play.
TreVeyon Henderson was the RB25 in PPR scoring in Week 1. He played 33.8% of the snaps, finishing with 11 touches and 51 total yards. His passing game role fueled his week with a 32.1% route share but a 13% target share (six targets). He had only 38.4% of the running back rushing attempts (five). He posted a 20% missed tackle rate but only 0.40 yards after contact per attempt. It was an incredibly small sample, so take it with a grain of salt. Hopefully, his role grows in Week 2 against a middling run defense. In Week 1, Miami ranked 17th in stuff rate and 16th in yards before contact per attempt while giving up the eighth-most yards after contact per attempt.
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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.