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
Last week, Travis Hunter played 62.3% of the defensive snaps. That didn’t stop him from playing 59.2% of the offensive snaps as well. I don’t know if Hunter will play that much weekly on both sides of the ball, but it was good to see proof of that concept for Hunter. Hunter has a 64.9% route share with a 19.2% target share (28% target per route run rate), a 6.3 aDOT, 1.10 yards per route run (27.5 receiving yards per game), a 22% first-read share, and a 28.6% designed target share. Basically, when he is on the field with the offense, he has operated as the team’s starting slot receiver (66% slot) and been fed short-area designed targets. Hunter is an immensely talented player, but Jacksonville is using him like their version of Wan’Dale Robinson. Unless Hunter breaks one of these targets for a big play or scores a touchdown (two red zone targets), you’ll likely be disappointed with this fantasy production. Houston has allowed the 14th-most PPR points per target to slot receivers.
Michael Pittman didn’t get the full shadow treatment from Pat Surtain in Week 2, but he did see him on 56.7% of his routes, which did impact his day. Overall, Pittman Jr. has a 20.6% target share with 2.07 yards per route run (60 receiving yards per game) and a 20.8% first-read share. Pittman Jr. is still looking for his first red zone target from Daniel Jones. This could be a strong week for Pittman Jr. against the Titans’ two-high coverage. Tennessee has featured two high at the 12th-highest rate (51.9%). Against two high, Pittman Jr. leads the team with 2.79 yards per route run and ranks second on the team in first-read share (22.7%). Pittman could see shadow coverage this week from L’Jarius Sneed, who followed Davante Adams last week. Adams cooked Sneed (78.6% of routes), securing five of nine targets in his coverage for 100 yards and a score. Pittman can win against Sneed. Among 96 qualifying receivers, Pittman Jr. ranks 25th in separation and 27th in route win rate. Tennessee is 19th in PPR points per target allowed to perimeter wide receivers.
To open the season, Calvin Ridley has seen the usage that we hoped for with a 23% target share, a 29.3% air-yard share, and a 26.8% first-read share, but the production hasn’t been there. Yes, one of those games he did lock horns with Pat Surtain, but he also had another dud last week. Ridley has 1.33 yards per route run and has averaged 42 receiving yards. He has posted only a 0.016 separation score and a 4.8% route win rate, so it’s tough to be too bullish about his outlook this week, but he could definitely be in store for a solid outing with this week’s matchup. The Colts have allowed the sixth-most PPR points per target to perimeter wide receivers through two games.
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