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 experts Pat Fitzmaurice and Derek Brown advise. And you can find all of DBro’s fantasy football outlook in this week’s fantasy football primer as well as Fitz’s fantasy football rankings & tiers.
- Waiver Wire Picks
- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
- Fantasy Football Trade Tools
Fantasy Football Start’em, Sit’em Lineup Advice
Bam Knight (RB – ARI)
Bam Knight has scored a touchdown in each of his last two games, but I’m ranking him as a low-end RB3 and don’t really want to play him against the Packers. Last week against the Colts, Knight played five more snaps than Michael Carter and out-touched Carter 12-11. This looks like a split backfield, with Knight as the primary early-down guy and Carter the passing-down guy. Carter seems like the better option if the Cardinals are in chase mode, and that seems likely to be the case this week with the Cardinals a 6.5-point home underdog against the Packers. Green Bay’s defense is giving up a league-low 66.2 rushing yards per game to RBs.
Kimani Vidal (RB – LAC)
If a player is a lead back for his team, you’re starting him unless he’s terrible or his offense is terrible, and I don’t think either of those caveats apply to Kimani Vidal. No doubt Vidal benefitted from the matchup with Miami and its abysmal run defense last week when he ran for 124 yards and added a TD catch. Vidal averaged 6.9 yards per carry in that game. His matchup against the Colts this week won’t be quite as easy. But Vidal’s usage last week was lead-back material: a 67.2% snap share, 21 touches, usage in the passing game. If you picked him up on waivers, you’re playing him.
Isiah Pacheco (RB – KC)
There seemed to be a usage shift in the Chiefs’ backfield last week. After splitting work pretty evenly with Kareem Hunt for the first five games of the season, Isiah Pacheco out-snaped Hunt 49-19 last week vs. the Lions and out-touched Hunt 13-7. It’s hard to tell whether the increase Pacheco usage is going to stick. Rookie RB Brashard Smith is in the mix, too, and the Chiefs have a league-high +9.7% pass rate over expected. Even in a game where the Chiefs are double-digit home favorites against the Raiders and figure to have a run-friendly game script, I can only rank Pacheco as a midrange RB3.
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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.