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
The big debate this week is “which Cardinals’ running back will take the lion’s share of the work this week?” The way I’m approaching this is that Michael Carter will be the early down option, and Demercado will handle the two-minute offense and most of the passing downs. Last week, he was second to Trey Benson in route share with 29.4%. He played 39.1% of the snaps but only had two carries. Last year, while he had a 20.4% route share, he had only 6.8% of the rushing volume. He could easily break a big run this week and pay off with the early down volume he is given. Last year, in limited action (24 carries), he looked very good with a 12.5% explosive run rate, a 21% missed tackle rate, and 3.58 yards after contact per attempt. Tennessee has allowed the fifth-most rushing yards per game, the fourth-highest explosive run rate, and the 13th-highest yards after contact per attempt. The Titans are also 17th in receiving yards and 18th in yards per reception allowed to running backs. Demercado and Carter are strong flexes this week, with the situation murky and the matchup juicy.
With Malik Nabers sadly done for the season, Darius Slayton is set to assume a larger role in the Giants’ passing attack. Last year, when Nabers was out (Weeks 5-6), Slayton was fed volume with a 29.3% target share (11 targets per game), a 56.9% air-yard share, 2.49 yards per route run (89.5 receiving yards per game), and a 36.5% first-read share. In those two games, Slayton was the WR7 and WR31 in weekly scoring. Last week, in the second half of the game without Nabers, Slayton had a 20% target share, a 42.3% air-yard share, and a 22.2% first-read share. It was a small sample (ten passing targets), but encouraging. I’m guessing the Giants chuck the rock more this week against the Saints to get Jaxson Dart more comfortable, and they should have success doing so. Slayton should lead the way for the Giants’ passing attack this week against a secondary that has allowed the second-most PPR points per target and the seventh-most receiving yards per game to perimeter wide receivers.
Daniel Jones is the QB7 in fantasy points per game after cooling off some from his red hot start to the season. Over the last two games, he has finished as the QB11 and QB23 in weekly fantasy scoring. He is now averaging only 4.5 rushing attempts and 13.5 rushing yards per game. Jones hasn’t surpassed 30 rushing yards in any game and hasn’t scored on the ground since Week 2. Among 38 qualifying quarterbacks, he ranks third in yards per attempt, eighth in passer rating, tenth in highly accurate throw rate, and sixth in catchable target rate. He faces a Raiders’ pass defense that will offer him a strong bounceback opportunity. They have given up the 11th-highest yards per attempt, the 12th-most passing yards per game, and the third-highest CPOE.
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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.
