Fantasy Football Start’em, Sit’em: Jalen Coker, Elic Ayomanor, Josh Downs

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 dive into our start/sit lineup advice and outlook for a few of the top fantasy football waiver wire pickups of the week.

Fantasy Football Start’em, Sit’em Lineup Advice

Elic Ayomanor (WR – TEN)

With Calvin Ridley dealing with a hamstring issue, ElicAyomanor should assume the No. 1 WR role for Tennessee until Ridley returns. Ayomanor has two top-36 weekly finishes this season (WR24, WR27). He hasn’t displayed a high weekly ceiling with Cam Ward‘s play and inside the context of the broken Tennessee offense. Ayomanor hasn’t had more than 56 receiving yards in any game this season, and he’s surpassed 50 receiving yards only once. Against the Raiders in Week 6, Ayomanor had a 13.1% target share with 27 receiving yards, but he could easily stack two nice games in the next two weeks with a bump in usage and good matchups incoming. The Patriots and Colts have respectively allowed the fifth-most and seventh-most PPR points per target to perimeter wide receivers, per Fantasy Points Data.

Jalen Coker (WR – CAR)

Jalen Coker practiced in full all week before Week 6, but the Panthers held him out. I expect Coker to be back for Week 7 and hopefully to hit the ground running. Last year, he burst onto the scene as an undrafted free agent. He earned a starting spot as the season moved along and racked up four games with at least 60 receiving yards in the process. In the six games in which Coker played at least 68% of the snaps and Bryce Young was the starting quarterback, Coker had an 18.3% target share, 55.7 receiving yards per game, 1.89 yards per route run and a 23.8% first-read share, per Fantasy Points Data. He averaged 11.4 PPR points per game with three top-36 weekly fantasy finishes (WR17, WR12, WR28). Coker offers immediate Flex value this week against a Jets’ secondary that has allowed the ninth-most PPR points per target to slot receivers.

Josh Downs (WR – IND)

In Week 5, Josh Downs had a season-high 71.9% route share, 21.9% target share, 54 receiving yards and a 29.2% first-read share, per Fantasy Points Data. Downs finished with six grabs and 54 receiving yards. Against the Cardinals in Week 6, Downs played 50.8% of the snaps with a 60.6% route share, per Pro Football Focus (PFF). He had a 23.3% target share, finishing with six grabs, 42 receiving yards and a touchdown. I’d love to tell you that the hot streak will continue, but Downs likely remains a middling Flex play moving forward after he had a nice matchup against Arizona. Out of his next three matchups, only Pittsburgh is an advantageous one (sixth-most PPR points per target allowed to slot receivers).

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.