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 Pat Fitzmaurice advises. And you can find all of Fitz’s fantasy football outlook in this week’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
Michael Carter had 18-51-1 rushing and 5-22-0 receiving last week. He had a 57.4% snap share and was fed 23 touches while starting for the Cardinals in place of the injured Trey Benson. It seems unlikely that Carter loses workload to Emari Demercado after Demercado’s costly and buffoonish fumble last week. Start Carter against a middle-of-the-road Indianapolis run defense that ranks 16th in DVOA.
D’Andre Swift is averaging -0.39 rushing yards over expected per carry, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. That’s ninth-worst among qualifying running backs. Swift was dead last in rushing yards over expected per carry last season at -0.69 yards per carry. Swift is currently RB27 in fantasy points per game. He’s averaging 3.3 yards per carry and 4.7 yards per target. As ineffective as the Chicago running game has been, I wonder if we might see a little more of rookie RB Kyle Monangai with the Bears coming out of their bye week. I don’t especially want to play Swift this week against a good Washington run defense and am ranking him as a high-end RB3.
The Bengals rank last in the league in the adjusted line yards run-blocking metric, and PFF gives the Bengals the worst run-blocking grade in the league. Chase Brown is averaging 2.5 yards per carry and has a nasty matchup against a Packers defense that has allowed the fourth-fewest fantasy points to running backs. Keep Brown on the bench if you can.
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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.