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, in the first half of the game, Worthy led the team with a 69% route share while seeing a 12.5% target share and 14.3% first-read share. With Rashee Rice back last week, everyone else in the passing attack took a step back as Rice reinserted himself as Kansas City’s clear WR1. Since Worthy’s return in Week 5, he has had a 16% target share, 32.3 receiving yards per game (1.08 yards per route run), and a 16% first-read share. He has four red zone targets and three deep targets during that stretch. Worthy is a decent flex play this week. Washington has allowed the 13th-most PPR points per target to perimeter wide receivers.
Last week, Carolina rotated Rico Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard, with each player getting entire drives to themselves all game. We’ll see if that continues in Week 8. If anything, I think the backfield could shift more in Dowdle’s favor if anything considering his per-touch effectiveness, which continues to dwarf Hubbard’s. Last week, Dowdle played 46.5% of the snaps overall, finishing with 18 touches and 96 total yards as the RB21 for the week. Dowdle has been awesome this season on a per-touch basis. Among 57 qualifying backs, he ranks 19th in explosive run rate and missed tackle rate and fourth in yards after contact per attempt. Assuming that Carolina will continue to feed their ground game and can keep this contest relatively close, Dowdle should eat this week against a run defense that has allowed the second-highest rushing yards per game, explosive run rate, and yards after contact per attempt.
Yes, last week Brashard Smith finished with 19 touches and 81 total yards as the RB14 for the week, but much of that production was in garbage time. Smith has juice, but it hasn’t translated into efficiency in the early down department, yet. He has only a 5% missed tackle rate and 1.45 yards after contact per attempt, but that’s with only 22 carries. As a receiving option, he has a 7.3% target share, a 51% target per route run rate, 3.49 yards per route run, and 0.143 first downs per route run. Last week, in the first half, Smith played 26.2% of the snaps with a 27.6% route share and a 16.7% target share (four targets). Smith is a viable flex this week in PPR formats. Washington has allowed the fifth-most receiving yards and the third-highest yards per reception to running backs.
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