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
In his first game back, Burrow finished as the QB11 for the week. The high-end moments were there as Burrow had an 8.7% hero throw rate, while he also had spots where the rust was evident. Burrow also had only a 56.5% highly accurate throw rate and a 67.4% catchable target rate. Burrow will round back into form with more snaps in the coming weeks. This week will be a good litmus test. The Bills’ pass defense has been one of the best in the league for the last few weeks. Since Week 9, Buffalo has allowed the eighth-fewest yards per attempt, the second-lowest passer rating, the tenth-fewest passing touchdowns (tied), and the second-lowest CPOE. Burrow could still be a QB1 this week, but he’ll need to raise the bar of his play-to-play consistency quickly.
Lamar Jackson isn’t playing good football. There, I said it. He is the QB14 in fantasy points per game this season. The last time that he cleared 40 rushing yards in a game was Week 4 against the Chiefs, and he’s done it only twice this season. After his four passing touchdown performance against the Dolphins in Week 9, Jackson has had only one passing touchdown. Across his last four games, he has finished as the QB15, QB29, QB25, and QB27 in weekly scoring. Since Week 10, among 35 qualifying passers, he ranks 16th in yards per attempt, 35th in highly accurate throw rate, and 29th in catchable target rate. It has been horrible. There’s no way around that, and if Jackson can’t supplement his struggling passing production with rushing equity, it’s tough to trust him in fantasy. Now, as I write this, watch Jackson go out and have a massive bounce-back game against a struggling defense in a divisional game and spike everything I just said in my face. That’s the risk of benching Jackson this week, but we can also say that he hasn’t played well over the last four games. Since Week 9, Pittsburgh’s pass defense has picked up the slack, allowing the seventh-fewest yards per attempt, the ninth-lowest passer rating, the fourth-lowest CPOE, and the eighth-lowest success rate per dropback.
Since Week 9, Trevor Lawrence has been the QB12 in fantasy points per game with QB1 outings in four of his last five games. Since Week 9, among 38 qualifying passers, Lawrence ranks 19th in passing yards per game, 11th in yards per attempt, 13th in highly accurate throw rate, tenth in catchable target rate, and 15th in hero throw rate. Since Week 9, Indy has ranked 16th in yards per attempt and success rate per dropback while allowing the 11th-lowest CPOE and passer rating. This should be considered an average matchup for Lawrence with Sauce Gardner out. Lawrence could be a low-end QB1 again this week.
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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.
