Fantasy football managers are facing a six-team bye week. Bye-mageddon has arrived.

Six-team bye weeks are challenging, arduous, headache-inducing … and kind of fun?

There are plenty of lineup nightmares in weeks where we have a half-dozen teams on bye at once. But you are really playing the game of fantasy football at a time like this.

I provide my fantasy football rankings and tiers for Week 7 to help you navigate your start/sit lineup questions. Below we dive into a few notable players for the week.

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Fantasy Football Outlook

I’m a few spots below the FantasyPros Expert Consensus Ranking with Jaleel McLaughlin, who’s my RB28. McLaughlin has looked good, and a Week 7 matchup against the Packers and their squishy run defense is appealing. But McLaughlin isn’t the lead back — that’s still Javonte Williams — and while McLaughlin appears to have leapfrogged Samaje Perine on the depth chart, Perine hasn’t gone away entirely. It’s still possible that Perine will be Denver’s primary passing-down back.

The Rams’ RB situation is a puzzle a week after the team lost starter Kyren Williams and backup Ronnie Rivers to significant injuries. The fantasy community is assuming that rookie sixth-rounder Zach Evans will be first in line for work, but the Rams also promoted Royce Freeman from their practice squad, signed Myles Gaskin from the Vikings’ practice squad, and signed Darrell Henderson to their practice squad. Some of the offseason enthusiasm we saw for Evans in the dynasty community was overblown. During his college career, Evans spent two seasons stuck in a three-man committee at TCU along with Kendre Miller and Emari Demercado. Then he transferred to Ole Miss and was quickly bypassed on the depth chart by freshman Quinshon Judkins. Rams beat writer Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic noted that Evans practiced exclusively with the scout team early in the season, so he wasn’t actually getting reps in the Rams’ offense. I have Evans ranked RB29, but I’m tapping the brakes with my expectations for him, even though he has a favorable matchup against the Steelers, who have given up the seventh-most fantasy points to RBs. It wouldn’t be a shock if Freeman, a journeyman who had 43 receptions for the Broncos in 2019, proved to be a more valuable fantasy asset than Evans this week.

The Emari Demercado enthusiasm in Week 6 turned out to be somewhat misguided. Keaontay Ingram led the Cardinals in RB touches last week. He had 12, Damien Williams had nine, and Demercado had only three. It’s worth noting, however, that Demercado still played the most snaps — 33 for him, 28 for Ingram, 13 for Damien Williams. Fantasy managers obviously care more about touches than snaps, and maybe Demercado falls into the Antonio Gibson category of RBs who get a lot of snaps but not many touches. With James Conner injured, the Cardinals have gone to a committee approach at the RB position. I have no interest in starting a running back in a three-man committee in a limited offense.

-Pat Fitzmaurice

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