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 for Week 4 and what fantasy football expert Derek Brown advises. And you can find all of DBro’s fantasy football outlook in the Week 4 fantasy football primer.
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Fantasy Football Start em, Sit em Lineup Advice
Don’t look now, but Jones is a viable fantasy quarterback again. Jones has finished as the QB6 and QB8 in fantasy over the last two weeks. Over that span, among 33 qualifying quarterbacks, Jones ranks seventh in passer rating, second in passing touchdowns (tied), eighth in CPOE, and seventh in fantasy points per dropback. Yes, I am as surprised as you are right now. I don’t think that carries into this week, though. Dallas has surrendered the seventh-highest yards per attempt, but they also have held passers to the 11th-lowest CPOE and 13th-lowest passer rating. Jones also falls apart under pressure. Dallas has the 11th-best pressure rate. Among 31 qualifying quarterbacks against pressure, Jones ranks 23rd in passing grade and 25th in yards per attempt. If you’re only expecting QB2 numbers from Jones in Week 4 in a Superflex league, he can likely provide that, but not a ton more.
Dowdle led the Dallas backfield last week in snaps, routes, targets, and carries. Dallas utilized fullback Hunter Luepke more in the passing game, while Ezekiel Elliott became a distant memory. Dowdle played 46% of the snaps, rolling up 11 touches with 56 total yards. Dowdle led the group with a 60% snap rate on rushing plays and a 43% snap rate in the red zone. Dowdle is slowly taking over the backfield as Dallas realizes that Elliott has little to offer at this stage of his career. It’s a small sample, but Dowdle hasn’t been efficient with his early down work. Among 49 qualifying backs, he sadly ranks 46th in missed tackles forced per attempt, 32nd in yards after contact per attempt, and hasn’t managed an explosive run yet. He still remains the best option among meh options for the team. This could be his breakout game of the season in Week 4 if the team commits to him finally. The Giants run defense is a magical elixir for backs, allowing the eighth-highest explosive run rate and the highest missed tackle rate and yards after contact in the NFL.
I speculated that Ferguson would be more limited last week in his return to the lineup, but he wasn’t. He had a 73% route share with a 19.6% target share, 2.38 YPRR, and a 20.6% first-read share (tied for the team lead). Overall, Ferguson has a 19.3% target share, 1.93 YPRR, and an 18.6% first read share as the TE7 in fantasy. Ferguson should post another TE1-worthy stat line this week against a defense that has allowed the 10th-highest yards per reception and the 12th-most receiving yards per game to tight ends.
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