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
Purdy has been his usual efficient self, but passing touchdown luck has hurt his fantasy production as the QB15 in fantasy points per game. Among 35 qualifying quarterbacks, Purdy ranks first in yards per attempt and CPOE and fifth in passing yards per game, but he is only 12th in passing touchdowns this season. This could be the boxscore stuffing game for Purdy. Seattle’s pass defense has shown cracks in the pavement. They have allowed the 14th-highest passer rating and CPOE while also struggling against a 49ers’ offensive staple. San Francisco loves utilizing motion in their game plan. Purdy has the seventh-most pre-snap motion dropbacks. Seattle has allowed the 11th-highest passer rating and the highest CPOE to pre-snap motion.
Chef Geno continues to cook as the QB7 in fantasy points per game. Much of his success has been volume-driven in Seattle’s pass-happy attack, but Smith has stood out in some efficiency metrics. He is first in passing attempts and passing yards per game while also ranking fifth in CPOE and sixth in catchable target rate. Smith should also benefit this week from Seattle’s use of pre-snap motion (Smith is 13th in pre-snap motion dropbacks). San Francisco can be passed on as they have allowed the ninth-highest yards per attempt and the 12th-most passing touchdowns (tied). They have also surrendered the sixth-highest passer rating and CPOE and the third-highest yards per attempt to passing plays that involved pre-snap motion.
Smith-Njigba is the WR36 in fantasy points per game with three top 36 weekly finishes this season (WR8, WR32, WR28). Smith-Njigba has a 20.1% target share, a 24.1% air-yard share, 1.34 YPRR, and a 19.7% first-read share. He leads the team in red-zone and end-zone targets with three a piece. Over the last two games, San Francisco has leaned more into single-high coverage with the 12th-highest rate (61.1%). Against single-high, Smith-Njigba ranks second on the team in target share (19.8%) and first-read share (22.4%), but he has been relatively ineffective with only 1.10 YPRR (fifth on the team). He could get an efficiency bump this week, though, against a 49ers’ secondary that has allowed the fourth-highest PPR points per target and the seventh-highest passer rating when targeted to slot receivers. Smith-Njigba will run about 89% of his routes against Deommodore Lenoir (58.3% catch rate and 69.4 passer rating).
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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.
