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
Since being inserted into the wide receiver rotation in Week 4, Shepard has drawn a 7.9% target share with 0.94 YPRR and an 8.3% first-read share. I could easily be wrong, but I look for him to take over as the team’s primary slot option. Shepard has played 61.3% of his NFL snaps from the slot. This season, with Chris Godwin previously owning that role, Shepard had been on the perimeter for 71% of his routes. Atlanta has allowed the 15th-most receiving yards per game and ranked 15th in PPR points per target to slot receivers. Shepard is a volatile flex this week.
We essentially have a little less than two games this season with Tagovailoa under center, so take some of the numbers with a grain of salt here. Among 39 qualifying quarterbacks, Tagovailoa ranks eighth in yards per attempt, first in highly accurate throw rate, 26th in fantasy points per dropback, and 30th in CPOE. The big thing to focus on for Tagovailoa this week is the matchup. Arizona has fielded a bottom-three pass defense this season, allowing the highest yards per attempt and success rate per dropback, as well as the fourth-highest passer rating and CPOE. This is a wonderful matchup for Tagovailoa to return and post strong QB1 numbers with.
Last week, Bigsby played a season-high 66% of the snaps with 26 carries and 118 rushing yards. He still barely saw any passing work with only one target (two targets all season), but he did play 47.6% of the passing down snaps, which is a big uptick. We still need more news regarding Travis Etienne’s status for Week 8 for a final call with Bigsby’s outlook. He remains a dynamic threat on early downs. Among 66 qualifying backs, he ranks eighth in explosive run rate, 18th in missed tackles forced per attempt, and first in yards after contact per attempt. The Packers aren’t the smash matchup that they once were. Green Bay has allowed the 11th-lowest missed tackle rate, the 13th-fewest rushing yards per game, the 12th-lowest yards per carry to gap runs, and the tenth-lowest gap run success rate (Bigsby 52.2% gap).
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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.