Fantasy Football Start em, Sit em: Tony Pollard, Rhamondre Stevenson, Kareem Hunt (Week 8)

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.

Fantasy Football Start em, Sit em Lineup Advice

Tony Pollard (RB)

Pollard has surpassed every off-season expectation for him this season. He is the RB20 in fantasy points per game, ranking 15th in opportunity share, 13th in weighted opportunities, 13th in carries, and seventh in targets among running backs. Pollard has averaged 18.7 touches and 81 total yards. Among 66 qualifying backs, Pollard ranks 32nd in missed tackles forced per attempt and tenth in yards after contact per attempt. Detroit has been an incredible run defense, but there’s some sneaky hope for Pollard this week when looking at the deeper metrics. The Lions have allowed the seventh-fewest fantasy points to rushing, the fifth-fewest rushing yards per game, and the third-lowest yards after contact per attempt. All of that sounds like nightmare fuel, no doubt, but Detroit has also been terrible at defending gap runs. They are elite versus zone concepts, but the Lions have given up the fifth-highest yards per carry to gap runs and the 13th-highest rushing success rate to the run type (Pollard 69.1% gap). If Pollard can break one long run and possibly get into the end zone, he’ll likely pay off this week with the remaining volume he’ll rack up.

Rhamondre Stevenson (RB)

Stevenson opened this week with a DNP (foot). We’ll see if he is good to go this week after returning last week from a foot injury. Last week, he played 50% of the snaps with nine touches and 25 total yards. This season, he has averaged 16.5 touches and 70 total yards. Among 66 qualifying backs, Stevenson ranks 19th in explosive run rate, 14th in missed tackle rate, and 11th in yards after contact per attempt. He has arguably been the team’s best player all season. While the Jets’ pass defense remains scary, their run defense shouldn’t strike fear in anyone’s heart. They have allowed the ninth-highest rushing success rate, the fourth-highest missed tackle rate, and the tenth-highest yards after contact per attempt.

Kareem Hunt (RB)

Since taking over as Kansas City’s clear starting tailback over the last two games, Hunt has played at least 63% of the snaps weekly with weekly fantasy finishes as RB5 and RB11. He has averaged 26 touches and 100 total yards per game. He hasn’t broken off an explosive run yet while posting a 16% missed tackle rate and 2.35 yards after contact per attempt. Nothing in that tackle-breaking profile is great or impressive, but Hunt is getting all the work and will remain a strong fantasy option until that changes (if it does). Las Vegas has allowed the seventh-highest explosive run rate and yards after contact per attempt and the tenth-most rushing yards per game. Hunt should crush again this week.

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.