Fantasy Football Start em, Sit em: Joe Flacco, TJ Hockenson, Jayden Reed (Week 9)

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

Joe Flacco (QB)

Well, it happened. The Colts benched Anthony Richardson in favor of Joe Flacco. We’ll see how long this lasts, but here we go for Week 9. In Flacco’s two starts, he has finished as the QB4 and the QB18 in weekly scoring. Among 37 qualifying quarterbacks, Flacco ranks 27th in yards per attempt, 30th in CPOE and highly accurate throw rate, and he has the fourth-highest off-target rate. Not great, Bob. We’ll see how well Flacco holds up against Brian Flores and his blitz-heavy approach. Minnesota leads the NFL in blitz rate (41.4%). Against the blitz, among 36 qualifying quarterbacks, Flacco ranks 29th in passing grade and 35th in yards per attempt. If he can stay upright, he should post decent numbers through the air. Minnesota has allowed the sixth-most passing touchdowns while ranking 14th in CPOE and 15th in yards per attempt.

T.J. Hockenson (TE)

Hockenson should be active this week, but there’s no way to project how big of a role he will play. You’ve had him sitting on the bench or in your IR spot all season, so what’s one more week? If you are in desperation mode in a deep league, or if you’re a psycho and play in a start two-tight-end league and have to start him, I get it. Indy has allowed the ninth-most receiving yards and the seventh-most fantasy points per game to tight ends, so at least the matchup is conducive to him possibly paying off with a touchdown on a snap count.

Jayden Reed (WR)

Reed has been quiet in recent weeks. He hasn’t had more than 55 receiving yards in any game since Week 5. That could change this week. Reed is the WR18 in fantasy points per game. He has seven deep targets but only two red zone targets over his last four games. Reed has a 17.1% target share, 2.68 YPRR, and a 21.1% first-read share. I expect the Lions to utilize single-high heavily this week against Green Bay. In their two meetings last year, they utilized it with 59.9% of their defense snaps. This season overall, they have utilized single high with 55.6% of their defensive snaps. They had a brief dalliance with two high in Weeks 3-5, but they have utilized single high on at least 60.8% of their snaps in their four other games this season. Against single high, Reed has ranked third on the team in TPRR (20%) with 2.65 YPRR (second-best) and an 18.4% first-read share (second-best). Detroit has been victimized by slot receivers all year, allowing the most fantasy points per game and receiving yards per game to the position.

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.