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
Brown stepped up as a true bellcow last week, and that type of usage could continue moving forward. Last week, he was the RB4 in weekly scoring, playing 83% of the snaps with 32 touches and 157 total yards. He’ll need every snap and scrap of volume this week to turn in another solid day for fantasy. Among 47 qualifying backs, Brown ranks 17th in explosive run rate and 12th in missed tackles forced per attempt. Baltimore has been a tough assignment for every back this season, allowing the fewest rushing yards per game, the fifth-lowest explosive run rate, and the fourth-lowest missed tackle rate.
Call it negligence by Denver or smart planning by Baltimore. Both arguments have their merit, but Flowers destroyed the Denver secondary in Week 9 as Surtain only followed him on 26% of his routes, and Flowers was in the slot for 60% of his snaps. Surtain has moved to the slot some this season to guard wide receivers, but not nearly at that clip. Flowers has been on a heater and has pulled his season-long ranking up to WR18 in fantasy points per game. He has surpassed 18 PPR points in five games this season. Flowers has been amazing, with at least 100 receiving yards in four of his last five games. Flowers STILL has zero red zone targets since Week 2. Overall, he has seen a 25.8% target share and 30.1% first-read share, producing 2.57 YPRR and 72.7 receiving yards per game. Since Week 4, Cincy has utilized single high with 57.4% of their defensive snaps. Against single high, Flowers has seen his numbers explode with a 31.8% target share, 3.69 YPRR, and a 33% first-read share. Flowers should crush again this week against a secondary that has allowed the eighth-most fantasy points per game to perimeter wide receivers.
Gesicki has served as the team’s WR2 when Tee Higgins has been sidelined. He has seen a 55% route share, a 19.1% target share, and a 23.7% first-read share with 3.28 YPRR. In this four-game sample, Gesicki has averaged 70.5 receiving yards per game. He should continue to eat this week. Baltimore has allowed the third-most receiving yards per game, the fifth-highest yards per reception, and the 12th-most fantasy points per game to tight ends.
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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.