Start or sit? Decisions about whether to start or sit in fantasy football can be excruciating. While it feels great to make the right decision and cruise to fantasy glory, it hurts just as much when someone blows up while sitting on your couch. You can check out our Who Should I Start? tool to get advice from fantasy football experts as you make your lineup decisions. And you can also sync your fantasy football league for free with 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 prospects in this week’s fantasy football primer.

Fantasy football Start em, Sit em lineup advice

Diontae Johnson (WR)

Johnson had just a 27.3% route share last week while not setting a target. This time frame is too short to expect Johnson’s involvement to increase enough to make him a fantasy prospect this week. Put it on again this week.

Rashod Bateman (WR)

Bateman is an easy fade this week. The correlation between Bateman’s bending and sitting comes down to their ability to defend deep passes. Bateman ranks second on the team in deep targets. Deep targets make up 21.6% of his target volume this season. Cincy has allowed the sixth-lowest passing yards per game and the fourth-lowest CPOE to deep passes. While I don’t expect Diontae Johnson to have a 70% route share this week, the risk remains that in two wide receiver sets, Bateman’s snaps could be cannibalized by Johnson. Bateman sits this week.

Mark Andrews (TE)

Last week, Andrews had just a 49% snap rate (his lowest since Week 4) and a 46% route share, which is likely tied to their big win against Denver. In weeks 5 through 8, Andrews had a 54.4% route share, a 14.1% target share, a 2.48% YPRR, and a 15.7% first read share. Andrews had six red zone goals and four scores in that four-game span. This week’s game against Cincy looks to be a more competitive game, which should lead to more snaps and routes for Andrews. Cincy has allowed the seventh-most fantasy points per game and the eighth-most receiving yards per game to tight ends.

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If you want to dive deeper into fantasy football, check out our award-winning list of Fantasy football tools as you navigate your season. From ours Start/sitting assistant – which provides your optimal setup based on accurate consensus projections – to our Exemption Wire Assistantwhich one This allows you to quickly see which available players will improve your team and how much – we’ve got you covered this fantasy football season.