Fantasy football: Start-em, sit-em players for Week 5
By Jay Marsdale
The fantasy football season starts to get difficult this week with bye weeks in full effect. There are quite a few big name players who are off this weekend, so building a winning lineup is going to be even more difficult for Week 5. Here are a few suggestions to make that process a little easier.
The Falcons, Broncos, Saints and Redskins all have byes in Week 5. That means key fantasy contributors like Devonta Freeman, Drew Brees and C.J. Anderson are all unavailable for your team.
Hopefully you have been building up your bench if you have one of these big players. From now until the end of the fantasy football year, you are going to be utilizing your bench a lot.
With the players some teams are losing in mind this week, we’ve added a player that is available as a free agent in most leagues under the other options for the start-em sections. This should help players fill holes in their staring lineups if they have players from those four bye week teams.
San Francisco 49ers
Enough about bye weeks, let’s take a look at how last week’s selections worked out.
Week 4 Hits: Jared Goff (LAR) start-em, Mike Gillislee (NE) sit-em, Larry Fitzgerald (ARI) start-em, Brandon Marshall (NYG) sit-em, Zach Ertz (PHI) start-em.
Week 4 Misses: Cam Newton (CAR) sit-em, Joe Mixon (CIN) start-em, Hunter Henry (LAC) sit-em.
Jared Goff continues to shine early in his second year. While Larry Fitzgerald seals the win for the Cardinals with a game-winning touchdown to end Week 4. Not bad for the start-em side of things.
However, Joe Mixon did nothing with his expanded role for Cincinnati and against the Cleveland Browns, nonetheless. And Cam Newton remembered how to play quarterback in Week 4 after a dreadful beginning to the season in Carolina.
Looking ahead to Week 5, there are fewer teams in action, but still a lot of fantasy football to be played.
Let’s take a look at the start-em, sit-em list for this week.
Start-em: Dak Prescott (DAL) vs. Green Bay
Don’t be scared off of Dak Prescott this week because of what the Green Bay defense did to Chicago in Week 4. That was much more a product of Chicago being bad on offense as it was Green Bay being good on defense. This is going to be a shootout in Green Bay in Week 5.
The only team Prescott has struggled against this season has been Denver. That is understandable, seeing as every quarterback that has faced the Broncos this season has struggled.
Prescott has went up against four of the toughest defenses in the NFL through the first four weeks of the season. The Giants, Broncos, Cardinals and Rams are all top-tier defenses, and Prescott has still done fairly well in fantasy. Now that his schedule starts to get easier, defensively, he is in for a big breakout performance.
That performance is going to come this week in Green Bay. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is going to score points against that porous Cowboys defense. That means Prescott and the Dallas offense is going to be forced to keep up. Prescott proved he can do that last week when his defense was destroyed by Goff of the Rams, and yet Prescott kept Dallas in the game.
Prescott should be another player fantasy football teams target if they are in need of quarterback help in 2017. He is at his cheapest right now, in terms of trade value, and is going to be facing much worse defenses in coming weeks. Dallas and Green Bay are going to score in Week 5, which means Prescott is going to score points for your fantasy team.
Other options: Aaron Rodgers (GB) @ Dallas and Brian Hoyer (SF) @ Indianapolis