Fantasy football Week 14 rankings: Who to start and sit
The fantasy playoffs are finally here! Unless owners have earned a bye week, start and sit decisions for Week 14 could be the reason a fantasy season comes to an end.
It’s been a long road for fantasy owners to get to this point. Making the fantasy playoffs is the goal for every owner and is the reason so many hours are spent researching in the offseason. Now that every owner is facing a win or go home scenario, deciding which players get the start and which ones ride the bench means everything. There’s no second chance to fix a mistake that was made the previous week.
One mistake that some owners make is to just follow the advice of “Start your studs”. While that sounds great, the players that were thought to be studs 12 weeks ago may not be in that category anymore. If an owner had a choice between starting Jordan Howard and Alvin Kamara in Week one, everyone would have chosen Howard. Kamara has developed into a slam dunk start every week. This is just an example to keep in mind that fantasy football is always a weekly game. The postseason is no different. Owners need to be smart and weigh out their options carefully.
Start: Golden Tate, WR – Detroit Lions
It’s been a fairly unproductive stretch for Golden Tate recently. After a four game run of never dipping below 86 yards receiving, Tate hasn’t been above 69 yardsin the past three games. In fact, he had a game on Thanksgiving with four receptions for a pathetic seven yards. That’s almost impossible to pull off. If owners have survived this recent string of poor play, Tate should be ready to explode this week.
The Lions are on the road again but are absolutely desperate for a win to try and stay in the Wild Card race. He also draws the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which has been a goldmine for fantasy owners all season long. They have given up the most points to receivers in fantasy. Granted, no Packers receiver really went off last week but that also has to do with Brett Hundley at quarterback for Green Bay.
Tampa is going to struggle to contain quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Lions passing game. There was some fear that Stafford may have suffered a significant injury to his throwing hand, but he seems to have dodged that bullet. Detroit is going to be looking to recover from the thrashing they took in Baltimore last week and Tate should be a big part of that effort.