Who Should I Start Tips
Everything You Need to Know About our Start/Sit Tool for Setting Lineups
Our start/sit tool has been breaking down start decisions for over a decade. We break down all start/sit decisions across a few different categories and then suggest an overall winner.
We take into account projections, season stats & trending stats, redzone opportunities, expert concensus rankings, injury status, and matchups to determine an overall winner.
Just recently we included Expert Analysis where we bring in start decisions from real owners who own both players and show who their prefered starter might be. This feature is unique to FantasySP and provides great insights to crowdsource the decision from real fantasy owners. We will touch more on that below.
Understanding the Basics of a Start Decision
As mentioned above, most of the start decisions you are analyzing more than likely have no clear obvious winner. No one is going to ask it if you should start Christian McCaffrey - at least we hope not. Because these start decisions are so complex we decided to present all of the data to you across various tabs so you can see the important comparisons at a glance. We feel this is the BEST way to attack a start decision.
Matchups play a key role in determining which player should get the start. We factor the strength of matchup into our player projections but when it comes down to a toss up our tool will likely lean towards the more favorable matchup.
Breaking news is also incredibly important when factoring in who to start which is why we also feature the latest news from across the web at your fingertips.
What about Consensus Rankings in Start Decisions?
Consensus Rankings are important but does not tell the full story and we do not rely on consensus rankings to justify who to start and quite frankly neither should you. What exactly are you learning if Player 1 has a consensus ranking of 34 and Player 2 has a consensus ranking of 33? Do those consensus rankings factor in your scoring system? Of course not.
Consensus rankings are a much less useful version of player projections and should not be held to the same standard as projections. Therefore they are just one piece of the overall puzzle.
Prioritize player projections - look at the specific categories so you can see how many passing yards, receiving yards, rush yards, etc a player is expected to have. View past performance and see what type of ceiling each player has this year instead of relying on a stat such as consensus rankings.
Crowdsourcing the Start Decision
As previously mentioned, it can be incredibly important to see what other fantasy owners are doing given the same option on who to start. It's a great way to take the temperature of other fantasy owners out there.
A good rule of thumb to go by is if each player has similar projections with a similar matchup, then the last deciding factor could be which player fantasy owners are more confident in. Are fantay owners likely starting both players? (a great sign) Is one player specifically getting a +25% in favor of the other player. Are both players being benched more than they are starting? (bad sign) Utilize these signals to your advantage.
Our start/sit data is updated in real-time throughout the day leading up until kickoff.
Premium Start/Sit Options to Consider
As you know, the start/sit tool does not know your scoring settings so the best way to obtain a more accurate start decision is importing your team into the Fantasy Assistant and seeing your roster at a glance.
