Week 10 Fantasy Football QB Start/Sit: Which New Starters are Worth a Spot in Your Lineup?

Post-trade deadline, we have an idea of what the second half of the NFL season will look like. There will still be shifting landscapes as injuries keep accumulating, but multiple teams made real swings at improving their rosters, and we have enough information to know who to expect to excel the rest of the way (in most cases...for now).

Let's look at three quarterbacks to start and three to sit in Week 10 of the fantasy football season. Most stats are from NFL.com, and fantasy points and rankings are from FantasyPros.

Use FantasySP's start/sit tool to compare players and help make your toughest lineup decisions each week!

Start

Drew Lock, Seattle Seahawks @ Las Vegas Raiders

Lock will start his second straight game while Sam Darnold deals with his second injury of the season. I had Lock listed here as a lower-level streamer last week in a strong matchup against the Cardinals, and while his fantasy score was underwhelming, Lock did what was needed for his team, as they shut down Arizona in a 17-3 victory.

The Raiders have given up the fifth-most yards per pass attempt and the third-most fantasy points per game to quarterbacks. They don't give up a ton of running, though four QBs did reach at least 25 yards. Instead, Las Vegas is beaten with the passing game often, allowing about 250 yards and 2.2 touchdowns per game through the air. This is one of our favorite targets to go after every week.

Seattle's defense gets their second “backup” quarterback in a row after Las Vegas traded Kirk Cousins to the Vikings and inserted Fernando Mendoza into the starting lineup. It wouldn't be a surprise to see the Seahawks put together another dominating defensive performance, which could set up several short fields for the offense. Lock is again nothing more than a low-to-mid-level streamer, but he is worth considering if you need a QB this week.

Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams @ Arizona Cardinals

Stafford's place in fantasy football is in major flux. Any quarterback losing his top two receivers is going to feel the pain, but after Davante Adams went down for an extended period, it now looks like Puka Nacua is going to miss around a month. Nacua, of course, is one of the best statistical receivers in football. While Stafford has been fine, he is way down from last year in fantasy, and things are unlikely to get better.

Arizona offers a fantastic matchup, though, as they have allowed the fourth-most yards per pass attempt and the second-most fantasy points per game to QBs. They were actually a little better than average from an efficiency standpoint the past two weeks, but the longer numbers point toward the Cardinals as a team to attack.

Stafford's ceiling is much lower than it used to be, and he currently tops out as a mid-level fantasy player. With his top guys out and Arizona looking better, fantasy owners should pause before blindly throwing him in, but Stafford still has a chance to put up some numbers based on season-long trends to this point.

Bryce Young, Carolina Panthers @ New Orleans Saints

The Saints have been a little better defensively from an efficiency standpoint than they were at the beginning of the season, but they are still allowing the ninth-most yards per pass attempt and the 12th-most fantasy points per game to quarterbacks. New Orleans struggled against big plays last week, as Cleveland had two players catch a pass of at least 60 yards and four guys with a long of at least 30 yards, even with Shedeur Sanders throwing the passes.

Young has been a successful fantasy player more because of his volume than efficiency. He has been fine from the latter perspective, but that has come with good games against weak competition and bad games against strong competition. Volume is what we're really worried about here because Young is tied for the fifth-most pass attempts, and the four guys above him have all played nine games versus just eight for Young. He continues to throw a lot, and that will result in fantasy points often, especially with an above-average matchup.

This isn't as great of an outlook as a few other guys, but with as much as Young has thrown the ball, we have to expect that trend to continue. These teams play again in the middle of December, so this could be a preview of what's to come right before the fantasy playoffs start.

Sit

Kirk Cousins, Minnesota Vikings @ Green Bay Packers

And here we go! The Vikings saw how abysmal their quarterback play was on Monday night against the Bills and knew they couldn't move forward with a fantastic defense and one of the worst offenses in football. They sent a third-round pick to the Raiders for Cousins, a player who, like Young, has been fairly average but has thrown a ton, building up volume numbers. Cousins will improve over the moribund group that Minnesota has thrown out so far, but it's a mistake to expect high-level play right away.

That's especially true in a tough matchup against the Packers, a team that has allowed the fourth-fewest yards per pass attempt and the eighth-fewest fantasy points per game to quarterbacks. They did give up 300 yards in two of their past three games, but last week took 41 pass attempts from Drake Maye to get there, and Green Bay has been better on a weekly basis with shutting down opposing QBs.

Joining a new offense, even with a coach with whom he is familiar, will create a learning curve, and I don't want to trust Cousins to put up numbers in that first game against a good defense. There will likely be some big games mixed in, but this is a time to leave Cousins on the bench.

Fernando Mendoza, Las Vegas Raiders vs. Seattle Seahawks

And now the other side of the Cousins trade. The Raiders will surely be happy with the third-round pick they received, but the real benefit is Mendoza getting his first taste of NFL action after only seeing the field in small samples of relief previously. There are likely to be flashes of good things for the top pick mixed in with rookie struggles, but we won't know what to really expect until we see him in action.

It's likely to start on a bad note. The Seahawks have given up the fewest yards per pass attempt and the second-fewest fantasy points per game to QBs. We don't need to go much further than that; there might not be a team I want to mess with less in fantasy than Seattle.

Essentially every quarterback is worth sitting against the Seahawks, so this is no knock on Mendoza. He will have much better performances, but stepping in for his first start against this defense is brutal. Skip him in every format.

Michael Penix, Atlanta Falcons vs. Kansas City Chiefs

Penix started the season hot after missing the first three games, averaging around 240 passing yards per game in his initial three contests at 9.3 yards per attempt. In the past four games, he is down to 181.3 yards per game on 5.9 per attempt. One of those games was a torrential downpour in Tampa Bay, but Penix has been struggling on a per-attempt basis over the past month, and it's hard to trust him in tough matchups.

This is one of those tough matchups. The Chiefs have allowed the sixth-fewest yards per pass attempt and the fourth-fewest fantasy points per game to QBs. Only two players have thrown multiple touchdowns against Kansas City this season, and one of those took 52 pass attempts from Cousins; that was also one of only two games in which a team reached 250 passing yards. This is a top-line pass defense.

With Penix looking worse recently and KC continuing their strong work against the pass, the Atlanta passer is set up for another low-scoring fantasy output here. There will be chances for better games later, but this week is followed by the Falcons' bye and then a game against the Vikings, so it's best to leave Penix on the waiver wire past Thanksgiving.