Even though you drafted your team with certain hopes and intentions, your weekly lineup decisions shouldn't be determined by the order you picked your players in. You need to check who your players play and make sure you've got the right guys in -- and the wrong guys on the bench. It's too early to be absolutely sure which matchups will be easy and which will be tough, but we can make some educated guesses based on healthy personnel, defensive schemes, track records and key details of offenses.
The things we know can help us minimize the impact of the things we don't know. This should lead to better decision-making. Let's go through every game and highlight the players who aren't obvious starts and sits (because you don't need to be told to start Bijan Robinson).
You should feel more comfortable starting or sitting players based on the information given, and feeling comfortable with your Fantasy lineup before the games start is the best feeling in the world. Dave Richard's Week 2 rankings: Top 150 | QB | RB | WR | TE | K | DST The track record of Drake London (17-plus PPR in 7 of 12 games together) with Michael Penix Jr. is reason enough to start him. Kyle Pitts is a different story -- he's seen more than five targets from Penix just three times in 12 games, and has 12-plus PPR points in four of those 12.
Maybe it's been because of the quarterback issues, but the Falcons have deployed Pitts further downfield than your average tight end and certainly farther than other tight ends in iterations of this specific style of offense, and it's also similar to how Pitts was used with the Falcons in 2024 when he had a not-so-great year. While the downfield routes might be more appealing to Penix, it just haven't worked out consistently in the past for Pitts. The zone-coverage-based Packers have generated good pressure thanks to a higher blitz rate through their first two games, notching seven sacks against solid offensive lines.
That's problematic for Penix, who already has a tendency to throw short when facing zone coverage. That also works against Pitts, who is at best a borderline starter. The Chargers have allowed a pass rush pressure on 45.5% of Justin Herbert's dropbacks, most in the league, and they're allowing pressure in 2.49 seconds on average.
Not surprisingly, Herbert has completed just half of his throws when pressured with a 61.8 QB rating. He's arguably worse when pressured this year compared to last year -- similar completion rate, similar catchable throw rate, worse QB rating this year, worse yards per attempt this year (5.4 in two games, 6.8 in 2025). Herbert had some good moments -- his third quarter was really good -- but by the fourth quarter, what was mostly a one-score game felt like a three-score game because the Raiders pass rush was too much.
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