The Arizona Cardinals will face the Carolina Panthers in Week 16. Here’s fantasy football start-sit advice for every Cardinals and Panthers skill player who has the potential to make a fantasy impact during the game.
Looking for more lineup advice? Head over to our Week 16 Fantasy Start-Sit Cheat Sheet, where we cover every fantasy-relevant player in every game.
Kyler Murray, QB
Kyler Murray has one top-20 finish this season since his QB4 performance in Week 10. This season, he has as many games without a TD pass as games with multiple passing scores. All of that said, a date with the Panthers has a way of correcting those ails. Carolina is one of four defenses this year allowing opponents to post an average passer rating in the triple digits.
Murray’s rushing production has been spotty (under 25 yards on the ground in six of his past seven games), and that keeps him from lineup-lock status. He’s in the same tier as Jordan Love for me this week — an inconsistent fantasy asset in a favorable spot where his team may not require him to post video game numbers in order to have success.
Bryce Young, QB
The 83-yard touchdown pass to Jalen Coker under duress was good to see, but on 14 other pressured dropbacks against Dallas, Bryce Young produced one (1) passing yard.
Over the past month or so, we seem to get breadcrumbs when it comes to a positive profile, but nothing substantial enough to have my interest in any capacity for the remainder of this season. Case in point: Young hit Micah Parsons — unofficially a top-three most scary player on a football field thes
e days — with a spin move last week, and it worked!
He then finished the run with a lost fumble.
That’s pretty much Young’s career arc up to this point. I’ll be paying attention in the offseason, not in the current times with no room for error in the fantasy playoffs.
Trey Benson, RB
Trey Benson was a logical pick-and-stash option all season long, but James Conner has stayed as healthy as ever, and that has left the rookie on the bench.
Benson isn’t close to stand-alone value (no more than five carries in a game over the past month) and doesn’t need to be held if you need value out of every player. That said, if you have a loaded team and/or a bye this week, I’m very interested in adding a handcuff like this as a luxury piece at the end of your roster.
James Conner, RB
Carolina has allowed a touchdown on seven of eight red-zone trips over their past two games (previous three: 5-of-13), opening up a path for James Conner to potentially repeat last week, his first multi-TD effort of the season.
In theory, you’d expect a player with Conner’s résumé to slow with time, but I’m not seeing it. He ripped off a 53-yard run in the first quarter against the Patriots last week, his longest as a Cardinal, and if not for a shoestring tackle, it’s an 80-yard score.
He’s getting the usage in close and in the passing game. There’s nothing to not like in this profile, and you can feel great about continuing to count on Arizona’s star.
Chuba Hubbard, RB
Chuba Hubbard is one touchdown away from joining Christian McCaffrey as the only Panther RB since 2010 with 1,000 rushing yards and 10 total scores in a season. Putting his name on a list with only McCaffrey is a bit dramatic, but what he has done as a part of a limited offense is nothing short of special.
With Jonathon Brooks done for the season (ACL), there’s no obvious carry competition. Given Hubbard’s contract extension, it’s logical to think that this team could shut him down, but until we hear that speculated, I’m planning on running Hubbard out there as a rock-solid RB2.
This season, Arizona is allowing the second-most yards per carry after first contact to opposing running backs. I think you can pencil in a nice rebound effort in what should be a more competitive game.
Jalen Coker, WR
Jalen Coker returned from a quad injury last week and took a pass 83 yards to the house to celebrate, fueling his second top-20 performance of his rookie season.
That play, naturally, was as much the result of mass confusion in Dallas’ secondary as anything, so I’d caution against reading too much into anything. It was Coker and Adam Thielen in two-receiver sets with Xavier Legette getting banged up, and that puts two similar skill sets in position to cannibalize one another.
With Bryce Young offering spotty QB play, I’d prefer to have the slot role locked up if I were going to venture into the Panthers’ waters. Both Coker and Thielen have shown the ability to win at that spot on the field, but last week, it was the veteran occupying that spot (71.4% of snaps) over the rookie (46.5%).
I remain interested in this team — I’ll save my exposure for next season.
Marvin Harrison Jr., WR
Marvin Harrison Jr. has 28 catches for 349 yards and three touchdowns in quarters 2-4 this season. If you extend those 42 quarters for a full season — 46 catches for 565 yards and five touchdowns. That’s essentially the stat line Chris Godwin posted in seven games before his season ended (50-576-5).
How crazy is that?
This summer, we assumed that this would be a marriage between quantity of targets, quality of opportunity, and elite pedigree. Heck, through September we believed that to be the case, but it hasn’t come close to panning out.
Harrison has one game this season with more than five receptions and is not one of the 186 players (entering Week 16) with a catch gaining more than 25 yards since Week 3.
- Josh Whyle
- Simi Fehoko
- Miles Sanders
Those are just some of the names on that list. Obviously, nothing about this matchup should scare you (CAR: highest TD pass rate allowed), but everything about how Arizona is using its supposed generational talent should.
I have Harrison sitting as nothing more than an ordinary WR3, preferring Jakobi Meyers (vs. JAX) to him.
Xavier Legette, WR
Xavier Legette is going to be more than a fun accent and interesting eating habits, but not yet.
Over the course of his last seven games played with fellow rook Jalen Cooker active, he’s turned 156 routes into just 148 receiving yards. There were some interesting scoring metrics on him earlier this season, but those have evaporated lately. Over his last five games, he’s been targeted on just 10.3% of his red-zone routes.
Citing “Carolina red-zone trips” is an issue unto itself given the small nature of it, and if Legette’s share is underwhelming, there’s no real reason to hold onto him, even if his status were to swing in a positive direction (groin).
Adam Thielen, WR
Jalen Coker (quad) returned to action last week, and that means we are splitting a slot role that was fringe-worthy in the first place in terms of my confidence. If Bryce Young is going to develop, I’d expect a very well-thought-out plan of attack down the stretch of this season, something like what we saw on his first 10 passes last week:
- Jalen Coker: Three targets (two catches for 19 yards)
- Chuba Hubbard: Three targets (three catches for 16 yards)
- Xavier Legette: Two targets (two catches for seven yards)
- Thielen: Two targets (one catch for five yards)
I’m not confident at all in the hierarchy of targets in Carolina to close this season, nor am I confident in Young paying off those targets with fantasy points. I’d hang onto Thielen with a plus schedule the rest of the way, but I’m doing so with very little in the way of expectations.
Michael Wilson, WR
I hate to admit it because I still think there is a fantasy asset in this profile, but based on usage, there’s no real reason to go to Michael Wilson this week, even if you like seeing the “at CAR” label in your Flex spot.
We don’t have concrete proof that Wilson is a target elevator, which mean he needs volume – and that’s not happening.
Wilson has cleared 6.5 expected PPR points in just one of his past six games, a low bar to struggle to reach. There is spike-play upside in his skill set, but Arizona’s offense as a whole has struggled to give us consistent production, and it’s buried their young receiver.
Since Week 3, the Cardinals are 3-0 against the AFC East (29.7 points per game) and 3-6 against the rest of the NFL (17.3). That’s not a predictive stat by any means, but it’s one that helps me communicate my lack of trust in this offensive environment as a whole, so I’m dropping it here.
And to answer your next question — yes, I’ll probably talk myself back into Wilson this summer.
Trey McBride, TE
At this point, it’s pretty clear that the NFL doesn’t currently have an answer for Trey McBride. He’s posted four straight top-five finishes at the position (PPR) and has 10 top-10 weeks this season – he’s essentially comes with no risk and great upside at a position that, at times, feels like throwing darts.
Kyler Murray has the fifth-lowest average air yards (6.9 yards) among qualified QBs, and that leads me to believe that McBride’s elite floor is here to stay for well beyond this season. He has at least seven grabs and 10 targets in four consecutive games, joining Amon-Ra St. Brown, Justin Jefferson, and Christian McCaffrey as the only active players with such a streak within their first three professional seasons.
It’s far too early to make any broad claims for next season – but if the industry doesn’t push the elite tight ends up draft boards, there might be a case to be made for taking two of the top-five at the position – locking in stable Flex production while weakening your opposition in the process.
I’m not locking that in as the Soppe Strategy to take to the bank just yet, but it’s bouncing around in my head.
Ja’Tavion Sanders, TE
The potential is there for Ja’Tavion Sanders to develop alongside Bryce Young, and that’s going to have my attention in the 2025 redraft prep. I think there’s a lot to like in the rookie, but not with your season on the line after consecutive goose eggs.
This season, just one of his 250 routes have earned an end-zone target. With six instances in which a single-digit on-field target share was posted, the floor is too low to garner serious interest as a streaming candidate.
