Making fantasy football lineup decisions can be incredibly frustrating or incredibly rewarding; it all depends on how often you get it correct. Here to help you make those decisions are our positional start ’em and sit ’em picks.
Fantasy decisions will only get more difficult from here on out, so let’s take a look at our Week 7 start/sit plays for the TE position.
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Which TEs Should You Start in Fantasy This Week?
Luke Musgrave, Green Bay Packers (at DEN)
Unless you have Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, T.J. Hockenson, or Sam LaPorta, it gets very difficult to recommend a tight end who should start.
MORE: Week 7 Start/Sit Options — QB | WR | RB
Luke Musgrave played 69% of the snaps in the game prior to the Packers’ Week 6 bye. He caught six of seven targets for 34 yards — I will gladly take that at tight end.
This week, the Packers get a Broncos defense that sees 26.5% of its total receiving yards allowed go to the tight end position. Playing the Chiefs certainly skews this number, but the Broncos are allowing the most PPG to the position. Musgrave is a borderline TE1 this week.
Which TEs Should You Sit in Fantasy This Week?
Zach Ertz, Arizona Cardinals (at SEA)
Assuming you read the start ’em portion of this first, you already read my prognosis on the position. There are four must-starts, and everyone else can reasonably be benched.
Zach Ertz’s name is here because he’s been a serviceable fantasy TE for six weeks, but now his time appears to be coming to an end.
Ertz played a season-low 46% of the snaps last week. He’s now seen a total of nine targets over the past two weeks and caught a total of four passes for 32 yards over that span.
Sophomore TE Trey McBride out-snapped Ertz for the first time this season. That feels like the start of a trend. To make matters worse, the Seattle Seahawks allow the fifth-fewest PPG to tight ends.
This is a bad spot for a declining player. Sit Ertz this week.
Trending Searches for TE Start/Sit
Did you know that we have a Start/Sit Optimizer here at Pro Football Network?! It’s completely free to use, allowing you to enter up to six players to find the best option to plug into your starting lineup!
It also allows us to see the most popular trending searches, which we’ve jotted some of them down here to help provide some clarity on!
Should You Start Luke Musgrave or Kyle Pitts?
Over the past two weeks, Kyle Pitts has looked more like the elite TE1 we thought he could be last year. But has anything really changed? Unfortunately, no.
Well, that’s a lie. Something has changed; Pitts’ role is getting worse. After playing at least 62% of the snaps in the Falcons’ first four games, Pitts saw his snap share dip to 53% and 55% in the past two weeks. Over those two games combined, he’s played fewer snaps than Jonnu Smith.
Pitts saw some nice volume in Week 5 with the Falcons playing catch-up. In Week 6, he caught a touchdown. Fantasy managers will take it, but it’s still largely smoke and mirrors.
MORE: Fantasy News Tracker
Musgrave’s role is better. His quarterback is better. His target competition is similar. And this week, the matchup is much better.
The Start/Sit Optimizer says Musgrave. I, too, say Musgrave.
Should You Start Cole Kmet or Jonnu Smith?
Here is yet another start/sit question involving a Falcons tight end. While Jonnu Smith has been playing ever so slightly ahead of Pitts, he’s not quite an every-week TE1. But he’s still better than Cole Kmet.
Smith has scored at least 8.7 fantasy points in every game since Week 2. He’s cracked double-digits in three straight games.
Kmet had his smash game in Week 4 against the aforementioned Broncos. Other than that, he’s hit double-digits just once and had two games with under 5.0 fantasy points.
This one is much closer in the Start/Sit Optimizer, but we both agree it’s Smith.