Week 7 is upon us and Thursday Night Football is back after a one week hiatus. I think we should make Tuesday night football a regular thing instead of Thursday. Thursday night games hardly even feel like a game for the week of the Sunday games. Tuesday night football still gives us 3 days of football, but it makes them flow better. I’m probably just bummed that my choice of football if I oblige is an NFC East game tonight. There won’t be a play for tonight’s game this week, so here are your starts and sits for Sunday!
Start
Justin Herbert
Justin Herbert has already moved into the betting favorite to win the offensive rookie of the year. It makes sense, he has a 3/1 TD/INT ratio with 9 TDs through the air. His lowest yardage total through 4 games is 264. The Jaguars have become the dumpster fire that I thought they would be coming into the year. You’re going to get a lot of recommendations for players playing against the Jaguars going forward. Through 6 games, the Jaguars have given up an average of 2 passing touchdowns per game. I see this being a big game for Herbert and Allen coming of a bye.
Ronald JonesÂ
Ronald looks like a world beater the past 3 weeks. He has 3 straight games with over 100 yards on the ground and ran in 2 touchdowns against the packers on Sunday. Jones is starting to show how explosive that he was expected to be coming out of college. He has at least a 23 yard run in each of those past 4 games. The Raiders give up 4.8 yards per carry and have let 10 touchdowns in on the ground. It should be another huge game for Rojo assuming the Bucs are in control of this one.Â
D’Andre Swift
The bye week was exactly what the Lions needed to make Swift a bigger part of this offense and they are better off for it. In his first game with double digit carries, Swift gained 114 yards on the ground and found the end zone twice. Swift is carving out a nice spot for himself in this Lions offense. The Falcons looked much better this past week, but I still expect the Lions to be able to move the ball.Â
Deebo Samuel
The 49ers are moving into another must win game against the Patriots to keep pace in the best division in football. Deebo will now be playing in his 4th game since coming off of the IR and he’s becoming more and more involved every game. In the past two games, Deebo has 14 targets through the air and he’s capable of breaking a big run at anytime. The depleted Patriots defense is a lot easier to scheme against than in years past.Â
Rob Gronkowski
Gronkowski is finally starting to figure it out through 6 games after a year off to be rich, wrestle, and drink. The absolute American dream if you ask me. Gronk also has 14 targets over the last two contests and has at least 50 yards in each with last week being his break out week finding the end zone. The Raiders are not tough to throw on at all so I expect Gronk to easily be a TE1 play in week 7.
Sit
Andy Dalton
Dalton looked atrocious on Monday night and now they have to go to Washington on a short week. The best part of Washington’s defense is their pass rush and the most beat up part of Dallas’ offense is their offensive line. There is a good chance that WFT feasts on that side of the ball based on what we saw from Dallas against Arizona. This division is terrible and ugly and very avoidable. I had hope for Dalton coming into last week but it was quickly dashed.
Le’Veon Bell
I think that Le’Veon is a great fit for Kansas City but we are going to have to wait and see what kind of involvement he has in the first couple of weeks that he dresses before putting him in our lineups. If he goes off this week, fine. But I don’t think the odds of that are very strong based on how strong CEH looked against Buffalo and the lack of necessity to throw Bell out there to see if he sinks or swims.Â
Mike Evans
Mike Evans is either a decoy and Tampa or there are too many mouths to feed and he’s not at the front of the line. I can definitely respect the red zone usage that Evans has enjoyed, but in two games that he has scored in, he totaled under 10 yards in each game. Last week was the low point. Mike saw 2 targets and caught 1 for 10 yards. He was on 10 days rest after he played through a nagging injury. Chris Godwin is back in full swing and as previously mentioned, Gronk is becoming a thing.Â
Jonnu Smith
Jonnu Smith’s breakout happened after A.J. Brown was out of the lineup. The volume wasn’t huge in Brown’s absence, but Smith was definitely making the most of it. In A.J. Brown’s first game back, he was back to being a fixture in the offense while Jonnu caught 1 pass for 13 yards. I don’t think that Jonnu is done, and he’s certainly not droppable yet, but you can do better than Jonnu Smith against Pittsburgh this week.Â
