Week 12 Start 'Em, Sit 'Em: Advice for Fringe Flex Fantasy Football Starters

Acing the roster-management portion of running a fantasy football team has never been more important.

As hyperbolic as that sounds, it's technically true—within the confines of the 2024 NFL season, at least. That's because Week 12 will be the busiest bye week yet with six different squads sitting out the festivities.

Since start-or-sit calls are tricky even when you're operating with a full deck, things will only get more difficult as you're moving closer to the margins with these fringe starters. To help ease this process, we'll break down a couple of our top start-or-sit calls for Week 12.

Patrick Mahomes is an objectively awesome NFL quarterback, but that hasn't made him a standout fantasy option this season. In fact, the two-time MVP sits just 13th among quarterbacks in fantasy points, per FantasyPros.

That means Mahomes is far from being a no-brainer starter in fantasy, but he should be viewed as such for this week.

Carolina has coughed up the sixth-most fantasy points to quarterbacks this season, per Yahoo, and allowed 200-plus passing yards with multiple touchdowns to the likes of Derek Carr, Caleb Williams and Marcus Mariota. Mahomes should have a field day with this defense.

It'll be tempting to trot out Matthew Stafford after his massive showing in Week 11 (295 yards, four touchdowns). That temptation should be avoided.

In case anyone's memory is a bit fuzzy, Stafford has endured a handful of colossal clunkers this season, too. He's gone without a touchdown four different times, including twice in his last five games.

The bust potential is real here against an Eagles defense allowing the fourth-fewest fantasy points to the position. Philadelphia has only given up nine passing touchdowns this season, and all but two of them were scored during the first four weeks.

The Chargers have grown more pass-heavy of late, and that trend should continue—if not accelerate—against the Ravens. Baltimore is dead last in passing yards allowed per game and second in rushing defense. It's pretty clear how opponents need to attack this team.

If L.A. airs it out more than normal, that should allow Ladd McConkey to be even more productive than he already has been.

The rookie second-rounder just authored one of his best performances so far against the Bengals (six receptions for a career-high 123 yards), and this could be another shootout full of fantasy fireworks.

Let's start this with a quick tip of the cap toward Jakobi Meyers. The fact he warrants weekly consideration as a fantasy starter is no small feat given what the Raiders are getting (or, really, not getting) out of their quarterback position.

Meyers is almost always involved in this offense (six-plus targets in six consecutive contests), but that doesn't always matter. He had six passes sent his way on Sunday and only managed four receptions for 28 yards in a tricky matchup with Miami.

Unfortunately, Meyers' matchup is even more difficult this week, as Denver is giving up the fourth-fewest fantasy points to the position. Meyers could be in line for a long outing, especially if he sees a lot of Broncos' shutdown cornerback Pat Surtain II.