Fantasy football start/sit, Week 4: Start Jones over Baker and Goff vs. Browns, Bench Herbert vs. Giants

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We take a look at our latest model projections for fantasy football in Week 4 of the 2025 NFL season to give you start/sit advice, and compare our numbers to the Fantasy Football Today consensus rankings to see where you can find value. We have focused on the players that are potential bench candidates based on the FFT consensus rankings but they would be likely starters based on Inside the Lines analysis, and vice versa.

Start/Sit Decisions in Week 4

In most cases fantasy mangers don't have the flexibility to actually sit a regular starter for the better option this week. So the SIT players are more ones our team considers to be overrated and the START players are underrated.

Jared Goff (ITL 8 | FFT 18): Cleveland totally took the Bengals, Ravens and Packers ground game and are allowing an astoundingly low 2.3 yards per carry. Detroit's two headed monster looked unstoppable against the formidable Ravens defense. I think Cleveland can take away any team's running game.

But this only forces Detroit to attack through the air and Jared Goff can attack the entire field with his WRs, TE and Gibbs out of the backfield. Cleveland's pass rush is much better than the Ravens' pass rush (w/o Madabuike, Kye Van Noy) but Detroit has not allowed a sack in their last 2 weeks. Goff will have the time to have a good game. The Lions' team total is 27 points. Two seasons ago the Browns led the league in defense (yards allowed) but still allowed 30+ on the road.

Daniel Jones (ITL 9 | FFT 14): Daniel Jones is a Top 3 fantasy QB so far but it's not because of aberrantly, unsustainably high deep bombs. He has had 1 passing TD per game. This is not a young Mitch Trubisky having 4 TD games before falling apart. Jones is completing a career high 71.6% of his passes and while that probably won't last, he is not getting lucky. He hit 67%+ levels with the Giants. He has super sure-handed options like Michael Pittman and TE Tyler Warren. With Jonathan Taylor dominating on the ground Jones can continue doing what he's been doing through the air.  You throw in his 2nd most rushing TDs by a QB and you have a must start "Indiana Jones".

Baker Mayfield (ITL 17 | FFT 11): The Eagles defense was struggling vs the Rams offense, until they weren't. The whole team 'woke up' on both sides of the ball in the 2nd half. I expect a better offense by Philly now that they realize they are allowed to pass. This reduces time of possession for Baker and the Bucs. Mike Evans is out and Chris Godwin is probably not ready. As good as Emeka Egbuka is it should not be hard for Philly to contain him and Sterling Shepard. 

Baker has been awesome with 3 game winning drives in the 4th quarter but the team is still averaging just 24 pts with 205 passing yards (29 on 261 last season).

Chase Brown (ITL 10 | FFT 26): The bad news for Brown is he had 3 whole rushing yards on his 10 carries. The good news is Jake Browning, when he wasn't throwing interceptions, was throwing to Chase Brown for 5 targets, 4 receptions. He had just 17 yards but in PPR, 4 rec = 4 points. Samaje Perine was given a shot at playing RB and he immediately rewarded the usage with an bad fumble. 

Brown IS NOT projected to have a good game with just 3.5 ypc and 6.5 yards per reception. But he is projected for 16.5 carries and 3.5 receptions so with 20 touches he's a must start. 

Travis Etienne (ITL 29 | FFT 19): His yards per game and carry has dropped each week from 16 for 143 in WK 1 vs Carolina, to 71 on 14 carries vs Cincinnati, to 56 yards on 16 carries vs Houston. He also has gone from 3 receptions, to two to none on 2 targets. Bhayshul Tuten looks good and has a TD in both Week 2 and 3. 

You don't want to sit Etienne since he is still a Top 30 RB and worth at least a Flex spot, but we are projecting more of a 60/40 split with Tuten (RB 33/34 in most rankings) so do not expect a monster game from Etienne.

DJ Moore (ITL 20 | FFT 33): DJ Moore is behind Rome Odunze in both Inside the Lines and FFT consensus rankings and Luther Burden had his breakout game. Moore's percentage share of the Wide Receiver fantasy point pie is definitely smaller. But with Caleb Williams having his best game and having more weapons to stress the defense the size of the pie is much larger. Moore also is getting snaps out of the backfield with 3 rushes in Week 1 and Week 3.

Moore's % of rec / yards / tds may drop by from their past 26% / 27% / 27% to 18% / 19% / 18% but if Caleb is a 22 completion, 250 pass yard and 2 pass TD per game QB he still gets plenty of fantasy points. 

Zach Ertz (ITL 6 | FFT 13): I was genuinely impressed by the Atlanta pass rush vs Minnesota but I realize now that i was way too high on J.J. McCarthy's readiness. The Falcons had 6 sacks vs MIN but then just 1 vs Carolina. I was correctly high on Marcus Mariota last week starting for Jayden Daniels and had him ranked above Justin Herbert. If Mariota has to start another game I'm not worried at all.

Ertz only had 3 catches for 38 yards last week, but he still is TE7 this season to date and I believe he was TE6 all of last season. Terry McLaurin is iffy this week and if he's out that should result in even more targets for Ertz in scoring situations.

Juwan Johnson (ITL 17 | FFT 4): I understand why he's ranked so highly since he is TE2 in fantasy so far this season. But it's not a coincidence that he is also the 2nd most heavily targeted TE this season and has around 2x as many targets as Tucker Kraft or Dalton Kincaid or Zach Ertz. Tight Ends have done next to nothing vs Buffalo this season. Buffalo has dealt with injuries at CB but they're just fine elsewhere and they are smart enough to take away the Saints' biggest offensive threat.

Mark Andrews (ITL 18 | FFT 11): He had a monster statistical game vs Detroit but I think that only put him back on the radar for the Chiefs' defense. Isaiah Likely is probably going to be back this week as well. The biggest problem is Baltimore needs to get their running game going. Their defense cannot be trusted. Lamar Jackson has been other worldly but his ability to score quickly only makes his defense more tired. This was the problem the Chiefs defense had in the Mahomes '18-22 era.

Lamar is also taking too many sacks and big hits with Pat Ricard out and struggling guards. I think Lamar will have more designed runs where he controls if/when he gets hit which in turn will open up running lanes on RPOs for the struggling Derrick Henry. Don't be surprised if Keaton Mitchell makes an appearance as well as Baltimore gets back to being a dominant run game... which reduces passing / receiving fantasy points.

Week 4 PPR Rankings

These are our initial Week 4 projected PPR rankings. Players who are rostered in under 80% of CBS Fantasy leagues are noted in [brackets]. The projected PPR points are shown along with the FFT Expert Consensus Ranking (ECR).

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