Antonio Brown start or sit: Week 17 fantasy football advice

Game day update: Brown is active and a must start in fantasy.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have no shortage of weapons on offense, including speedster WR Antonio Brown.

The former Steeler WR has only played six games this season but has seemed to come up with a big stat line more often than not when he does hit the field. Can he keep that up this week when the Bucs take on the New York Jets?

Fantasy Football analysis: Tampa Bay Buccaneers WR Antonio Brown

Brown had his best game of the season from a catch perspective last week against the Carolina Panthers. He racked up 10 catches on 15 targets for 101 yards. It was the third time this season he got over 100 yards. He wasn’t able to hit pay dirt, but he’s still been good enough to reach the end zone in half of his games this season, with a total of four scores on the year.

Brown will probably be the go-to pass-catcher again this week, as long as he’s active, with Mike Evans landing on the COVID list on Monday. He was already dealing with a hamstring injury before that, so missing rehab and practice time doesn’t bode well for him suiting up this weekend. The matchup isn’t great for Brown, though. Despite the lack of on-field success as a whole, New York is good at limiting opposing WRs. They rank 7th in the NFL in terms of fantasy points allowed to the other team’s WRs, averaging just 31 fantasy points per game to the entire pass-catching corps.

Fantasy Start/Sit Recommendation

Brown is going to get a lot of looks Sunday if he plays and is sure to be the star of the show when the ball goes in the air for Tampa. Despite the solid defense he’s facing, Brown has proven time and again this season that he’s going to play well regardless of who lines up across from him.

Start him as long as he’s active.