Start or Sit Ben Roethlisberger
In this article we answer the question: should you start or sit Ben Roethlisberger in week two as the Steelers host the Kansas City Chiefs?
The first week of the NFL fantasy football season is in the book, and at this point, you’re either on pace to go undefeated, or more likely, you’re an endless pit of depth and despair, wondering why you wasted your time even thinking about fantasy football. After all, John from Accounting auto-drafted Tyreek Hill, Alvin Kamara, Patrick Mahomes, and Jared Cook and smashed the thoroughly-researched players you took after countless hours of studying during the long offseason. A wasted summer spent on nightly mock drafts instead of tending to your relationships with your loved ones. Whether you won or lost, it’s time to move on from week one and set your lineups for week two. Here at Football Absurdity, we try to help you out with your weekly lineup questions.
The Browns-Steelers game last weekend was a special display of ineptitude. Rain and Pittsburgh’s propensity for playing down to their competition left the denizens of the Factory of Sadness and Terrible Towel Nation scratching their heads, wondering how to feel.* Big Ben’s owners knew how to feel: disappointed. He mustered 335 passing yards, one score and three picks in five quarters of work. While the passing yards are encouraging, doing it on 41 pass attempts definitely are not. However, this outcome was to be expected. There is a certain subset of fantasy football prognosticators who want to ignore the evidence in front of them (Ben sucks on the road outside of night games), but the evidence is clear at this point. Throw in a massive storm and Big Ben sucking was the median outcome of that game; even Dr. Strange couldn’t find a single one of his 14,000,605 realities where that wouldn’t be true.
That all should change this week, as Kansas City allowed over 500 yards to the Chargers in week one. Big Ben should take advantage of that same questionable defensive effort this week. While the Steelers won’t (or can’t) be as creative this week, Big Ben is a completely different quarterback at home compared to the road. Since 2015, he averages an extra 61 yards and 1.5 scores at home while throwing the same number of picks.
Big Ben owners likely drafted him in some sort of timeshare, and could legitimately be asking themselves if they should start or sit Ben Roethlisberger this week. His dismal week one performance was easily anticipated due to his home-road splits and the awful weather. This week he gets to pick on an already-dismal Chiefs defense. He’s a definite start this week, and he has a chance to finish inside the top-three at quarterback. The answer to the question, “should I start or sit Ben Roethlisberger,” is: Start.
*Side note: I was at the 49ers-Rams tie game in 2012. Leaving was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. 60,000+ people cheering their heads off for hours, to zero emotional release. No cheering, no excitement, just tens of thousands of people muttering to themselves.
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