Fantasy Football Week 8: Start or Sit Mostert, Mack, or Ronald Jones?

Fantasy Football Week 8: Start or Sit Raheem Mostert, Marlon Mack, or Ronald Jones?

It feels like the fantasy football season just started, but this is the last week where we can consider ourselves in the midgame. After this week, you’re entering the last third of your fantasy football regular season, and you have to start thinking of things on a week-to-week basis. Thankfully, we always think of you when considering our week-to-week propositions. Our goal is to help you make the hard start or sit decisions every week. We consider six players at all positions, helping you decide if you should start or sit them. Without further ado, in the first half of our start or sit running backs piece, we help you decide if you should start or sit Raheem Mostert, Marlon Mack, or Ronald Jones?

Start or Sit Raheem Mostert at Arizona

Going into the season, very few people would think we would be in this position with Mostert. The fourth-year vet has 75% of his career carries in the last three games. That’s not a typo: Mostert made his hay before this season as a special teams guy. He never rose above fourth on the 49ers depth chart before everything fell apart around him. However, Matt Breida’s extreme fragility continues to rear its ugly head. This weekend it’s looking extremely unlikely that Breida will play, and even more likely that Alf Morris will continue to have his amazing Washington days firmly in the rearview mirror. Mostert is likely to get the bulk of the carries this weekend, and he’s been electric in that role the last two weeks. His first extended run of his career finds him with with 157 rush yards on just 24 carries. That’s a very good rate, and he has a chance to build on it this weekend as the 49ers square off the worst rush defense in the entire NFL. The Niners and Cards played just a few weeks ago, and the running backs totaled over 33 fantasy points against them in half-PPR. If you’re wondering if you should start or sit Raheem Mostert, just call him Raheem Must-Start. I am not sorry.

Start or Sit Marlon Mack at Oakland

To be honest, I would start whoever is going up against Oakland this week. That team is a freaking disaster, and the only halfway decent thing to come out of Gruden’s tenure there is isgrudengoneyet.com (the brainchild of the Something Awful Dot Com Forums). Marlon Mack is the best running back out of the 700 that the Colts cycled through this season, and has over 200 yards rushing in his first two games since coming back from—aaand he’s already hurt again. Mack was a DNP on Thursday at practice for the Colts, so this is a recommendation to monitor. If he plays, I’m firing him up. Oakland can’t stop anything, and the Colts showed their willingness to stick the ball in Mack’s belly already. Even a partial workload for him against a messy Raiders run defense is enough to return RB2 numbers. You’ll have to pay close attention to the inactive report on Sunday, but if you’re wondering if you should start or sit Marlon Mack on Sunday, go ahead and start him if he is active.

Start or Sit Ronald Jones at Cincinnati

I am not going to try to sugar coat Ronald Jones and his time in the NFL. He hasn’t been great, and the Tampa Bay offensive line hasn’t done him any real favors so far this year. He has just seventeen carries on the year, and he’s taking those carries for absurdly low yards per carry for the back that he was in college. This week, he gets a chance to turn it around against the Bengals. Peyton Barber is unlikely to play, and Jones is better than everyone else they have. The Buccaneers take on a Bengals run defense that has allowed the fifth-most fantasy points to RB this year, including nine touchdowns to the position in the last six games. He’s not the best option this week, but if you are in a pinch and trying to decide if you should start or sit Ronald Jones, I would start him this week.

If I was trying to decide who to start or sit from these three players, I would start them in this order:

1. Marlon Mack
2. Raheem Mostert
3. Ronald Jones

If you need more help deciding who you should start or sit this week, check out these pieces below:
Start or Sit Mitchell Trubisky, Jameis Winston, or Andy Dalton?
Start or Sit Cam Newton, Matthew Stafford, or Deshaun Watson?
Start or Sit Stefon Diggs, Tyler Boyd, or Chris Godwin?
Start or Sit Tyler Lockett, Devin Funchess, or Marvin Jones Jr.?
Start or Sit Isaiah Crowell, T.J. Yeldon, or Doug Martin?
Start or Sit C.J. Uzomah, David Njoku, or O.J. Howard?
Start or Sit Kyle Rudolph, Eric Ebron, or Jordan Reed?

Also, we have Hot Takes from Crazy People: Eric Reid vs Malcolm Jenkins Edition

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