Samaje Perine start or sit: Week 9 fantasy football advice

The 3-5 Cincinnati Bengals will host the 4-3 Chicago Bears on Sunday as 2.5-point home underdogs. Joe Flacco will tough out his throwing shoulder injury to start, while Caleb Williams tries to pull his game together after a poor showing in Baltimore last week.

One player who had their best game of the season last week was Bengals backup running back Samaje Perine, who ran the ball nine times for 94 yards and a touchdown, while adding one reception for six yards to get him to 100 total yards against the Jets.

Below, we’ll go over Samaje Perine’s outlook in fantasy football for Week 9.

The Bears run defense can be beaten, as they’ve allowed the eighth-most fantasy points per game to running backs. They also rank 26th in run defense DVOA, and 31st in DVOA against receiving backs. Much like the game against the Jets last week, there is a real chance this becomes a high scoring affair between two weak defenses and two offenses with some good offensive players.

The question, as usual for a backup running back is, can they get enough touches to be fantasy relevant? Perine’s 11 touches last week were his highest of the year, with 7, 9, and 6 touches in his three previous games. He didn’t top 5.2 PPR points in any of those games. We can’t also be sure that Flacco lasts the whole game with his shoulder injury. One bad hit could sideline him and severely hurt the overall offense.

I’m not going to chase Perine’s big game this week.

Sit.

Sit.