Christian Watson start or sit: Week 9 fantasy football advice

The 5-1-1 Green Bay Packers host the 4-4 Carolina Panthers on Sunday as 8.5-point favorites. The Packers lead the NFC in win percentage and only trail the Colts in the entire NFL. They’ve scored 27 or more points in every game except for their loss in Cleveland. Through all of that scoring, no single wide receiver has stepped up as a strong fantasy option. This has been a consistent, but troubling fact for fantasy footballers.

Rookie Matthew Golden hasn’t been able to win targets, Jayden Reed is injured, and Romeo Doubs is the No. 1, but only has one top 25 fantasy receiver finish this season. So, when Christian Watson returned from his ACL injury last week, it was good to see him play well, as he caught all four of his targets for 84 yards.

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

Watson has always been a boom or bust type of wide receiver, which isn’t helped by the Packers wide receiver usage. But in one game he finished better than Doubs in all but one week of the season. Green Bay would love to be able to run the ball effectively, while setting up deep passes to Watson to keep the defense honest.

The bad news for Watson this week is that the Panthers have been one of the better teams at stopping the deep pass. They are allowing a completion percentage of 28% on passes that go over 20 air yards, ranking ninth-best in the league. They’re also sixth-best at fantasy points allowed to wide receivers per game.

Watson has good upside, but he did see only four targets while getting a good snap count in his first week back. The team will also look to run the ball after James Cook slapped two bills on the Panthers last week. I’m fine with playing him for the upside, but I don’t like the odds that he comes through this week.

Sit.

Sit.