👋 Welcome back! Week 6 kicks off tonight, so let's get those lineups ready for prime time.

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In this edition: We cover the latest news (yes, including more injuries), share the fantasy PSA every manager needs to hear, preview tonight's 49ers-Seahawks clash and more.

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Today's Get to the Points! is written by Andy Behrens. For the web version, click here. To sign up for free,click here.

For starters, we'd like to remind you that Wednesday practice absences are quite often no big deal, so we are not going to spend precious time and bolded font in this space fretting about them. Instead, let's hit on a few burning issues with greater clarity, beginning with the youth movement at QB...

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Drake Maye and Spencer Rattler, you're up: Oh, hell yeah. These guys could be a party. Both rookies produced some quality preseason highlights, too. Maye is obviously the rest-of-season answer for the Patriots, while Rattler is looking at a multi-week audition. On rushing upside alone, Maye becomes an immediate superflex starting option and a viable stash elsewhere.

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Will Levis returns to full practice: It's not entirely clear what this means for various Tennessee skill players, but it's huge news for anyone who may have streamed the Colts defense. Let's go.

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Nico Collins placed on IR: The NFL's leading receiver is out at least four games with a hamstring injury. It's another blow for the Texans, who are still waiting to get Joe Mixon back. In the meantime, Stefon Diggs and Tank Dell should get peppered with targets.

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Michael Pittman Jr. out multiple weeks, IR candidate. Brutal news for an excellent player coming off consecutive quality games. Pittman is dealing with a back injury, which of course is the sort of issue that tends to reappear. In his absence, Josh Downs (who is battling a toe injury), Alec Pierce and Adonai Mitchell all climb a rung on the WR hierarchy.

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A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, back in the game. Both star receivers returned to practice on Wednesday, an obviously great sign for Philly. Hope the Dallas Goedert managers enjoyed his two-week semi-binge, but it's very likely about to end.

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Green Bay's receiving room is crowded and complicated again. Romeo Doubs returned from last week's outburst/suspension on Wednesday, and, somewhat surprisingly, Christian Watson (high-ankle sprain) got himself back on the practice field as well. This is excellent news for Jordan Love and the Packers in reality, but it clearly makes a mess of the projections in fantasy. Jayden Reed remains the only circle-of-trust receiver in this group.

The Cleveland Browns are giving us the greatest and most extreme example of the sunk cost fallacy that has ever played out in any major North American sport, at least in recent memory.

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It's now brutally obvious that Deshaun Watson is not a starting-quality NFL quarterback. He was a liability in each of the past two seasons and has somehow regressed in 2024. Watson is averaging just 3.46 net yards per pass attempt through five weeks, a scandalously low rate — easily the worst in the league. 

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And yet the Browns steadfastly refuse to bench the league's least effective QB, presumably because the organization feels they have 230,000,000 reasons to continue playing him. Without question, this team is doing a disservice to fans, employees and every non-Watson player on the roster. It's a wild, terrible and probably hopeless situation. 

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Cleveland's self-made predicament can serve as a fantasy lesson for the rest of us, however. Please understand that you are not — repeat: NOT — under any obligation to remain committed to your worst and costliest fantasy decisions.

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We have arrived at the point in the season when this year's stats tell a more compelling story than last season's data. As managers, we need to begin making start/sit choices based on current performance rather than our preseason wishcasting. It's time to set aside draft status.

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If you're trapped in the habit of starting, say, Jaylen Waddle — or Sam LaPorta, Mark Andrews or whoever else — simply because he was your third-round pick and not because you think he's about to break out of his 4-for-40 streak, then you are doing it all wrong. ADP is ancient history — in fact, it was irrelevant as soon as you exited the draft room. Don’t compound an early mistake by continually making it each week. 

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Let's not be the Browns, folks. That’s all we’re asking. It feels like a low bar to clear.

We get a classic rivalry game this week on Thursday night, as the utterly unpredictable Niners travel to Seattle to face the utterly unpredictable Seahawks. It appears as if all fantasy relevant players are good to go, with the exception of Christian McCaffrey and Jake Moody. Let's take a moment to appreciate three of this game's spiciest matchups:

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Geno Smith vs. the Niners pass D: We are now five weeks into the 2024 season, and Smith is leading the NFL in passing yards (1,466), attempts (199) and completions (143). He's also third in completion percentage and, critically, fifth in fantasy scoring. We haven't actually seen a monster game from Geno just yet — he's thrown exactly one TD pass each week — but the yards are piling up. He's certainly exceeded nearly all fantasy expectations as the director of Ryan Grubb's offense. 

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San Francisco's defense has of course not been the dominant unit most of us expected. The Niners have allowed 7.4 yards per pass attempt this season, the ninth-worst rate in the league, and they were cooked by the Vikings, Rams and Cardinals. Simply put, it's not a stay-away defense at this stage.

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Jordan Mason vs. Seattle's run defense: Mason hasn't missed yet this season, having delivered over 80 scrimmage yards in every game. He's averaging 107.2 rushing yards per game and 5.1 YPC, plus he's caught seven of his eight targets. Mason clearly isn't anything close to CMC as a receiving weapon, but he's also not inept as a check-down option. Also, he is stylistically delightful, treating every carry as an opportunity to appear on Angry Runs.

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Seattle has allowed 4.5 YPC to opposing rushers on the season and they have been diced up by Tyrone Tracy Jr. and Detroit's two-man committee in consecutive weeks. This feels like another matchup in which Mason should feast. 

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Jaxon Smith-Njigba vs. his own hands: JSN finished with one of the league's highest drop totals last year as a rookie — either 8 or 10, depending on your source — and he had an absolutely crushing last-minute drop last week just ahead of the game-deciding blocked field goal. He's definitely made progress year-over-year and targets are flowing his way, but reliability remains something of an issue. He's a player in need of a bounce-back. 

Whenever a fantasy league descends into chaos and dissension, there's a very good chance the root cause of the discord is one of two things:

1️⃣ Commissioner overreach or

2️⃣ Deadbeat managers

😱 Occasionally, a league is actually plagued by both...

Simple answer: No, this is very much not OK. 

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A commissioner who sets lineups for other managers is like a parent who cuts up food for their otherwise independent adult children and uses the classic "Here comes the airplane!" feeding method. You might think you're helping, but in fact you're being weird and doing irreparable harm.

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We don't want to train our league members to be inattentive on game days, but that's exactly what will happen if the commish offers this variety of safety net. We can't have it. Managers must be responsible for their own roster maintenance, and thus their own success and failure. 

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If a league happens to have one manager who repeatedly whiffs on the easy stuff, leading to walkover matchups, then we need to first deal with them using our most reliable time-tested tools: ridicule, derision and peer-pressure. Everyone else needs to shame the negligent party — lightheartedly at first, escalating as needed. If they remain a persistent problem, then the commish can eventually reassign the team to a new manager. It's a harsh yet understandable solution in the interest of preserving competitive balance. 

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But, again, we cannot have commissioners actively managing the rosters of other league members. It's an outrageous and unsustainable burden to place on the commish. It also means they have failed at a commissioner's most important job, which is to properly curate the league.

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Your first and most essential role as a commish is to assemble a group of compatible, competitive fantasy players. If you get the personality mix just right in your league, everything else is easy. 

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*BANGS GAVEL*

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Have a league dispute? Email us the conflict and it could be the subject of the next session of Fantasy Court.