The ESPN+ Cheat Sheet for Week 8 is your one-stop shop for fantasy football advice. We’ve curated all our best start/sit advice from this week, including insights from Matt Bowen, Mike Clay, Tristan H. Cockcroft, Eric Karabell and Liz Loza. Don’t have time to read it all? That’s why cheat sheets were invented! Catch up on a week’s worth of reading in mere minutes, see which players are on the injury report, consider the betting data and then set your lineup with confidence.
Lines accurate as of latest time stamp. For latest odds, go to ESPN BET.
Injury aggregation powered by RotoWire. Football Power Index by ESPN Analytics.
Atlanta Falcons -2.5 vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Locks: Sunday 1 p.m. ET
Over/under total: 45.5 (fifth highest)
FPI favorite: Buccaneers by 2.8, 57.1% to win outright
Falcons injury watch: none to report
Buccaneers injury watch: TE Payne Durham: Q; RB Bucky Irving: Q; WR Mike Evans: O WR Chris Godwin: IR
Best of the Week
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Mike Clay: Kirk Cousins lit up the Buccaneers for 509 yards and four touchdowns when these teams met in Week 5, but he’s still a risky fantasy starter. The veteran QB has stumbled in recent “plus matchups” and has now fallen short of 13 fantasy points in five out of seven games this season — and all five finishes were QB20 or worse. Cousins, who has negative-8 rushing yards this season, is fine to stream this week, but he’s not a lineup lock.
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Mike Clay: Despite a favorable schedule, the zone-heavy Tampa Bay pass defense has allowed the fifth-most fantasy points to receivers, including the fourth most to the perimeter and sixth most to the slot. A lot of that damage came with top corner Jamel Dean (currently on IR) on the field. Atlanta’s receivers should, of course, be upgraded.
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Matt Bowen: The Bucs’ offense took a major hit in the Monday night loss to the Baltimore Ravens with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin both going down. Given the throwing mentality of quarterback Baker Mayfield, both Jalen McMillan and Sterling Shepard can be played this week in deeper leagues. Tampa Bay will still be aggressive in the pass game.
Arizona Cardinals vs. Miami Dolphins -4
Locks: Sunday 1 p.m. ET
Over/under total: 45.5 (fifth highest)
FPI favorite: Cardinals by 0.7, 51.6% to win outright