Fantasy Football Cut-N-Go: Cedric Benson Should Shine in Week 16

Cut-N-Go is Fantasy Football FanHouse's weekday roundup of the NFL news with fantasy football impact.

One of the toughest situations to master as a fantasy football GM is starting the right personnel to get the job done. There isn't a worse feeling than seeing someone flounder on your starting lineup while a bench players blows up.

Take for instance last week. In one league I made the mistake of starting Percy Harvin and leaving Greg Jennings on the bench. I won the game thanks to Fred Davis' heroics on Monday night, but it was much closer than it needed to be.

Here in our FanHouse league, I advanced to the league championship but still had Justin Forsett in my starting lineup scoring 6.9 points while Jonathan Stewart's 24.3 points were wasted.

It's impossible to get every situation right every week of the season. But, heading into the final week of the season -- which most of us are doing in Week 16 -- it's terribly important to choose wisely. Here are a few matchups that should be considered prior to setting our fantasy lineup.

Joe Reedy of the Cincinnati Inquirer notes that Cedric Benson, and maybe even Larry Johnson, face superb matchups this weekend. Benson should be stated in all leagues.

The Chiefs have allowed at least 200 yards rushing in their last three games including a club record 351 in last Sunday's loss to Cleveland. Kansas City has dropped to the league's second worst run defense while the Bengals have the league's sixth best rushing offense. Not to mention there's a running back on the Bengals roster looking for revenge against his former team.

Darrell Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution speaks highly of he Falcons second-year linebacker Curtis Lofton and predicts a tough day for Fred Jackson, who is 189 yards short of a 1,000 yard rushing season.

Lofton's play in the middle has helped the Falcons steadily improve in defending the run.

Since New England's Fred Taylor ran for 105 yards in the season's third game Sept. 27, the Falcons defense has not allowed an opponent to run for more than 100 yards.

Other Fantasy Football Notes

• Jerry McDonald of the Oakland Tribune says that the Raiders have named Charlie Frye the starting quarterback for this weekend's game against Cleveland. In another case of hot NFL news that should only effect the deepest of fantasy GM's, the St. Louis Rams official twitter feed announced on Wednesday that Keith Null took most of the snaps with the first-team offense. It looks like he'll have his number called on Sunday.

• According to press conference notes on HoustonTexans.com, head coach Gary Kubiak plans to give Arian Foster another chance to carry the ball quite a bit on Sunday.

"Oh yeah. Yeah, I definitely will. Like I said, after the game I was disappointed because I had really big plans for him as far as getting on the field and doing a lot yesterday. It did not stem from one play. It stemmed from some practice and a play. He's a young player, but he'll go right back to his duties this week. He's very talented. He can help us win this weekend, but he has to have a good week and be ready to do his job."

• If you were asked to quickly guess which receiver on the Green Bay Packers has been targeted the most over the past five weeks, would you have said Jermichael Finley? Rob Reischel, writing for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, says the Packer tight end is wreaking havoc among opposing defenses since returning from injury. Here at FanHouse we have Finley ranked as the No. 4 fantasy tight end this upcoming week.

• For those of you holding out hope that Matthew Stafford will return this weekend, for get about it. Nicholas J. Cotsonika of the Detroit Free Press says that Drew Stanton is starting at quarterback.