Which NY Jets to start/sit in fantasy football for Week 2 vs the Cowboys

The Fantasy Gods never waste any time completely altering the fantasy football landscape; this year is no different. I lost J.K. Dobbins for the year and also had to bench Mark Andrews in one of my leagues (started Tyler Conklin!), but there are others out there who had no Travis Kelce or are now monitoring the status of Aaron Jones and Austin Ekeler.

Perhaps the biggest loss of them all is the immediate loss of Aaron Rodgers — who put up a goose egg in the most important position in all of fantasy.

Even worse, if you reached for Garrett Wilson, Breece Hall, Dalvin Cook, or even Greg Zuerlein, it's likely your season production from any of those four guys has been drastically reduced.

Just like the actual NY Jets, we can really only take things one week at a time. If you own any of the players I listed in that last paragraph, it is still too early to panic. Especially if the person you own from that paragraph is Hall — he looked amazing on Monday.

Let's take a look at the four lists for this Sunday! For those of you unfamiliar with the format, I'll start with players you definitely should bench and then players you probably should bench. From there, we go with people you should probably start and finish with people you definitely should start. Let's begin!

NY Jets to sit with confidence

• C.J. Uzomah
• Randall Cobb

Usually, this list is empty, but because I didn't do one of these last week, I need to set the baseline by naming these two players. If you have either of these guys on your team, you should probably feel ashamed, but I am trying my best to make these articles a safe haven for fantasy managers of all types.

Please don't start them.

NY Jets players to sit with reservations

• Dalvin Cook
• Allen Lazard
• Mecole Hardman

Listed in order from most likely to prove me wrong to least, these are the three players I feel pretty comfortable leaving on my bench this week.

Mecole Hardman could've easily ended up on the first list, especially considering he played zero snaps on Monday. But head coach Robert Saleh said that was more of a knee-jerk reaction to the Aaron Rodgers injury than anything else.

If they do decide to let him loose, they could use him for screens (which Zach Wilson suddenly appears to be good at) or run him out deep like he did in Kansas City for a Zach Wilson bomb.

The one time the Jets really let Wilson air it out, he found a lot of success with Garrett Wilson. Hardman could certainly eke out some yardage if they show confidence in Wilson.

Allen Lazard is the closest thing Wilson has to Corey Davis, who historically was always his most comfortable target. He loves the strong guys with the big frames, who he feels the most confident throwing to because he seems to wait until guys are "college open" to throw the ball instead of throwing guys open.

We've already seen camaraderie develop between the two, but of course, it seems like Wilson has worked hard to improve his chemistry with the uber-talented Garrett Wilson as well.

However, in the immortal words of Mike Tyson, "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." If Micah Parsons wreaks havoc and causes chaos in the pocket, instinct may kick in for Wilson and draw him to Lazard — making him a potential steady option in PPR and a potential red zone target (if they ever make it to the red zone).

Lastly, there's Dalvin Cook. If you want to disagree and start him anyway, that's fine because I'm on the fence with this one. My reasoning is that it looks like Hall will be used in short-yardage situations, and we saw that, in general, Hall was much more explosive (even if he gassed out on that run). It's clear that Hall is RB1, even if Cook out-touched him last game.

It's very possible he out-touches Hall this game as well, but I don't have faith that this is the defense he'll be able to pick up his efficiency against.

Unfortunately, these are some tough run defenses that the Jets are going against these first five weeks, and the Cowboys specifically just held Saquon Barkley to 51 yards on 12 carries. In the 14 games last year in which he had 12 or more carries, he finished with less than 55 yards just once, so the Cowboys certainly held Barkley in check.

If Mike White was under center hitting his running backs all the time, I'd have Cook on the definitely start list, but with Wilson, we must err on the side of caution. I think he can only support the production of one running back, and I personally predict that running back will be Breece Hall.

NY Jets to start with reservations

• Jets Defense
• Tyler Conklin

For all of these bulleted lists, they are ranked in order of who is most likely to have a good game to the least. I had originally bashed the Jets' defense and advised passing on them in your draft because they don't get turnovers.

Four turnovers on Monday against the Bills would have you believe I have egg on my face, but this is similar to what happened last year.

After the defense had already lost steam, they bullied Josh Allen and forced multiple turnovers before reverting back to a team that stops opponents from scoring but couldn't force Kirk Cousins, Geno Smith, and Jared Goff to turn the ball over in must-win games.

Are last night's numbers just surface-level proof that Allen struggles mightily against Robert Saleh's defense, or has this unit finally gotten over the hump and joined true elite status? They will have plenty of chances to find that out against Dak Prescott, who led the league in interceptions (15) despite only playing in 12 games.

You might think I'm crazy for listing Conklin here, especially considering his horrific stat line from Week 1 and the fact I wasn't even high on Cook enough to put him on this same list. The majority of Conklin's touchdowns last year came from Zach Wilson, and if you recall, Wilkson loves the big guys with the large catch radius.

If they do make it to the end zone, Conklin is a great candidate to secure any target thrown his way. Of course, it's very likely that he gets one catch for eight yards and nothing else.

His floor without Rodgers is awfully low, but this might be a good matchup for him, and there aren't any reliable tight ends out there with both Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews already missing games.

NY Jets to start with confidence

• Garrett Wilson
• Breece Hall
• Greg Zuerlein

All three of these entries made my original list of the safest NY Jets to draft on your fantasy team, and while Rodgers certainly affects these guys' ceilings (just like everyone else), their floors were pretty high to begin with.

With Joe Flacco, Mike White, and Zach Wilson throwing him the ball, Garrett Wilson was the 21st-best receiver in fantasy — a pretty remarkable achievement for a guy who wasn't even consistently drafted among most leagues. There's reason to be concerned about Wilson since Garrett's stats seemed to dwindle whenever Zach was under center.

What do I mean exactly? Well, last game's touchdown was the first time Zach ever threw a touchdown to Garrett despite playing nine games together last year.

In the eight other games of the season, Wilson had four touchdowns and considerably more targets, catches, and yards per game via Joe Flacco and Mike White (with a hint of Chris Streveler).

It seems Garrett Wilson has taken a step this offseason that Zach Wilson (and offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett) simply cannot ignore — so while Zach may look to the bigger guys in times of crisis (like he did with Lazard on this play), Garrett is the safest play for volume, chunk plays, and apparently has improved greatly with his jump ball abilities. We'd love it if Aaron Rodgers was his guy, but he's still worth starting with Zach Wilson.

Breece Hall was just spectacular on Monday. After just two carries, he already had over 100 yards rushing on the day and finished the game with an average of 12.7 yards per carry.

He literally wasted no time picking up where he left off, so it's very safe to assume he will only get better as he continues to work his way back to game shape.

Perhaps if he was in game shape, he would've had enough juice to finish this run regardless of whether Garrett Wilson chose to celebrate or block for him.

As for Greg Zuerlein, this one's tough. If the offense goes three-and-out all day like the Cowboys just forced the Giants to do (and Zach Wilson is no stranger to), then starting him will look like quite the failure.

But as we saw against the Bills, the Jets were able to leverage their run game to move the ball — it's just that Wilson could only drive them to the end zone once.

So, for Zuerlein owners, that's arguably the best-case scenario because he was able to drill three field goals en route to a good fantasy week. Since Hall still has a pulse and Dalvin Cook exists, it's fair to assume that, even against this stout Cowboys defense, the Jets will be able to move the ball via the run.

To start Zuerlein means that you believe in the Jets' running backs but are not quite sure how many touchdowns will be scored. All of those drives will end in field goals — and you get points.

Truth be told, that is exactly how I feel about this week's matchup, so I personally am starting him with confidence in the two leagues I drafted him in. Good luck!

*UPDATE: Greg Zuerlein has been downgraded to OUT and will not play on Sunday*