Fantasy Football Week 7 Start 'Em And Sit' Em: Tee Higgins Vs. Matthew Golden

Welcome to this week’s wide receiver Start ‘Em and Sit’ Em decision!

In this Week 7 article, we’ll be taking a look at whether fantasy managers should be starting Tee Higgins against the Pittsburgh Steelers or Matthew Golden against the Arizona Cardinals. Higgins is coming off his highest yardage total of the 2025 NFL season, while Golden is coming off his highest yardage total of his six-game NFL career. With the two players seemingly on an upward trajectory, this is one of the tougher Start ‘Em and Sit ‘Em decisions we’ve faced this year.

Shawn Childs has a great Week 7 wide receiver projections article that dives into the numbers behind this decision (and others!), but let’s go through the decision and see if we can come up with our own thoughts on Tee Higgins vs. Matthew Golden this week.

WR Tee Higgins, Cincinnati Bengals

Ranked as our WR30 this week, Higgins hasn’t had a great season as he’s dealt with a quarterback carousel that has included Jake Browning and now Joe Flacco as the Bengals continue to try to work around Joe Burrow’s toe injury. Higgins has only caught more than three balls in a game all season (last week) and has only surpassed 60 receiving yards once (also last week).

It’s only a one-game sample size, but Higgins’ season-best game last week coincided with Joe Flacco’s only start of the year. And as luck would have it for Higgins, Flacco will be under center again this week when the Bengals take on the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday Night Football.

Now WR47 on the year, Higgins will also benefit from his matchup against the Steelers as they’ve allowed the sixth-most fantasy points per game to opposing receivers. The Steelers are allowing an average of 160.4 yards per game to receivers, so Higgins should be able to capitalize.

WR Matthew Golden, Green Bay Packers

Matthew Golden is ranked as WR33 in our Week 7 wide receiver rankings, and is currently WR58 on the year. While this has been a bit of a disappointing season for the 2025 first-round draft pick, Golden had his best fantasy game of the season last week with 13.2 PPR points.

Golden hasn’t seen a ton of usage this year as his season-high in one game is six targets, but he’s seen more targets in his last two games combined (11) than he had in his previously three combined (8).

While Golden doesn’t have an amazing matchup, the Cardinals aren’t great against wide receivers either (with 151.3 yards per game allowed to the position) so that shouldn’t really factor into our decision-making too much.

The Verdict

This is honestly a bit of a coin flip for me, and I can see why Matt Brandon has Higgins and Golden ranked within four spots of each other.

All that said, we’re not here for wishy-washy opinions, so we have to pick someone. With Higgins seeing 15 combined targets over his past two games (and a season-high of eight last week), I’m going to err towards the player with the slightly higher volume and slightly better matchup. And then I’ll also cross my fingers and hope for some Joe Flacco magic on Thursday Night Football. Kidding. Sorta.

I’m locking in Tee Higgins over Matthew Golde for Week 7.