Should I start Justin Herbert or Mike Evans in Week 9?

Where the draft room stands

Live drafts hold no current pick on Justin Herbert, and the board ranks him 71st overall on the rest of his evidence.

By format he goes standard: ADP 23; 2QB: ADP 12.

Live drafts hold no current pick on Mike Evans, and the board ranks him 72nd overall on the rest of his evidence.

The market-based projections

Justin Herbert's market-based projection is 16.6 PPR points a game, built from 5 markets across 5 market sources. That is the 9th highest figure of the 213 players with a market-based projection.

The market-based projection for Mike Evans is 4.2 PPR points a game off 1 market across 1 market source. That is 30 percent of what a wide receiver's projection needs, so it is a fragment of one rather than a projection.

Mike Evans's projection is not complete, so the two figures are not set against each other here.

This season so far

Through Week 8, Justin Herbert has been on the field for 100 percent of LAC snaps, dropped back 255 times and thrown 7.4 air yards an attempt.

He has been sacked or hit on 48 of 255 dropbacks and scrambled 22 times.

In Week 5 against DEN he completed 14 of 23 passes for 121 yards, threw 1 touchdown and 1 interception and ran 6 times for 54 yards.

In Week 6 against KC he completed 22 of 37 passes for 204 yards, threw 0 touchdowns and 1 interception and ran 5 times for 26 yards.

In Week 8 against LAR he completed 24 of 31 passes for 257 yards, threw 0 touchdowns and 2 interceptions and ran 4 times for 15 yards.

Through Week 6, Mike Evans has been on the field for 55 percent of SF snaps, drawn 23 percent of the targets and had 9 percent of the red zone chances.

He has taken 19 of the offence's 43 third down targets, had 2 of its 19 chances inside the five and seen 9 of its 25 two minute targets.

His 39 targets have averaged 14.6 air yards.

In Week 4 against DEN he caught 5 of 8 targets for 76 yards and did not score.

In Week 5 against SEA he caught 7 of 10 targets for 113 yards and scored 1 touchdown.

In Week 6 against WAS he caught 3 of 5 targets for 94 yards and did not score.

Their 2025 seasons

In 2025 Justin Herbert played 16 games and scored 299.9 PPR points, 18.7 a game, finishing QB10.

He threw for 3727 yards on 512 attempts with 26 touchdowns and 13 interceptions, and ran for 498 yards and 2 touchdowns.

That came to 32.0 attempts a game at 7.3 yards an attempt.

He was on the field for 97 percent of the snaps in the games he played.

In 2025 Mike Evans played 8 games and scored 84.8 PPR points, 10.6 a game, finishing WR76.

He caught 30 of 61 targets for 368 yards and 3 touchdowns, with 8 red zone targets.

That came to 7.6 targets a game, a 49 percent catch rate and 12.3 yards a catch.

He was on the field for 65 percent of the snaps in the games he played.

Justin Herbert was available for 8 games more.

Side by side

In 2025 Justin Herbert scored 18.7 PPR points a game and Mike Evans 10.6, 8.1 a game between them.

Justin Herbert finished QB10 and Mike Evans WR76, which are two different ladders.

Justin Herbert is a quarterback and Mike Evans a wide receiver, so the question is which slot you fill first rather than which of them is better.

Byes and availability

Justin Herbert is off in Week 7 and Mike Evans in Week 8, so either can cover the other's bye.

Mike Evans is listed as out on the injury report.

What would change the answer

Mike Evans has only a partial projection, so the market half of this page is whole for only one of them.