DFS First Look Week 1

Photo: USA Today Sports

The NFL season is back, and with it, the excitement of daily fantasy football. Whether you're a veteran or a newcomer, the mission is to find the best value plays, identify positive matchups, and build a winning lineup. In this early-week breakdown, we’ll kickstart your DFS prep with a high-level overview of the Week 1 Main Slate on DraftKings and FanDuel.

We’ll analyze the opening lines and team totals to pinpoint teams in the best spots for an offensive explosion. This helps us focus on players who could provide the best return on investment. We will also highlight the players standing out in our early-week projections as the best values. Much of your research late in the week should be dedicated to figuring out which of the best points per dollar (PPD) plays you trust and which you don't. Our goal is to arm you with sharp insights and data-driven visualizations so you can start honing in on the best plays before the week unfolds. In future weeks, we will go deeper into player utilization trends.

Week 1 Team Totals 

I like starting my week with this simple visualization, which shows how much each team is favored on the X-axis and the implied team total on the Y-axis. Let's go clockwise, starting in the upper-left quadrant, and highlight teams with interesting angles in Week 1.

• Upper left: The teams in this quadrant are underdogs but still expected to score more than the average team on the slate. This is an easy way to identify the games most likely to turn into shootouts. The Jaguars travel to Miami as 3.5-point underdogs in a game with a 48.5-point total. The Colts are 3.0-point home dogs to the Texans in another game with obvious shootout potential. Lastly, the Rams are 3.5-point underdogs at the Lions in Sunday Night Football. Note this Rams-Lions game is included on the FanDuel main slate but not the DraftKings main slate. Targeting these passing games could be a winning strategy. Cooper Kupp is only $7,000 on FanDuel, making for an interesting play.
• Upper right: These are the teams that are both favored and expected to score an above-average amount of points. In both cash games and GPPs, we want to focus heavily on the teams in this quadrant. This should be an especially fruitful part of the slate to look for running backs, given that we should expect positive game scripts. There are a lot of the "usual suspects" in this quadrant. The Bills, Bengals, Dolphins, Lions, and Texans are teams we will be looking to every week for our star fantasy players. Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Tyreek Hill, De'Von Achane, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Sam LaPorta, Jahmyr Gibbs, Nico Collins, and others will be popular options. There are also some new teams that we did not see in this quadrant very often last season. One that stands out is the Bears. With Caleb Williams and his top targets priced affordably, expect this to be a very popular spot in Week 1.
• Bottom right: These are teams that are favored but expected to score a below-average amount of points. Typically, we are interested in running backs (positive game scripts are expected) from these teams, but we should be a bit suspicious of the passing games, given the low totals.
• Bottom left: This is where we want to be careful and only roster players we feel especially strongly about. Teams here are underdogs and not expected to score many points.

Quarterback

• The first thing that stands out is that all but one of the Top 8 in projected points per dollar is priced at or below $7,500. We are going to see a whole lot of rosters built around inexpensive quarterbacks in Week 1.
• We project Josh Allen to outscore every quarterback on the slate by at least 3.0 fantasy points. With the amount of value available at other positions, Allen is likely to be the guy who optimization tools favor as your Week 1 quarterback. 

• The PPD numbers favor the inexpensive quarterbacks in Week 1, with each of the Top 5 priced at 6K or below.
• Given how much the quarterbacks are popping in the early-week projections, I expect the Tampa Bay versus Washington game to be one of the more popular Week 1 game stacks. Baker Mayfield and Jayden Daniels both project very well and have pass catchers that are priced attractively.
• Sam Darnold is the top PPD projection on both sites. What could possibly go wrong?