Week 1, 2026
Wednesday night in the OWS Discord Season Kick-Off Party, a stat regarding Week 1 was brought up with games being disappointing from an offensive perspective. JM went back and looked it up and found that over the last two seasons, games in Week 1 have gone UNDER the game total 65.
The button that this pushes in my brain is that separator scores become that much more important to land on in the places where they show up.
Look at what we see from the information laid out above. Tyreek Hill scored 44.5 in 2023. Josh Allen and Saquon Barkley scored over 31 in 2024. Cooper Kupp scored over 30 that same year. And Josh Allen scored 38 in 2025, while Derrick Henry (29.2) was the only player who topped 25 that year.
Obviously, there are things we won’t be able to see, and the best we can do is just position ourselves to land on those if they happen. Brandon Aiyuk’s 32.9 in 2023 was his best career game. Jayden Reed’s Week 1 game in 2024 was his best career game. These things happen. And while we can position ourselves for these things, through the offenses and skill sets we target, we ultimately need something to break our way to land on something like that.
But Tyreek Hill in 2023, Josh Allen, Saquon Barkley, and Cooper Kupp in 2024, and Josh Allen and Derrick Henry in 2025 all fall into the bucket of plays we could have been positioning ourselves for.
If fantasy scoring is down across the board, and we get a separator score, that separator becomes that much more valuable, as the gap between that separator and the other scores is that much greater.
My goal this week, then, is to position myself with the players clearly capable of putting up a score that we’re pointing back to a year from now; and as I spend my salary away from the high-end guys, to think about the cheaper players who might be capable of putting up a once-in-career type of game.
To me, this data makes overstacking more important. If most games go under, that means there are fewer separator scores being posted and fewer strong fantasy scores overall, so it makes sense to try and bet on one game environment really blowing up. So, instead of playing two or three players from my main game stack on a given roster, I want to play five or six – especially with chalky games like NO/DET. If the game whiffs entirely, I’ll have rosters with nobody from it, but if the game really smashes, I’ll blow past the majority of rosters that are playing 1-3 players from it. My overall TL;DR here is, on lower-scoring slates, overstacking single games becomes more +EV.
We’ve talked about this fact since the league and NFLPA came together to shorten the preseason in 2021. Furthermore, teams are looking at the injury data and deciding to use the preseason more like an extension of camp, where the fringe-roster players are competing for their future. We’re seeing regular starters play less and less in the preseason, with most teams offsetting that loss of game repetitions via inter-squad practices against other NFL teams. Even so, the shrinking of game reps and full, padded practices has left teams with fewer opportunities to iron out the kinks, which, to me, is the causal factor of the slow starts seen throughout the league early in the season. We already saw it with the two games that have played to start the year, and we’re likely going to see some poor football on Sunday.
So, what does this mean for our process? Firstly, we know even less than we think we know to start the year. Secondly, what we see on Sunday is not likely the end state of these teams. Thirdly, defenses get a small nudge in these matchups to start the season, so I’m looking to top “scheme” defensive coordinators to really show out early in the year. Lastly, fewer players putting up elite scores means the ones that do become “had to have it” much easier. Within our process of identifying the top spots on paper, I also want to be honest with the fact that outlier production means more early in the year than it will later on, meaning I will be expanding my player pool slightly to account for higher variance. Not that I’m going full-blown off the wall on every roster, just that I’ll be more lenient in my departure from ownership and the chalk build.
My thoughts on this subject very much echo JM’s sentiments. There are likely going to be fewer separator scores, but those ones mean that much more. The other elephant in the room is that from the eight players JM mentions, only Aiyuk, Tyreek, and Josh Allen (2024) were on the Main Slate. As I noted in the question, the NFL tends to put the “stronger bets” from a team strength standpoint in the primetime windows in Week 1, which further shrinks the likelihood of elite scores. I always think 30-point scores are the target, obviously, but also in a week like this I think that giving yourself a legitimate shot at an 18-25 point game from every roster spot is wildly important. We often fall into the “value” traps early in the season, but focusing on players with elite upside AND solid 70th-80th percentile outcomes carries a ton of value.
Projected win totals, season player props, game spreads and totals – all of these are data points that we use to help guide us in DFS and all areas of sports prediction. However, Week 1 of the NFL season is one of the most fragile times in all of sports for these numbers.
This is ultimately a big part of the name of the game in Week 1 each year. If we’re backward looking, we will miss a lot, because so much changes from one season to the next. If we’re forward looking, we will also miss a lot, because there’s plenty of guesswork involved. But at least we’re giving ourselves a better shot at being all the way right, if we make the right assertions in the right directions.
Some spots that come to mind in this area, in this week:
BUCCANEERS AT BENGALS
I will have a stack of the Bengals this week. I will have Ja’Marr Chase exposure away from this roster. I will have Chase Brown exposure as well. But I have approached this game with a sense of caution — as you may have noticed from my content throughout the week — and my exposure to this game will be more of a hedge than an application of money toward a central thesis of mine.
I think the Bucs front seven will be really good this year. I think the Bengals will be improved on defense. And I think Zac Taylor will continue to avoid proactive aggressiveness, which means that if the Bengals defense is improved, the chances for absolute shootouts will be quite a bit lower for the Bengals this year than what we’ve gotten used to in the past couple seasons.
BEARS OFFENSE
I think the Bears will take a step forward on offense. And with Ben Johnson remaining aggressive, and with a bad defense for the Bears, I think this will lead to plenty of shootout opportunities.
EAGLES OFFENSE
I think the Eagles have a chance to be a wagon on offense this year. I also think Washington will be below average on defense, making this a spot I want to be out in front of in the early going.
Much like JM, I like the Eagles. AJ Brown is gone, but Devonta Smith and Dallas Goedert have prices and ownership projections as if he were still around. If this was midseason last year and AJB were to miss a game, both Smith and Goedert would be extremely chalky, but they’re falling through the cracks.
The Packers offense is also super interesting. They’ve always been a good offense, but they’ve been so spread out that it’s been challenging to invest in them for DFS purposes. Well, Doubs and Wicks are gone, so we should see no more games in which five WRs all play around 50% of the snaps. The offense is good – and now it’s much more concentrated, which makes it much more fantasy-friendly.
Man, a lot of them. I think the Bengals are going to take significant time to see if under-center play is right for them, likely leading to yet another slow start. I think the Falcons are going to find themselves in the bottom 10 in total offense. I think the Buccaneers have a legitimate bounce-back season, saving Todd Bowles his job. I think the Vikings are going to beat the Packers in Week 1 and will turn the NFC North into one of the most competitive divisions in NFL history. I think the Browns are the worst team in football and Todd Monken is fired. I think Michael Pittman leads the Steelers in receptions. I think Josh Downs and Jayden Reed finally, and fully, erupt. I think the Cardinals lose over seven pass attempts per game versus their 2025 totals, which, when combined with Brock Bowers’ injury, allows Colston Loveland to finish as the overall TE1.
A couple of my biggest convictions for this season revolve around the Ravens and Chargers offenses. I think Lamar Jackson and Justin Herbert will both be squarely in the MVP discussion in their new look offenses. Lamar is already priced there, but Herbert is not. More specifically within their offenses, guys like Zay Flowers and Ladd McConkey I think could be carried to unseen levels the way things are shaping up. Flowers has never truly been featured in his career, but this year I think that changes with the tight end room much thinner and a new OC. McConkey will benefit from creative scheming and be used all over the field, with Mike McDaniel finding ways to get him the ball in space with his 4.39 speed.
I also think that Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III are special talents and pairing them with Ben Johnson in full-time roles from day one this season puts them both in position to be near the top of their positions when all is said and done. Loveland is my pick for TE1 and I think Burden has a top-5 WR season coming within the next three years.
Some more “off the board” thoughts I have entering the season are:
