Too-Early Week 1 NFL Thoughts for FanDuel and DraftKings

Week 1 in the NFL is just around the corner and with it comes what is usually the most volatile week of the year in terms of prognosticating. While we know *a lot* about some teams, others we will have to take a wait and see approach on both sides of the ball. We will have our Week 1 picks for FanDuel and DraftKings early next week, but for now, let's look at some themes already cropping up on the horizon.

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How quickly can Andrew Luck return to being Andrew Luck (if at all)?

Andrew Luck FD 7300 DK 6100
Opponent CIN
Proj Points FD - 19.23 DK - 20.1
T.Y. Hilton FD 7200 DK 6800
Opponent CIN
Proj Points FD - 13.5 DK - 15.98
Ryan Grant FD 4900 DK 3900
Opponent CIN
Proj Points FD - 8.75 DK - 10.6
Jack Doyle FD 5600 DK 3600
Opponent CIN
Proj Points FD - 9.25 DK - 11.45
A big early theme of Week 1 is going to be how much of it rests on the shoulders (or knees) of guys returning from injury. Perhaps no single player will have quite the deterministic impact of Andrew Luck. It’s been more than a year since this guy’s seen regular season action and even if things look okay on the health front, there’s simply no way to really recreate the speed and intensity of this kind of game pace. And yet, he’s Andrew Luck who in 2016 finished in the top 10 in passing yards a would have reasonably been in top four had he not missed a game.

Week 1 will set him and the Colts up for early success. They’re opening as -3 home favorites against a Cincinnati team that ranked a little below average in team defense last season. Vegas certainly doesn’t hate their chances at scoring points, coming in with the eight-best implied total on the day.

It also helps that he’s got at least two familiar faces to throw to in T.Y. Hilton who led the league in receiving yards the last time Luck was under center. Meanwhile, Doyle was the team’s second-most targeted receiver that season, starting in 14 games and finishing with five targets per game when Luck started. That's not elite usage, but he's a more polished receiver at this point in his career. And finally, it sure seems like Ryan Grant has emerged as the team’s number two receiver.

The biggest issue for the Colts in 2016 (and for Luck’s long-term injury safety) was the lack of offensive line (which is putting things rather mildly). They were a complete sieve. Things appear improved for 2018, signing Matt Slauson and going into the draft for help as well. It’s hard to imagine they’ll be worse. And so we get Luck who now controls so much of the fantasy fate of an entire team. If they return quickly to 2016 form, then these prices are too low across the board for the Colts. Maybe we end up putting them high in the GPP target list rather than cash for Week 1, but it could be close.

Running Back Usage Questions

Le'Veon Bell FD 8900 DK 9400
Opponent CLE
Proj Points FD - 20.09 DK - 22.32
Dalvin Cook FD 7300 DK 6200
Opponent SF
Proj Points FD - 19.43 DK - 21.37
Saquon Barkley FD 7600 DK 6700
Opponent JAX
Proj Points FD - 17.29 DK - 19.21
Look, you can probably say this about any group of players/ positions/ everyone in the NFL. It’s a broad statement to question a certain player’s usage and it ultimately is the most correlated stat in terms of overall fantasy performance. I get that. But I’m putting these three guys out there because they represent examples of question marks across three different scenarios.

First, we have Bell who will once again sit out the entire preseason in a contract holdout only to (most likely) emerge Week 1 as the Steelers’ starting running back and bell-cow. We saw how well that worked out last season when he opened the year against these very same Browns and promptly touched the ball 13 times for 47 total yards. It was an epic disaster for a guy seemingly opening the season in the perfect spot for a running back (as a big favorite against a perceived weak defense). It turned out the Browns actually were a pretty good run defense (4th in DVOA) but still, this was a massive disappointment all around. And guess what? We get the exact same scenario Week 1 this year except now Bell is a huge home favorite.

Then, on the injury front, we get Cook returning from an ACL injury. Before getting hurt in Week 4, Cook had 23 touches (carries + targets) a game and that included the injury-shortened affair. He was looking at elite usage going forward. Now, we’ll get him less than a year removed from major surgery but right back in a similar role for the Vikings who should be even improved on offense with Kirk Cousins under center. Cook, for his 2017 usage, is coming incredibly cheap on both sites in a matchup against a 49ers squad that played ultra-fast in 2017 while ranking 26th in defensive DVOA. I want to be bullish on Cook here but with Latavius Murray still around the Vikings likely don’t need to lean as much on the former.

And finally, there’s Barkley who enters as the much-ballyhooed first round pick. The Giants haven’t made any bones about their plan to just unleash him to start the season with a full workload as an every-down back. That much isn’t exactly news. But just how much they mean it is always the question. I guess, in some ways, we’re saved too much of the mystery because the Giants get such a brutal matchup against the Jaguars.

Note: I could easily have added other running backs to this list. Alvin Kamara being one that comes to mind. And he would have fit another category: Team with one half of a RBBC suspended. Christian McCaffery would have fit the “Maybe (Probably)  now I’m fully the guy” scenario. We will likely write him up in the Week 1 cash picks. You get the point.

Both Sites Released Their Prices Way Too Early

I get it. It's a business more than anything else and the best way to drive excitement (and get the contests to fill) is to give a super long runway for folks to enter and fiddle, fiddle and enter. But the problem with that approach, from a strategic end, is that there will be epically mispriced players based on simple context alone. So many scenarios have changed in that last couple of weeks that players are already looking like total bargains because of newfound opportunity. The aforementioned Christian McCaffery has played his way to the top of the RB1 charts simply because it's abundantly clear the Panthers are going to use him like a bell-cow and will be on the field for all three downs.

Then there's the Marquise Lee injury which opens up a ton of targets for the Jaguars. Sure, they're still the Jags and still have Blake Bortles under center. But so many targets are available for this team now with Keelan Cole and Dede Westbrook sitting near punt prices on DraftKings. You can easily stack the entire Jacksonville squad against the Giants in Week 1 and actually not feel all that bad about it.

We are more than a week away, so expect a couple of other things to change as well. Such is the nature of football and all its volatility. Situations change on a dime (or on an ACL) and when prices for DFS are released a month before the game actually happens, we will undoubtedly have a ton of value to parse through.

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