2:02 pm | September 9, 2018 | Go to Source | Author:
Opening day of the new NFL season is one of the best days of the year.
Among the most enjoyable parts of the game-day experience is tracking how your fantasy football team reaches its weekly outcome — remember, it has been a whole 252 days since a “Sunday that counted,” for our purposes. It’s watching Alvin Kamara, fantasy’s fourth-highest-scoring player of 2017, scoring the day’s first touchdown en route to a monstrous 43.1-point day in PPR scoring. It’s embracing James Conner, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ newest star who scampered all over the Cleveland Browns’ defense for 34.2 points. It’s celebrating the fact that you were one of the lucky few so bold as to start Ryan Fitzpatrick, who scored a career-best 42.3 points against a tough New Orleans Saints defense.
It’s tracking all of these things as they unfold in our live scoring.
These all happened during Week 1, and as we’ll do right here each week, we’ll take you through the best, the worst, the historic and the simply odd performances. They’re broken down into two groups: The “winners,” the week’s best from a fantasy perspective, and the “losers,” usually relative to ADP (average draft position), start rate in ESPN leagues or their perceived value in fantasy. Injury-related performances are generally excluded, and any applicable game or historical data is included.
Check back after the conclusion of the 1 p.m. ET, 4 p.m. ET and, when applicable, Sunday Night Football games for our picks of the week’s best and worst.
Winners
Alvin Kamara, RB, Saints: If you spent your first-round pick on Kamara, you certainly were happy for the entirety of his Sunday game, even if fans of his NFL team were not. In addition to scoring the first touchdown of the day, Kamara in the fourth quarter added a second rushing touchdown plus a two-point rushing conversion (at a time his team was down by 24 points) and a receiving touchdown (down 16), finishing the game with a career-high 43.1 PPR fantasy points, which led all running backs in the early games. As was the case during his breakthrough rookie 2017, Kamara did most of his work as a receiver, catching nine of 12 targets — both of those best at his position during the 1 p.m. ET games — for 112 yards. Kamara might not get to such a point total quite the same way in future games — the Saints probably won’t be playing catch-up on a deficit that big each week — but there’s no denying his win-your-week potential.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, QB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Jameis Winston’s three-week fill-in — or might it be longer than that? — found himself on rosters in just 1.15 percent of ESPN leagues and in just 0.47 percent of starting lineups, so if you’re among that select group, give yourself a round of applause for the bold call! He led all quarterbacks during the 1 p.m. ET games with 42.3 PPR fantasy points, the second-best single-game performance in his career, giving him a 30-plus-point performance for three different teams (39.3 in Week 13 of 2014 for the Houston Texans; 30.3 in Week 15 of 2013 for the Tennessee Titans). Nevertheless, Fitzpatrick probably won’t earn many more starting nods entering Week 2, nor should he, considering he’ll be facing the stingy Philadelphia Eagles defense.
Julio Jones, WR, Atlanta Falcons: How do the Falcons explain Jones’ being on the sidelines during their fourth-down, goal-line play on the opening drive? Better yet, how do we explain Matt Ryan’s inexplicable trouble getting the football into Jones’ hands in the red zone, best encapsulated by this nugget from ESPN Stats & Information: Counting the playoffs, Ryan is 1-for-20 targeting Jones in the end zone in the last two seasons. In the on-field game, Jones might not have qualified as a “winner” — his potential game-tying catch as time expired was ruled out of bounds — but in fantasy, Jones delivered a winner, with a Thursday night best 28 PPR points. Volume had much to do with it, as this was the 14th time in his 96 career regular-season games that he caught as many as 10 passes, and his 19 targets fell one shy of his personal best (20, Week 3 of 2015). Jones’ fantasy point total also fell just 5.1 points short of the wide receiver record in the 17 NFL Kickoff games.
Michael Thomas, WR, New Orleans Saints: The No. 6 PPR scoring wide receiver in 2017 got off to an outstanding start to 2018, scoring 38 points, which led all receivers in the early games and is also a career high. Though he’s widely regarded a WR1 — and should be — Thomas’ strength so far has been his weekly consistency. This was the 11th consecutive regular-season game in which he has scored 10-plus points, the longest active streak by any wide receiver, and he was 2017’s second-most-consistent player at the position.
Losers
Nick Foles, QB, Eagles: Predictably, on Thursday night he couldn’t repeat the magic that he showed during Super Bowl LI, when he scored 24.92 PPR fantasy points. He looked much more like the ordinary passer we saw in Week 16 of last season (8.52) or the NFC divisional playoff game (9.64). Foles wasn’t a heavily started player by any means, active in only 7.5 percent of ESPN leagues on Thursday night, but that means some did chance using him, probably more so in two-quarterback or superflex leagues. His 5.1-point performance continued what has been a more recent trend of mostly forgettable games as an NFL starter; in his past 16 games (playoffs included), he has averaged just 10.7 points. Foles will continue to start nevertheless until the Eagles deem Carson Wentz (knee) ready, which could happen in a matter of days or weeks. If Wentz gets scratched for Weeks 2 and/or 3, Foles at least will get a pair of exceptional matchups with which to rebound (@TB, IND), making him a stronger streaming choice than he was on Thursday.
Saints defense/special teams: Fitzpatrick’s big day came at the Saints’ expense, as their defense was routed for a whopping 48 points and 529 total yards in an upset loss that probably cost a slew of people their eliminator pools — the Saints were the most-selected team in ESPN’s Eliminator Challenge (28 percent) in Week 1. In fantasy-point terms, the Saints scored minus-9, their worst score in franchise history, and letting down the many who started him (68.3 percent of ESPN leagues, seventh most among D/STs). In the Saints’ defense (pardon the pun), they also posted poor point totals in the opening weeks of 2017, scoring minus-5 in Week 1 (@MIN) and minus-2 in Week 2 (NE). Those were much tougher matchups than this one, however, so it’d be understandable if fantasy managers are hesitant to start them in Week 2 versus the Browns.
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