The Odds Are: An overview of Week 1 on FanDuel

I’m just kidding (sorta), in case any of the fellas from that league happen upon this post.

“What’s fantasy football? What’s breastfeeding?”

If you haven’t played daily fantasy college football yet, you’re missing out.

Fantasy football fans have something to be excited about this week with the new release of Playerline, a fantasy football news app that offers instant, real-time insight into every player in the NFL. I am basing this off of where I have seen these players being drafted.

That’s one of the keys for doing well in FanDuel, though – finding the underrated plays that don’t cost as much toward the salary cap.

How often are you in the middle of a draft and someone takes that quarterback, and they say, “They’re the highest scoring player”, or someone is deciding between a running back and wide receiver, and they say, “well the wide receiver scores more, I better take him”. Without further ado, here are my GPP picks for Week 1.

A recent survey estimated that more than 30 million Americans would be participating in some variation of a fantasy football draft this year before the regular season starts this week. He has high upside even though he had just 5 touchdowns last season and 696 yards. Pretty good, but not great. He’s the type of back who gets better as the game wears on because he can wear down a defense with his bruising style. As the number one rusher, he should feast on a weak Idaho defense this week. Kirk Cousins like to sling the ball around, and could throw a pick or two. He also rushed six times for 48 yards.

During his 74 snaps this preseason (roughly a full game), he was 24/31 for 236 yards.

After a year out, we finally get to see Adrian Peterson again.

He’s been less than healthy for most of the preseason and I have my doubts about the Bills offense in general. What if you had unlimited resources at your disposal and could fill your Week 1 roster with the flawless lineup, regardless of its total price tag? He’s so damn consistent.

“Our team of daily fantasy sports experts already provides free strategy content every day that gives our readers an edge over the competition”, said FantasyWired editor-in-chief Brett Collson. They haven’t even listed him as the backup running back yet. Of that $1 million, $100,000 will go to the victor, while the other $900,000 will be split among his or her fellow ESPN League Manager fantasy football league members. This should mean a bigger audience for all the games and likely higher advertising revenues for the NFL. But that won’t slow down Forte; if anything, it will just create more opportunities for the tailback to get touches. This week I’m playing Randle and hoping for a big game. Running backs, especially starters, are too highly valued. But that doesn’t matter so much for FanDuel. The Eagles have been a top-five scoring offense the last two years under Chip Kelly. (So a Twitter account is required to enter.) Outside of the huge first place prize, DraftKings money will be awarded to the top 25,550 participants. It’s like I blacked out and, while unconscious, drafted all these incredible teams. And if you want to make the point that his quarterback is now Alex Smith – he had that game a year ago with the combination of Nick Foles and Mark Sanchez under center.

The Green Bay Packers are my favorite team. Where if you had Andrew Luck, he only gave you a 5.5 point advantage per week, therefore making Beckham and Brown the obviously better fantasy player. He won’t get a ton of targets, which is why his value is greater in FanDuel than in DraftKings.

A better fantasy option might be Richard Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers.

Don’t waste a first-round draft pick, or even a second or third, on Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees.

Enjoy as always, and look for me next Tuesday with my top 10 waiver adds for Week 2. Kirk Cousins is a turnover machine, and the Redskins’ pass defense can’t stop anyone, so look for Washington to be trailing and Reed to see plenty of opportunity.