Slate Overview
Week One of a new season is like this combination between Christmas and Y2K. You and everyone else are extremely excited and hopeful for the new season, but there’s also this existential fear that you don’t really know what to expect. Like Y2K, there’s nothing to worry about, but there is certainly an almost limitless amount of uncertainty. We saw with someone like Romeo Doubs on opening night that even seemingly clear roles end up not so clear, and we don’t really know how good every offense and defense are. And that’s all before we even get to the natural variance in an NFL game.
It’s the greatest time of the year to get off the beaten path, but it’s also the easiest to get fancy play syndrome or *too cute*. Pricing is very loose in both DFS and Draft games, the player pool is stocked with strong plays due to a lack of bye weeks, and the amount of players who feel playable is so large thanks to a lack of certainty in player roles, talent, offensive environment and more.
The most important element for me entering a new season is identifying where my actual advantages lie. In the year 2026, I’m not going to out-project or out-sim the top players out there. Everyone is working with a baseline of these resources. I’m not saying there aren’t other good resources out there to help narrow down the top targets for a DFS slate, but I think my personal greatest advantage is in sort of what top DFS player Youdacao coined as “bullying the sims”.
If everyone has access to high quality projections and simulations, simply using those as my guiding light aren’t going to give me much of an edge over those people. I do, of course, use and analyze those tools. But I also want to primarily focus on the different aspects of the slate that those tools might be missing. Essentially, where might the projects be the most wrong? What elements of the player, situation, or matchup might not be appropriately accounted for in these tools that are driving the lineups of our opponents?
I think if you have been around here all summer playing Best Ball, drafting fantasy football teams and grinding the offseason news religiously, then that is something that we should lean on very heavily. A good chunk of DFS bros largely parachute into Week One with limited background on the offseason and training camp. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we may have insight into certain things that aren’t going to be accounted for in Week One and the early season because we have been terminally online reading every training camp report all summer.
That doesn’t mean all these insights from the summer are certain to come to fruition this year, and certainly not immediately in Week One, but if we are right about these things that the projections are missing, we stand to gain a ton. So, that’s my primary focus and strategic angle, especially in the early going. What can we use from grinding all summer to our advantage?
Optimals & Chalk
I ran 50 lineups with no restrictions in RotoGrinders LineupHQ, which is where I like to start to get a gist for what is popping in “optimal lineups”. Here was the top projected lineup on DraftKings:
Across all the top optimals, several similar trends continue.
- Justin Herbert is the QB, but there is never another Charger attached to him.
- Pay down at TE, typically for Michael Mayer.
- Jahmyr Gibbs & generally paying up for RB.
- Spend up at at least one WR spot (Ja’Marr Chase, then Amon-Ra St. Brown) and spend down at a WR spot (Tre Tucker).
I like to analyze these trends across “optimal lineups” to get a gist for not just who is going to be popular individually, but how people are generally going to construct their lineups.
The Herbert thing is super interesting, but it does make perfect sense. The Chargers are expected to be an awesome offense, and they should be able to put up a bunch of points on the lowly Cardinals, but the target and touch distribution among all their weapons is extremely murky. So Herbert pops at his price, but none of the individual weapons surpass the bevy of strong RB/WR/TE options. This means one of two things are likely to happen. Either Herbert’s ownership stays in check because the field is very focused on stacking, and his weapons don’t pop, or we see the ownership of the Chargers pass catchers rise higher than we expect as people force stacks in with Herbert. I lean more towards the first, making Herbert a great play, but also including Ladd, QJ or, dare I say, Kolar with him an intriguing tournament angle.
With such loose pricing and a deep player pool this week, it makes perfect sense that we see spend up and RB/WR for some studs like Gibbs and Chase. I am going to be almost entirely out on Bijan given their QB situation and tough matchup with the Steelers, but I don’t see a way to avoid Gibbs. Chase is clearly a great play, but WR is incredibly deep with strong plays for cheaper prices, but he is my 1.02 in draft games.
The Lions and Saints game is just making its way into optimals very significantly, which makes sense, but don’t think you’re being at all sneaky by targeting that game. Gibbs, Amon-Ra, Etienne and Olave all show up early and often, and I expect Jamo, Juwan and even (to a much lesser extent) Vele to be far from overlooked tournament options. Naturally, Goff and Shough will be two of the more popular tournament QBs. This doesn’t mean you should avoid this game, and I will not be, but it also will not be my primary focus given the fact it’s everyone else’s primary focus.
Tournament Angles
So we’ve established we want to find some of these angles that the projections and sims aren’t accounting for, and we’ve established the basis for our opponents’ lineups, so what are these angles to attack?
When it comes to the Raiders, the field is very clearly not avoiding them, but I think the way in which they are attacking this situation is arguably the most exploitable angle of the slate. Ashton Jeanty is healthy, in the best matchup of this season and his career, with a brilliant offensive head coach calling plays and a revamped offensive line. Oh, and Brock Bowers is out, making him the center of everything the Raiders do on offense. He is game script proof with his pass catching, he’s cheap in all formats (DK/FD/Drafts), and the field is gravitating to Michael Mayer and Tre Tucker. You can play him with those guys, or you can pivot away and onto Jeanty.
I also firmly believe that the Ravens offense is going to look wildly different from recent seasons, but the projections and the field are still mostly treating them like the old Harbuagh teams. All summer long, new OC Declan Doyle (from the Ben Johnson tree) would not shut up about catering the offense to Lamar Jackson and creating explosive plays. Their personnel changes indicate they move to a lot more 11 personnel than years past, and they have a foundational star WR in Zay Flowers with two dirt cheap flyers in Rashod Bateman and Ja’Kobi Lane.
I am not sure there has ever been a drumbeat as loud as the one for Parker Washington this summer. I totally understand being skeptical of the breakout last year, but despite a slow start, Parker was the 12th most efficient WR in the league over the entire 2025 season from a yards per route run basis. Now, Liam Coen waxed poetic about Parker Washington every time he got in front of a mic, Jakobi Meyers is banged up and Travis Hunter is playing predominantly defense. The Browns defense took a step back without Myles Garrett, and Parker is cheap and completely unowned.
Ben Johnson discussed wanting his offense to be the best of all time, which is clearly a fairly absurd and lofty goal, but the Bears might have to come close to that at least in the early going. Their defense is extremely banged up, especially in the secondary, so they are going to be getting in plenty of shootouts. The Panthers are not some juggernaut offense, but they are fully capable of exploiting this Bears defense, especially with Tetairoa McMillan moving into the slot more often this season (where Bears slot corner Kyler Gordon is out). The Panthers defense is not bad, but the Bears offense is loaded with young, emerging talent heading into year 2 with Ben Johnson and everyone is healthy.
As long as Geno Smith is the starting QB, I think the Jets offense is kind of fun? The offensive line is not bad, and Breece Hall, Garrett Wilson and Adonai Mitchell are quality weapons, even if their two rookie first round picks may get off to slow starts. That should just funnel the targets to that big 3, plus Mason Taylor at TE, in the early going, and I think they’ll be pretty effective. They also are in a really good spot against a Titans defense that projects to be closer to the bottom of the league this season.
Flag Plants
Often times, a lot of touts, including myself, will give this lengthy list of all these different plays and options for a DFS slate. I get it, but at the end of the day I also think it’s important to specifically communicate your actual favorite plays. So, here’s a list of my actual flag plants for this week. I think they apply to pretty much every format and every site, with just the TE position in your draft games being a smidge different.
QB – Lamar Jackson
RB – Ashton Jeanty
WR – Zay Flowers, Parker Washington
TE – Michael Mayer, Mason Taylor (add Juwan Johnson in draft games)
But if you did want to ask me about some of my other favorite tournament options, these would be those guys.
Additional Core
QB – Geno Smith, Jared Goff, Bryce Young
RB – Jahmyr Gibbs (duh), Saquon Barkley, Breece Hall, Bucky Irving
WR – Tetairoa McMillan, Adonai Mitchell, Amon-Ra St. Brown
TE – Colston Loveland, Juwan Johnson
