Week One Takeaways

Now for my UK followers, a takeaway is often viewed as items like chicken chow mien and prawn crackers or a lamb rogan josh in a microwaveable box. In football and in this article I’m more looking to see what we can learn from week one. My aim is to guide you as to who was undercooked, who looked hot and who you may need to take a cool glass of milk with.

Tyreek Hill looks unstoppable
Blistering speed that is more than just the 40yard dash straight line, good route running, good hands, a working offensive system with Andy Reid, a QB with the arm to deliver and the support pieces to avoid getting all the attention all adds up to one heck of a player.
I’ll be honest here, I wasn’t really on the Hill train a lot. I thought Sammy Watkins was the better value and that both would see a lot of looks but the difference in speed and skill is much more than the ADP difference suggested. I was high on both but often missed Hill purely because I thought it was so obvious something had to go wrong. A classic case of overthinking it. Trading for him now would be a bad idea as the premiums will be through the roof but equally, if you own him it should take a king's ransom to even consider moving him.

The Lions won’t be that bad again.
Monday night football I got the Lions vs Jets totally wrong. Stafford bombed and Golladay was the shining light. Darnold recovered from a bad start to become respectable. The run game was much more powerful than I expected but the Lions defence to be much better. They’re still getting into their new system. There were plenty of good signs though, it’s just not clicked in time for game 1 and Stafford, so often the hero turned out to be the weak link. I can’t see them being that bad again and it’s debatable that Lions players may be decent trade targets.

Fire up the Atlanta pass attack
Matt Ryan got a lot of flack for his opening night performance but the team are going to have to rely on him much heavier this season than normal. The losses of Keane Neal and Deion Jones who were their best two defensive players will make keeping the opponents score down a difficult task. That kind of game script would suggest Julio, Sanu, Ridley and Hooper might see a lot of targets and with Freeman already a little banged up the Atlanta run game isn’t fantastic to own right now.

Denver’s backfield is still complicated
Lindsey has a first game to remember. He has speed and agility, a good set of hands and despite his frame, he has some strength to him. Royce Freeman will still be the starter and over the season I can see him being a top Fantasy asset like I have been drafting him as, but Lindsey may prevent him from being a solid top 5 option and it may be another 1,2 punch where you have to figure which you want. I can see a little bit of Ingram and Kamara in them but even younger. If the Denver O-Line does show signs it’s improved then both will be owned in every league very soon. I’m targeting Lindsey if I have an obvious drop, which in many leagues is Devante Booker now that he seems like an afterthought.

The Browns broke their week 1 hoodoo in the most Browns way
So you’ve not won on opening day for 14 years and against your bitter rivals who you haven’t beaten in 6 attempts, you get a chance. With the Steelers missing a field goal in difficult conditions you get a great INT and get into great field goal range to win it in OT. Then you get the attempt blocked and it ends in an annoying draw. They’re still the Browns and they still haven’t won a game since Christmas Eve 2016.
There are positive signs though. Landry and Gordon should be strong, Tyrod is looking like a good play now the Mayfield
Hype subsided and they really do have some great defensive pieces. In deep leagues where I have to play 2 DST or where there are 24 teams I found myself believing in the Browns D and with Denzel Ward and Myles Garrett that looks a shrewd move.

It’s great to have football back
Watching redzone on a Sunday night is one of the biggest joys of each week for me at this time of year and it feels so good to have it back. Sure it’s getting colder and the nights are closing in, but there’s nothing like tracking 50 fantasy teams, rooting for your teams and watching all the action to make you forget all that. Football is back people!!!