Cracking FanDuel Week 1

Sunday Morning Update:

Rome Odunze is active, which is a slight downgrade for both Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III, but not enough to materially change their outlook this week. I do expect to face a lol of Justin Herbert, but Jared Goff is also gaining some popularity overnight. I'm continuing to take a chance on Kyler Murray, which is risky, but there's a trust that I have for Kevin O'Connell, and the matchup against a Micah Parsons-less Green Bay defense is not as scary as it otherwise would have been.

If there are any surprise inactives, we'll hop back on, but as of now it's looking pretty quiet. 

For the Primary Cash Lineup there are a couple of adjustments:

1) Moving away from Colston Loveland to Michael Mayer. The price at $4,600 is just too cheap for Mayer. 

2) With the move to Mayer, I don't want two Raiders players in my lineup, so I'm upgrading Ashton Jeanty to Saquon Barkley. Barkley is a player I've become increasingly interested in this week, going up against what should be a horrendous Washington defense.

3) Upgrading Luther Burden III to Ladd McConkey. This one is just based on touchdown upside. McConkey is going to be more popular, and I'm already taking some risks by deviating with Murray, Barkley, and Lloyd; I'm not sure I want to have a one-v-one of Burden and McConkey against the field. 

Primary Cash Lineup

• QB Kyler Murray - MIN, $7,200            
• RB Jahmyr Gibbs, DET, $9,100
• RB Saquon Barkley, PHI, $8,100
• WR Ja'Marr Chase, CIN, $8,900
• WR Chris Olave, NO, $7,400
• WR Ladd McConkey, LAC, $6,500
• TE Michael Mayer, LV, $4,600
• Flex RB MarShawn Lloyd, GB, $4,900
• TD Tennessee Titans, $3,200

What is Cracking FanDuel?

Since we’ve been doing this article for a while now, and there are always some new people, I’m going to give a little bit of history of Cracking FanDuel. I’m Devin Knotts, and I started a version of this as a blog (when those were still a thing) back in 2017. I started at Footballguys in 2015, primarily covering college football at the time, but I have been a DFS player dating back to 2010.

This is a “Cash Game” article. So what is a “cash game”? It is a term that came from poker, but essentially, it is a contest in which you’re looking to double your money. Either an H2H contest or a 50/50 contest, where the top half of the entries get paid.

Cracking FanDuel is a look into my cash game process and how I’m ultimately thinking about building lineups. Throughout the article's lifespan, we have been profitable using the “Primary Cash Lineup,” one of the three lineups provided. That is the primary purpose of this article. The Cash + lineup is a fun lineup that can be used in a little bit larger contest, think 20-200 people. At the same time, the GPP lineup is an optimal lineup using our Multi-Lineup Optimizer that fits in the favorite plays of the week.

Neither the Cash+ nor the GPP lineup has the amount of time or the success rate that the Primary Cash Lineup has. I’ve spent most of my DFS history playing cash games with far more success than GPPs. Despite having six live final entries and several GPP wins, I've found that I no longer chase these things, as I’ve come to love the craft of hand-building and rooting for my players just as much as I do against my opponents. In a GPP format, the thrill is unbelievable, but I found myself consumed by the highs and lows of the game. About 90% of my weekly bankroll each week gets put into the cash game format, while I’ll still take about 10% of my bankroll and enter it into a lottery ticket GPP contest.

2025 Recap

2025 was the worst in this article’s nine-year history. As bad as it was, it ended even worse health-wise, as in Weeks 17 and 18 I was in the hospital for 6 days with shingles in my eye, which is among the most serious versions of shingles. Thankfully, my vision is 95% returned, and outside of the occasional flare-up, I’m fully ready to go this season.

2026 Outlook

This season, I’ll be doing some exciting things. I’ll be covering both DraftKings and FanDuel articles, which makes it easy to compare and contrast the differences each week. Playing on both sites can create a distinct advantage, as some weeks one site has a significant edge over the other. For example, there are often multiple weeks when FanDuel screws up pricing so badly that it creates 3-4 players who are must-starts in cash games. Meanwhile, DraftKings often has much tighter pricing, but that can lead to weeks where you’re just not comfortable building a lineup around a player that you absolutely love.

Cash Game Strategy- Week 1 Tip- The Rookie Trap

Last season was frustrating for a number of reasons. Nothing was more frustrating than the success of duplicate train lineups, which we hadn't seen in many seasons. Several factors contributed to their success, but none more than the impact Emeka Egbuka had early last year. This is year 16 of playing DFS for me, and year 10 of this article. I’ve built a reputation for being slow to play rookies and those with offseason buzz. The “breakout” darling of the fantasy analysts often doesn’t come true when it comes to DFS, but when it does, it is going to be a painful season. Nothing was more evident than when Emeka Egbuka scored five touchdowns in his first five games last season. I continued to fade him, as the lack of red zone targets wasn't sustainable for his success, and ultimately he had just one touchdown in his next 12 games; but at that point, starting as slow as I did became a spiraling snowball effect.

This season, that same risk applies for players like Carnell Tate. If he’s a player that people are going to be high on this season, I will gladly fade him for the first few weeks of the season. This isn’t stubbornness; it’s not overreacting. People saw the 2024 success of Brian Thomas Jr. and Malik Nabers and immediately overreacted to taking rookies last year, as Tetairoa McMillan and Emeka Egbuka were among the most popular players every week. The reality, however, is that for every Thomas/Nabers, there are Marvin Harrison Jr., Rome Odunze, Xavier Worthy, Ricky Pearsall, Xavier Legette, etc who were also heavily played in 2024.

We will see how the field reacts to a player like Tate. I suspect he will not be as popular as Egbuka was last season, simply because of the offense and the questions for Cam Ward, but don’t be surprised if the field jumps all over rookies after one good game. There will be weeks where players like KC Concepcion, Makai Lemon, Omar Cooper Jr., or Jordyn Tyson get popular.

Evaluate these rookies on a case-by-case basis. Did that player's role change? Did they just get fortunate luck like Egbuka did early last season? What do their targets look like, especially red-zone targets?

Injuries Create Opportunity

Week 1 used to have some horrific pricing due to preseason injuries. Preseason injuries are much less frequent now compared to the past, so there are not many injuries ahead of Week 1.

Alvin Kamara looks like he will play this week after coming into the week as more doubtful than questionable. Kamara was a full participant on Friday, which helps the Saints and gives them another playmaker, but it does greatly impact Travis Etienne Jr.’s upside as the bell-cow running back this week.

Tua Tagovailoa will miss this week with an oblique injury, while Michael Penix Jr. will miss with a knee. This leaves Cooper Rush as the Falcons' starting quarterback. While Rush is capable, the biggest impact to this offense is that they’ve been preparing for a left-handed quarterback with either Tua Tagovailoa or Michael Penix Jr. Now, with a right-handed Rush, the entire playbook looks slightly different. Everything is a little bit backward, and how the offense will deal with that is a big question.

Rome Odunze is questionable with a calf injury. This is a critical injury, as if he were to miss, Luther Burden III and Colston Loveland move from good plays to must-starts.

Brock Bowers will miss for the Raiders. Michael Mayer will get the start, while Tre Tucker should see an upgrade at the wide receiver position this week as the returning leading receiver should see a significant workload with Kirk Cousins at quarterback.

2026 Week 1 Strategy

Historically on FanDuel, the successful strategy was to pay up for running backs and find underpriced mid-tier wide receivers. While the elite running backs still scored more than the elite wide receivers because of the 0.5 PPR, the gap between the top two wide receivers and the rest of the field was staggering last year. Puka Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba were nearly must-plays every week. For reference, Nacua scored 328 FanDuel points in 16 games last season, which is 20.5 per game. The seventh-highest receiver had 119 fewer points, as Zay Flowers had just 209. Long story short, the drop-off from the truly elite wide receivers was massive last year, and it was a scenario where, in order to have success, you had to have one, or often both, if you could afford it.

Interestingly, in 2024, one wide receiver clearly separated himself from the group: Ja'Marr Chase, who had 73 more points than the second-highest-scoring wide receiver on FanDuel, while the rest of the wide receivers were more closely bunched. Chase finished as the fourth-highest-scoring wide receiver despite Joe Burrow playing only eight games last season.

So, what does this mean for this week, when there is no Smith-Njigba or Nacua?  For me, I’m going to try to target the truly elite wide receivers almost every week until the strategy doesn’t work or the price gets too high. If Ja'Marr Chase gets back to 2024 levels, he’s far too cheap at $8,900 and provides a massive advantage compared to your competition. For the rest of the wide receivers, I’m going to try to avoid chasing the top 3-6 wide receivers. These are players like Justin Jefferson, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Drake London, CeeDee Lamb, Nico Collins, A.J. Brown, etc. The problem with them is that while they may have more upside than wide receivers 10-20, the price that you’re paying prevents you from going up at running back, where the difference between a top 5 running back and a 10-20 running back can be massive.

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