Welcome to Week 1 of the 2026 Footballguys Roundtable. Our intrepid panel of fantasy pundits discusses and debates four topics every week. We split the conversation into separate features.
This week's roundtable features these four topics:
- Bold Fantasy Predictions
- The Players They Wish They Drafted Less
- The Players They Wish They Drafted More
- Listening to the Little Voice
Let's roll...
Matt Waldman: What fantasy management wisdom do you want to remember heading into Week 2 that overreactive fantasy managers and media will be tilting over?
Gary Davenport: This is easy—take a breath.
That word “overreactive” is the key here. Every year, fantasy managers lose their minds over what happened in Week 1. The players who had good games are mega-breakouts who are going to tally 3,000 total yards and score 40 touchdowns. Guys who struggled have been infected with the Wildfire virus. They are the Walking Dead. They must be decapitated and then burned so as to not infect the rest of the team.
Never mind that one game is a ludicrously small sample size—which it is. But most of the league’s high-end offensive players either barely played in the preseason or didn’t at all. There is rust to be shaken off.
Seismic lineup shuffles and panic drops one week in the season don’t lead to fantasy championships. They lead to the liquor cabinet.
Maurile Tremblay: Right, Gary. Week 1 is one data point, and one data point is not a trend. It is a dot. You cannot sensibly draw a line through a dot; you can only stare at it and make poor decisions. Every year the loudest overreactions come from people treating a single box score as a verdict on a player's role and character, and the antidote is to look at the inputs rather than the outputs.
Joe Bryant: That Week 1 data point is big, Maurile. Remember the Raiders beating the Patriots last year? New England was never the same!
Tremblay: Exactly, Joe. We can't overreact to one-week events -- more inputs, fewer outputs.
Snap share, routes run, carries inside the ten, and targets tell me what a coaching staff intends; yards and touchdowns tell me what happened once. A running back who got 18 carries and gained 41 yards had, for my purposes, a perfectly fine week. A receiver who caught two passes for 62 yards and a touchdown on 3 targets did not.
I especially want to hold that line with the handful of veterans I know are being deliberately rationed early, like George Kittle and Tucker Kraft coming off major surgeries, and the rookies who are on a ramp, like Makai Lemon and Jadarian Price.
The second thing is that committees look far more decisive after one game than they actually are. Plenty of backfields this year will have split workloads by design, whether it is Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, Tennessee, or Denver, and a coaching staff that spent all of August describing a shared workload is not going to abandon it because one back got the hot hand for three quarters against a bad run defense.
Coaches say "we'll ride the hot hand" the way restaurants say "that'll be right out." The same goes for the offenses breaking in new play-callers, which this season is a huge share of the league. Drew Petzing in Detroit, Zac Robinson in Tampa Bay, Mike McDaniel in Los Angeles, Sean Mannion in Philadelphia, and the new staffs in New York and Baltimore will all look different in Week 6 than they do in Week 1.
The last thing, and the one I most need to say to myself before Tuesday morning, possibly into a mirror, is that the waiver wire after Week 1 is where good rosters go to die. The urge to drop a fifth-round pick who had a bad day for a practice-squad call-up who scored twice is overwhelming, and it is almost always wrong, because the player I drafted has months (at least) of evidence behind him and the player I am chasing has one game and a nice smile.
There is surprisingly strong historical evidence that even after four games, preseason expectations/ADP have often remained roughly as predictive of future performance as the first four weeks of fantasy production. One game should only modestly update your expectations, and "modestly" is not a word anyone has ever used to describe a Tuesday-morning waiver claim.
My rule is that I only add a Week 1 hero if the reason he produced is structural and still true next week, like a starter being lost for the season; and I only drop a drafted player if the thing I drafted him for has demonstrably vanished, not merely gone missing for an afternoon. Otherwise I hold. I keep my highest bids for players whose situations changed rather than players whose stat lines did, and I go shopping for whichever star had the worst Sunday, because his owner is going to be tilting, and, as I will tell myself in the mirror, I am going to be the calmest person in the league.
Jeff Bell: Benny Snell is not replacing James Conner.
Matt Waldman: Thank you!
Bell: Overreaction theater is at a premium coming from Week 1. Last year, A.J. Brown was completely removed from fantasy relevance; Will Shipley was going to share the backfield with Saquon Barkley, and New England lost to Las Vegas. Week 1 brings valuable information, but the reaction far outweighs the reality. There will be surprises. There are surprises in Week 8 or in Week 13. The player you drafted in Round 2 is probably going to be ok.
Week 1 second waiver run is real. People will overreact. The FAAB will be poured on the current WR9. In situations like Puka Nacua’s rookie year, it can be warranted. More often, Sammy Watkins' best game is not hitting anyone's lineup, and players who would have never hit the wire all summer will become available. It is a long season.
Corey Spala: The season has officially started; do not get too excited. Let’s remember to not overreact to one week, especially the first week. Last year, Keon Coleman (WR2) and Marquise Brown (WR9) finished Week 1 as a WR1 while Noah Fant (TE9) and Jonnu Smith (TE10) presented optimism as TE1s. All four players finished as their positional three (WR3, TE3) or worse.
It will be important to look into why players may have had a boom week. For example, Brown had 16 targets in Week 1 because Travis Kelce accidentally injured Xavier Worthy in the first quarter. For that specific game, the offense adjusted on a whim, having Brown play 93 percent of snaps.
Over the duration of the season, Kansas City adjusted the offense, resulting in Brown averaging 3.9 targets and 50.3 percent of snaps per game. Brown should not be a focal piece of an offense for an extended outlook. Do not chase points on any given week. Identify the variables behind a player's boom week and determine whether they are worth the add.
Jeff Haseley: Chasing Box Score "Flukes" vs. True Utilization: Media chatter always hypes the gadget wide receiver or backup running back who scored two touchdowns on three touches in Week 1. The wisdom to remember is that route participation, snap counts, and total target share are far more predictive of long-term success than a random multi-touchdown game. Don't blow high waiver priority or FAAB on a player whose box score completely masks a 20 percent snap rate.
The "Early-Season Defense" Fallacy: Every year, elite offensive players lay an absolute dud in Week 1, and the media immediately declares the entire offense broken or the player "washed." In reality, NFL defenses are traditionally ahead of offenses in September, especially with more starters resting more often in the preseason. Don't bench or drop a proven star after 60 minutes of rusty offensive football.
Panic-Dropping Draft Capital: Overreactive managers love dropping solid mid-round picks after a low-usage Week 1 in favor of the shiny new waiver-wire darling. The move to capitalize on is hunting your league’s drop list after the Week 1 waivers process. Sometimes, you'll find proven talent that got cut in a knee-jerk reaction.
Rookie Slow-Burns: Outside of top-three picks, rookie running backs and tight ends rarely dominate touches in Week 1. Coaches lean heavily on veteran pass protection early on. Tilting over a rookie's low snap count in September is a mistake; their usage almost always ramps up as the season progresses.
Mike Kashuba: Your good players are probably still good. Don't be the guy panic-dropping or benching players like Jeff pointed out. Ja'Marr Chase was the WR76 in Week 1 last year. George Pickens and Tee Higgins were both outside the top 50 as well. The early part of the season is a mess for both offenses and fantasy managers to figure out, but with proven players we know are good, keep them in your lineups at least until we see a trend showing a decline in utilization or talent.
Waldman: As always, thanks for reading.
Check out the links below for all of this week's roundtable topics:
- Bold Fantasy Predictions
- The Players They Wish They Drafted Less
- The Players They Wish They Drafted More
- Listening to the Little Voice
Good luck!
