First Victims of the Injured Reserve
Attention all citizens of Fartlandia,
As a part of my Kingly duties, I had to attend a knight’s roundtable meeting that delayed our expected print date. For that reason, this week breaks our standard format by posting multiple blogs to cover the first two weeks of the regular season. Unfortunately, I come bearing bad news…
Week 1 Highlights
In the first Thursday Night Football of this NFL regular season, A.J. Brown’s ankle gets folded on a low Drake Maye hospital ball slightly resembling a meatball sub with extra cheese on a roll with banana peppers. Drake “Drake Maye” Maye then proceeded to prove the “schedule” rumors to be right by severely underperforming and throwing 3 BLTs on cheesy Italian bread (interceptions), essentially repeating his poor performance in the Super Bowl last year. The Patriots offense is off to a very rough start to say the least, and so is my fantasy team with A.J. being unplayable for roughly half the season due to his high-ankle strain. It's truly unforunate that the Etienne and Brown trade with Mina in the preseason really did not work out as intended.
Coleston Loveland lays a “goose egg” with zero fantasy points despite the Bears putting up 59 points up on the board, making this the highest scoring first NFL game of an NFL season. With such a versatile arsenal of talent and HC Ben Johnson boldly proclaiming that the Bears will have the highest scoring offense of the season, you can expect Loveland to bounce back from this low-scoring game especially looking at his route tree.
Naturally, I was very happy with Gibbs throwing up a 30 burger and absolutely running through the Saints defense and doing what he does best. Though, I will note that the Lions defense and secondary specifically looked atrocious because they let the Saints put up 30 points before coming back in overtime to win. I am a little concerned about how easy it is to get passing yards through Detroit’s secondary with Olave having a career yardage day, but I figure Dan Campbell can get their shit together eventually because their talent and experience is clearly present.
Perhaps the Week 1 prospect that left the most bitter taste in my mouth was Saints RB Travis Etienne who played in a 3-headed RB committee instead of being the bellcow (handles most of the ball running) I thought he was. To the untrained eye, Etienne seems like a solid RB2 with 11.3 half PPR points mostly coming from 9 targets and efficient rushing with 5.1 Yards Per Carry (YPC). However, the deeper issues stem from the fact that someone we have never heard of before, CJ Donaldson, is taking rushes and goal-line snaps from him as well as Kendre Miller. What makes this even worse is that veteran RB Alvin Kamara will be returning soon which will dilute points further as Kamara acts primarily as the passing-down back. Why did they guarantee him 28 million dollars to sit in a committee role just to see such limited usage? No idea, and you could say I’m jumping the gun since it’s only been a game, but I want Etienne off my team as soon as possible while his value still holds.
It’s 2026 and Carson Wentz is starting for the Vikings. Yes, you heard that right. In Week 1, Kyler Murray suffered a concussion and had to be taken off the field. Before he went down, his efficiency looked pretty horrible. On the flip side, Wentz was able to chuck the ball in JJ’s vicinity and that was more than enough to put BTA on the stinky cheese Packers.
Week 1 Matchup
Before we get to my matchup, I’m going to shout out Julien for putting up a league-high 168.06 points this week, averaging roughly 18 points per player on his team. Since he had Baltimore Ravens QB Lamar Jackson and RB Derrick Henry week 1, they put up an explosive 60 point performance combined. I just cannot believe that King Derrick Henry is still elite at his age of 32 which is a more-than impressive lifespan for a back.
If you have never seen Fantasy Football scoring, this screenshot of my matchup may seem confusing to you, but I promise it's not that complicated. Circled in red is the fantasy points that a player scored in their game of the week while the number below it is the expected fantasy points. These numbers are added up for your active players every week, and the higher total score determines who wins your matchup. Putting it all together, we can see that the New York Giants (NYG) QB Jaxson Dart scored 26.6 fantasy points this week against the Dallas Cowboys in a 28-20 win. For those who are unaware about half PPR scoring in fantasy, any team projected to get over 100 points in a week is usually primed for success. As you can see below, we both did pretty well for our first week.
This week I faced off against Tristan’s team who had the unstoppable catch-magnet Amon Ra St. Brown, who at first seemed like the only major threat on his team. Little did I know that Dalton Kincaid would start off the season as a top 5 TE candidate with his deep looks and hands while Ladd McConkey would perform despite QJ snapping at his heels. Gibbs, Jeanty, and Dart really held down the floor of my team while my receiver core is subpar to start the season as I predicted in my preseason blog. It seems like T-Mac and potentially Matthew Golden will have to step up from the bench next week. Both of these wideouts are young and received plenty of targetshare on routes from their QBs. I think this will be Golden’s breakout year, and it will be hard to stop with the Packers lacking a decent run-game at the moment and needing to rely on long slants and go routes for his explosive speed and playmaking.
Roster Adjustments
Due to my shaky receiver core, I was mainly aiming for solid floor options that would have potential upside in the season as time goes on. On a side note, I most likely will not be including much information about kickers or defenses that I waiver simply because they will be changing every week based on matchup. I have personally found more success this way, but some people prefer to plug in the Seahawks or Rams defense and forget about it.
As I was saying, I need more WR depth, so I picked up New Orleans Saints WR2 Devaughn Vele and birds WR2 Wicks. Thankfully, I was able to consolidate Vele’s upside with Dobbin’s questionable RB2/3 season into former Bucs legend and current 49er’s WR1 Mike Evans (shoutout Mari). Obviously, this trade can go south quickly if Mike Evans has more soft tissue injuries approaching his 13th season in the NFL, but I figured Big Mike would be enough to hold it down until my WRs are healthy / have a QB.
Current Standings
Team
Julien da ruthless (Julien)
Pen15 (Gavin)
FLUCK DUCKSEN (Declan)
Senator Davis (Hope)
King Nish (Me)
Iva’s Rush Hour (Iva)
The Red Army (Devon)
Big Brain Tristan (Tristan)
Beast Mode Tess (Tess)
Lone Wolf larsson (Lars)
Block Blasters (Mari)
Wilhelmina’s Pancakes (Mina)
Record (W-L)
1-0
1-0
1-0
1-0
1-0
1-0
0-1
0-1
0-1
0-1
0-1
0-1
Total Points
168.06
148.86
134.36
133.22
124.10
116.90
103.22
97.26
97.26
94.04
83.96
55.60
The green highlighter is from last week's predictions for which teams I think are scary, and as you can see I cooked. This was a very high-scoring week of fantasy overall, so it makes me optimistic for what's to come.
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