How to Properly React to NFL Week 1

May we all let out a collective sigh of relief.

The arduous six-month hiatus is over — we have professional football that counts for something being played on our televisions.

With the turning of the sports calendar comes plenty of excitement, but perhaps none matched by the enthusiasm of degenerate-grade fantasy football managers. The dopamine high that comes with having lineups to set, stats to follow, and incredible on-field reactions in real-time is truly blissful.

But what we are not going to do is become overzealous based on limited exposure.

Particularly in dynasty fantasy football, we must remember to be diligent in our dedication to being as measured and strategic as possible. A great way to stay on that straight-and-narrow is to understand and differentiate which factors from Week 1 play are helpful and which occurrences are likely to be fluff.

Together, let’s explore certain items to keep in mind so that you know how to react to Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season appropriately:

Searching for the stats and metrics that matter? Find them all here in the Fantasy Points Data Suite.

Focus On Who Is On The Field

Ideally, we’d like every player rostered on our teams to see double-digit touches and rack up insane fantasy points. Truly, deeply, balling out.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen for everyone off-jump.

Despite that, a handful of performance measures can still tell how successful a player might be, even if they didn’t touch the ball very often. These usage stats are helpful yet straightforward items that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Through these measures, we can discover important context and move beyond wholesale reactions to highlight clips that go viral online.

Snaps (and Snap Percentage)

Players must be on the field to have an opportunity to touch the ball.

It is a simple concept but often needs to be appreciated more in analysis. This underlying principle applies to any skill position, whether running back, wide receiver, or tight end.

For running backs specifically, monitoring a player’s snap count and percentage of team snaps can be a strong indicator of what kind of role they may have in a particular offense. Game script has a tendency to dictate which archetypes of running back get more run (i.e., a pass-catcher when an offense is losing and trying to catch up, etc.), but snaps and being present on the field are generally sound ways to draw some conclusions from.

Take, for example, Ravens RB Justice Hill:

Per our Fantasy Points Data Suite, you can see that the veteran saw action in a near-50/50 complement of snaps with the team’s superstar offseason signee Derrick Henry. While Hill didn’t get much run in the carries department, he ran 26 routes on 51% of the Ravens’ passing plays and ended the contest with a 17.1% target share.

This information should jump out and say, “Hey, it sure seems like Hill will have a role in this Ravens’ offense in 2024.”

Of course, it’s also wise to be critical of this data and ask yourself whether or not any factors at play dictated this outcome. As our fearless leader of dank stats, Scott Barrett, points out, losing efforts aren’t quite Derrick Henry’s forte:

Indeed, it is an extra layer of information to consider, but something to address. The reasonable ultimate takeaway from a case like this should inform managers not to overreact to Henry’s Week 1 but perhaps to be more open to Hill as a flex option in particularly good matchups against stiffer competition.

We should also point out that the inverse lesson can be taken from this section: a player who is largely absent from the field will probably not be much of a factor (at least not right away, in some cases).

As the season goes along, there will always be opportunities for expanded roles for particular players in certain offenses. We’ve got a full 17 games to get through before year’s end. But if the third-round rookie draft pick that you’ve been fawning over since April hops on the field for five snaps and touches the ball once, it’s probably a good sign that you should pump the brakes on your enthusiasm.

Not all dreams come true, sadly. *cough* Blake Corum *cough*

Route Participation

Expanding upon the “being on the field” concept, we cannot forget to include the helpful nature of route participation for pass-catchers.

We alluded to this measure a bit in the last section, but route participation tells us how often a player lined up on the field for a pass play and ran a route as an eligible receiver. As we know, the ball can only go to one player on every snap, though simply being involved in the play is a helpful piece of information.

Putting this information into context can go a long way, and Chiefs rookie wideout Xavier Worthy stands out as a strong example of this:

Here, we see every member of the Chiefs who ran at least 10 routes on Thursday night. Among them, Worthy does stand out as running an equal number of routes as incumbent slot standout Rashee Rice. This is an objective tick in the ex-Texas speedster’s favor.

It’s vital, however, to look at the mass disparity in targets between them and the less-than-stellar targets per route run that Worthy posted on opening night.

Sure, he found the end zone twice — it’s undoubtedly an incredible feat, but dynasty managers shouldn’t get too carried away by scouting the surface-level box score. It’s unreasonable to make any sweeping conclusions based on this contest.

Taking this point a step forward…

Broken Plays Are Not Good Supporting Arguments

Aspects of certain plays fall apart on nearly every NFL snap.

I challenge anyone to find a team that perfectly executes a play every time it goes out on the field. It’ll be a long search, however, because this essentially never happens. As such, we must also be critical of any sort of series of actions gone awry.

In plain terms, broken coverage ≠ a good WR play.

Anecdotal one-offs aren’t going to be sustainable occurrences and, therefore, should not be used as primary or even prominent secondary supporting arguments for the case of a player. Had Worthy hit Marlon Humphrey with a little shake and bake, leaving him with broken ankles a la Allen Iverson in the early 00s, that’d be one thing, but that isn’t what happened.

We’ll all be tempted to hype up the big chunk plays that our favorite wideouts put forth early in the season, but just remember to keep your football-watching cap on instead of reacting to plays with your fantasy gut.

Be Measured When Pricing Long-Term Assets On Small Samples

Dynasty is foundationally a long-term format.

The team you roster will include players who, in theory, can be on your roster forever. The stakes that come with making sound evaluations are all the more heightened based on this reality of the game.

Make sure you always keep this in mind because one thing that will crop up a lot early in the season is outrageous price spikes on players’ dynasty values.

Barring some insane breakout to open the year, there is very little reason for managers to place a premium on a previously undervalued asset suddenly. Don’t take this as suggesting your mind shouldn’t change based on new information, but maybe give something a few games to unfold before making sweeping conclusions.

Overreaction Is A Bad Thing…

Mark Andrews found himself in a reportedly “extremely scary” car accident a handful of weeks ago and only returned to practice with the team last Friday. With only one week to prepare after missing time, Andrews still finished third on the team in route participation during the Chiefs, nearly 10% greater than his positional counterpart Isaiah Likely.

He faced some difficult coverage that rendered his 2024 debut a disappointment:

Opening night gave us reasons to be concerned, but this performance shouldn’t magically kill whatever value Andrews’ stock carried entering the showdown. Conversely, it would be too radical to vault Likely into upper-echelon dynasty value based on the 9-111-1 receiving line he ended the night with.

If anything, we learned Likely has the potential to be more involved in the Ravens’ offense than anticipated, but better days are probably ahead of Andrews. Remember, we’re talking about a former Pro Bowler who ranks third in PPR points per game (14.2) among 58 tight ends with at least 100 targets since 2019, per Stathead.

Is Likely more valuable than we thought? Yes.

Based on this game, is he worth sending a package that includes a first-round draft pick and then some? Well, it’s possible, but would that be the soundest move to make?

Answering questions with questions can be frustrating, but that level of pause should be present in a critical dynasty manager’s brain. Hastily making decisions rarely serves human beings well.

… But Underreacting Can Be Even Worse

That all understood, the exception to this rule is a player who demonstrates a somewhat out-of-body type renaissance right from the beginning. We have players such as 2023 rookie breakout Puka Nacua of the Los Angeles Rams to thank for this necessary addendum.

Surely, you don’t want to place all your eggs in a player’s proverbial dynasty basket on limited information, but you shouldn’t be afraid to pounce when a meteoric rise occurs.

Here, we see how strongly Nacua performed over the first seven weeks of the 2023 season. Between his outrageous target rate and gaudy 2.95 yards per route run (YPRR), it’s evident that we were looking at a transcendent pass-catching talent before October even concluded.

But through the first couple weeks of the season, despite racking up 25 receptions on 35 targets for 266 receiving yards, Nacua could still be acquired in plenty of micro-markets for a second-round rookie pick based on skepticism.

I’ll fully admit to being a non-believer who missed out on the Nacua discount sweepstakes last autumn, though this lesson highlights the delicate line between proper reaction and full-scale, quick-trigger shooting.

Plenty of nuance goes into all of this, which only goes to further hammer the difficulty of being a championship-winning dynasty manager. Still, the core takeaway here is that you must ensure your B.S. radar is as strong as possible when making limited window investments.

Conclusion

Not everything covered here is necessarily earth-shaking information.

Frankly, all of these concepts should be foundational to a strong dynasty manager’s thought process and playbook. Hopefully, this refresher will put you in the right mindset to take on the 2024 season.

Be sure to focus on playing time, how often someone is involved in a play, and what the results of the plays are within the context of the game you’re breaking down. These repetitions will not only make you a sharper mind but also lead to more thoughtful decisions in your trade market.

Keep these concepts in mind as we approach the full slate of Week 1 games, and happy tilting to all who celebrate this fine pretend game.