Fantasy Football Week 1: Last-Minute Advice for Setting Your Roster

Even the most prepared and confident fantasy football managers experience enduring bouts of lineup stress.

Hamstrung by hamstring ailments? Confused by rookie-infused backfield committees? We've only seen one regular-season NFL game played in 2015 at press time, and fantasy football is already rife with inscrutable depth charts and mysterious injuries. 

My advice is to embrace the stress—instead of letting the pressure produce indecision, managers can proactively pursue solutions to the common roster dilemmas nearly all teams face on the road to imaginary glory. 

In this series of last-minute nuggets for setting your Week 1 lineups and better managing your early-season roster, we discuss how to approach both common and specific rosters challenges for this first week of the new campaign.

Fantasy Football Week 1: Alshon Jeffery and Mike Evans Have Investors Perplexed

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I know the feeling. I paid $35 for Mike Evans in my favorite auction league ($200 total budget) and only $2 for Torrey Smith. For much of the week it appeared Smith would be in my Week 1 lineup. With real fears over Evans' availability lingering late into the week, only a Friday return to practice (which is essentially at half speed) has helped offer hope he'll even be active. 

Given the promising tone of Friday's return to work, can we now feel confident in deploying Evans in lineups this week? Outside of the rare scenarios where we've seen a series of decoy performances emerge, I'm of the belief you start your most talented players when their teams deem them active for the rigors of live NFL battle.

Evans just delivered a top-12 fantasy season as a 21-year-old professional freshman. If Evans is active and not on some enunciated low and limiting snap, he's in my lineups. Is he at 100 percent? He's not. But that doesn't preclude worthy fantasy production. If it did, we'd all be in trouble given the violent nature of this sport. 

The fact that Evans' game in the later afternoon slate on Sunday admittedly opens up some real risks for certain rosters, but I'd only start an earlier player over him in cases of awesome depth (as in you acquired Amari Cooper on the cheap or something unlikely in deeper formats). Ideally, you'd have an active replacement available for the later slate, but I'm guessing we seen Evans out there outside of a pregame setback.

Which brings us to Alshon Jeffery and the curious case of his calf ailment. Coach John Fox has suggested Jeffery has improved in limited practice participation this week, but thanks to an early kickoff, we'll all know if he's active without the timing risks Evans' situation offers.

Similarly to Evans, I'm deploying Jeffery if the Bears are. He played through a lingering hamstring injury, after all, throughout last year's No. 12 fantasy finish at the position in ESPN leagues.

Fantasy Football Week 1: Which Rookie Running Backs Should Be Fantasy Fixtures?

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Loading up on rookie running backs can potentially be a profitable investment strategy.

The San Diego Chargers' Melvin Gordon was the second tailback taken in the real NFL draft and was the top drafted rookie running back on this summer's market. A meeting with the stingy Lions' defense—the only group to limit opposing running backs to fewer than 1,000 yards last season while also allowing just the third-fewest fantasy points to the position—severely limits the Week 1 appeal for this talented rookie rusher.

Seemingly isolated to early-down usage, I don't have Gordon in my top 20 at the position this week, but I do believe he'll be a top-20 guy in total points at the position if he plays a full 16 games. With rookies, it's fine to pick your spots when the matchup factors are compelling on either side of the expected outcome spectrum.  

According to ESPN's Lions' beat scribe Michael Rothstein, Lions offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi suggested Ameer Abdullah could see impressive usage in his debut, especially as a weapon in the passing game. It's not unreasonable to think the Nebraska product could earn a significant share of the Lions' backfield workload in competing with a veteran back coming off multiple offseason surgeries in Joique Bell. I'd roll out Abdullah as a surefire flex in standard setups, with upside RB2 status in PPR formats. 

While a plodding preseason left investors less enthused than his early-summer stock suggested, the Jacksonville Jaguars' T.J. Yeldon is quietly regaining some lost luster with recent reports expecting feature duties. Given talk of a heavy workload versus a Panthers' front without its best run-stuffing lineman this week, I'm pricing Yeldon just behind Abdullah among rookies for Week 1. 

Despite the uninspired preseason, ESPN NFL Nation's Mike DiRocco recently reported the team's offensive coordinator Greg Olson (not a top fantasy tight end!) is ready to unleash the Alabama product in his debut: "Olson said Jacksonville is comfortable with giving Yeldon a full load against Carolina. With Toby Gerhart dealing with an abdominal strain, Yeldon should also be the Jaguars’ top option near the goal line."

Tevin Coleman's impressive athletic metrics and 2,000-yard status in college should inspire some hopes for a big rookie season on a potentially potent Atlanta offense. Any issues in trusting this impressive freshman this week, even while in a contest with the week's highest point total, would stem from the Eagles' strong front seven. Even while Fletcher Cox & Co. form a formidable front, I'm still sending Coleman out as a flex asset, but I wouldn't want him above Gordon, for example, as a starting fantasy tailback.

With Coleman's share of regular-season work after a light preseason workload still a bit murky on the doorstep of the season (as in we don't know much about his potential to play on third downs), I'd rather let him force his way into my lineup after offering some in-game evidence.

Fantasy Football Week 1: Let Vegas Help Select Your Fantasy Defense

MIKE MCCARN/Associated Press

Let the desert help you when selecting a fantasy defense.  

The average point total out of Vegas last season was 46.3 points per game. Using 46.5 as a benchmark for this strategic angle, I studied the results of fantasy defenses when favored in games with points totals under 46.5. The results suggested that sticking with favorites in games under this point threshold ended up top 10 in ESPN fantasy leagues nearly half the time, with the exact number coming in at 49 percent. 

Compare this to underdogs in games over 46.5, and we find those teams ended up in the top 10 of fantasy D/ST groups on average just 21 percent of outcomes. Favorites in games over the point total were fairly successful, striking top-10 finishes in 38 percent of outings. Dogs in "under" outings were top-10 D/ST groups 29 percent of the time. 

The suggested takeaway? Don't select your streaming fantasy defense based primarily off the results I've offered, but rather use it as a way to cross teams off. More specifically, if Vegas has a team getting points, it's not as likely that they'll get you a strong sum of D/ST fantasy points.

Fantasy Football Week 1: Add Your Favorite Upside Asset Before Kickoff

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I have one friend in my home league of 13 years that will a few times a season cut what he views as his weakest one or two players on the eve of a new week of competition and leave those spots empty until the next waiver claim period.

Now I've told him about 234 times over the past 13 seasons that his strange practice comes at the expensive cost of opportunity. His boilerplate response is often, "There are no good players on the wire anyway." He adds players on the wire the following week, while competing with 11 other managers for talent.

While his denial of opportunity cost serves to subvert his roster's potential (as you can guess he hasn't been so successful in our trash-talking league), we should all be eyeing any possible "dead weight" at the back end of our own rosters and proactively look to the wire for players who could become hot waiver adds.

Employing some fluidity to the back-end of rosters, even early on, can sometimes help you acquire the next big thing before he even announces his arrival. Predicting which players are capable of earning increased ownership and upside isn't easy, but just like how you need to enter a DFS tournament in order to win big, being active on the free-agent market is required for those seeking the next league-shifting waiver wonder. 

Not to say you should be starting waiver commodities over your key draft assets, but in "setting your lineup" you can also weigh how you can best prepare for the challenging weeks ahead.

Is Tyler Lockett due for big-play production thanks to recent comments from the coaching staff that he'll be offered a worthy share of the Seattle Seahawks' passing game? If so, and he enters Sunday unowned, your entire league will compete for his services via the waiver system. It might not seem entirely novel, but comparing your weakest assets to the available talent on your wire before rosters lock is one of the more helpful pieces of advice one can consider.

Fantasy Football Week 1: Reading Is Fundamental

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Beat writers are an invaluable resource for mining meaningful information for fantasy purposes. Not every update from the beat is going to influence market perception, but in staying informed from the writers who closely follow the teams, and not just—ahem—fantasy analysts, can prove invaluable. 

We recently learned from Rothstein that rookie Ameer Abdullah is set to be an offensive fixture from early on: 

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Abdullah might be preparing for his first regular-season NFL game, but it sounds as if he is going to receive a lot of work in his debut. Lions offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi said that he expects Abdullah to be involved in the run game and that he will also be "used extensively" in the passing game.

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We previously promoted Abdullah as a rookie to watch, but this is really why. Finding the "why" for yourself is much more important and actionable than getting some nerd like me to answer your lineup question on Twitter. I'm high on Chris Ivory because in addition to strong forced missed tackle and explosive play rates, some of the most tenured and trusted Jets' beat writers are.

Can they be wrong? Of course. But they also can help position you for profits if you read enough to realize what is really news. Don't have time to read the Detroit Free Press every morning? Quite understandable. One of the greatest active resources for updated and informed news is right here with B/R, where you'll find not only breaking news, but quick and quality fantasy spin on how managers should react.

I field a several hundred fantasy football questions each week, and so often the answer is really just in the news.