Fantasy Football Week 1 Cheat Sheet for Opening Rankings, Waiver and Projections

You have had a full offseason to get ready for Week 1 of the NFL season. There's no time for warm-ups at this point.

If you are prepared to have a strong season in your fantasy football league, you have been reading and digesting everything you can get your hands on. You have almost certainly conducted your draft, and the rest of your season is designed for fine tuning your roster. 

This is a transition year in fantasy football. While the top one or two players at each position are well known, there are many debates about the rest of the first tier as well as the second tier.

To help you do that, we present our cheat sheet with the top 10 players at each position, top sleepers and sharp waiver-wire pickups.

Here are the projections for all 16 games on the schedule this week.

Skill Position Rankings

Rank	QB	RB	WR	TE
1	Cam Newton	Adrian Peterson	Antonio Brown	Rob Gronkowski
2	Aaron Rodgers	Todd Gurley	Odell Beckham Jr.	Jordan Reed
3	Russell Wilson	Ezekiel Elliott	Julio Jones	Greg Olsen
4	Ben Roethlisberger	Devonta Freeman	DeAndre Hopkins	Delanie Walker
5	Drew Brees	LeSean McCoy	Jordy Nelson	Travis Kelce
6	Andrew Luck	Doug Martin	Mike Evans	Tyler Eifert
7	Eli Manning	Le'Veon Bell	Sammy Watkins	Zach Ertz
8	Carson Palmer	Lamar Miller	Brandin Cooks	Coby Fleener
9	Philip Rivers	Eddie Lacy	Amari Cooper	Gary Barnidge
10	Tom Brady	David Johnson	A.J. Green	Julius Thomas

Antonio Brown and Odell Beckham Jr. are our top two fantasy players at the start of the season, and an argument can be made for either player being in the No. 1 spot.

However, we will go with Antonio Brown based on his overall consistency and proven ability to string together back-to-back wonderful years. The only variable with Brown is the health of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and Big Ben goes into the season in relative good health and that's tremendous news for the Steelers passing game. As added motivation, the Steelers upped Brown's salary for this year.

Since Le'Veon Bell won't be in the lineup at the start of the season, the Steelers will probably run the ball a tad less with DeAngelo Williams, but he is still a competent running back and Mike Tomlin's offense will have a decent sense of balance.

Beckham has moved all the way up to the No. 2 spot overall and in the WR rankings because the Giants have an all-systems-go mark on their passing game. The Giants committed in that direction last year when they hired Ben McAdoo to be their offensive coordinator. This year, McAdoo is their head coach and Eli Manning should continue to throw the ball all over the lot.

That means ODB and the rest of the Giants receivers will have an opportunity to make as many big plays as any group of receivers in the league—with the possible exception of the Steelers.

Adrian Peterson was the top running back in our rankings a year ago, and he is once again this year. However, there's a little bit of a difference because he was all by himself among running backs as rookie Todd Gurley was still not ready to play at the start of the year. While Gurley looked like a future stud, nothing was proven.

Gurley ran for 1,108 yards with a 4.6 yards per carry average and 10 touchdowns, and that's his jumping off point for his second year. It would not be a shock if he passes Peterson by the end of the season.

Ezekiel Elliott of the Dallas Cowboys is this year's Gurley. The rookie from Ohio State is with a team that wants to establish the downhill run as much as any in the NFL, and there's no reason he won't be an elite back in the NFL by the time the calendar turns to October.

Quarterbacks are way down on our list, and while Cam Newton has the potential to come close to what he did with his legs and his arm a year ago—35 TDs rushing and 10 receiving—it's not likely. At a certain point, the Panthers will turn down his running volume in an effort toward self-preservation.

Still, he is the No. 1 quarterback on our list, with Aaron Rodgers second. Rodgers has a chance to have a spectacular season in large part because he has stellar wideout Jordy Nelson (knee) returning to the fold, and he is one of the most underappreciated players in the league when healthy. All systems are go on Nelson as the season gets underway.

The absence of Tom Brady in the first four weeks of the season will almost certainly leave him as the No. 1 waiver-wire pickup of all-time when he returns to the New England Patriots in Week 5. But even though Brady won't be there through the Pats' first four games, Rob Gronkowski (lower body) is still at the top of the tight end rankings.

Jordan Reed of the Washington Redskins is the No. 2 tight end followed closely by Greg Olsen of the Panthers. However, neither one of those players are close to Gronk in the overall rankings, but perhaps they should be.

Jimmy Garoppolo has trained well to take over for Brady, and his four-game run as New England's No. 1 quarterback could set him up for a huge free-agent contract after the 2017 season. However, he has to pass his test and play like a No. 1 quarterback. He's just a big "if" at this point, and if he struggles, it will likely impact Gronkowski's numbers.

Sleeper Projections

Pos.	Player	Team	Opp.	Projection
QB	Sam Bradford	Minn.	Tenn.	267 passing yards, 3 TDs, 1 int.
RB	Thomas Rawls	Sea.	Mia.	95 yards, 1 TD
WR	Jeremy Maclin	KC	SD	103 yards, 1 TD
TE	Crockett Gillmore	Balt.	Buff.	86 yards, 1 TD
D/ST	Los Angeles Rams	LA	SF	4 sacks, 2 takeaways

Quarterback Sam Bradford is an X-factor as he begins his tenure in Minnesota. If that sounds familiar, that's because the same thing was said last year when he was new in Philadelphia.

The big difference is that he is now playing for Mike Zimmer instead of Chip Kelly. Zimmer and offensive coordinator Norv Turner will get Bradford up-to-speed quickly and he will start from the get-go when the Vikings line up at Tennessee Titans in Week 1.

The expectation here is that the 28-year-old Bradford will be successful right away and won't be a sleeper for more than a couple of weeks, even though his stats to this point have not been overwhelming. 

Thomas Rawls of the Seatte Seahawks is our top sleeper running back heading into Week 1. However, he may be able to change his status to every-week staple by the time he is through with the Miami Dolphins on Sunday or the Los Angeles Rams in Week 2. Rawls rushed for 830 yards in 13 games as a rookie last year with a league-best 5.6 yards per carry mark.

It should only get better from here for Rawls, who is coming back from an ankle injury. Head coach Pete Carroll says Rawls should "carry the ball quite a bit" this week. 

Jeremy Maclin was a superb fit for the Kansas City Chiefs last year, as he gave them a legitimate threat on the outside throughout the season. Maclin caught 87 passes for 1,088 yards and eight touchdowns a year ago, and he hit his top stride in Week 3 when he caught 8-141-1 vs. the Green Bay Packers.

Maclin should torch the San Diego Chargers in Week 1 because this is a team that appears to be in disarray. This could be that team's last season in San Diego and their defense is not going to be able to slow Maclin down.

Waiver-Wire Targets

Pos.	Player	Team	Pct. Added
QB	Sam Bradford	Minn.	+4.3
QB	Matthew Stafford	Det.	+4.1
RB	Spencer Ware	KC	+32.6
RB	C.J. Spiller	NO	+5.5
WR	Mike Wallace	Balt.	+11.0
WR	Will Fuller	Hou.	+7.1
WR	Terrelle Pryor	Cle.	+4.5
TE	Jared Cook	GB	+9.5
TE	Clive Walford	Oak.	+7.7
D/ST	Philadelphia Eagles	Phil.	+6.8

For our purposes, we will use players who are on ESPN.com's most-added list as our waiver-wire targets.

The waiver wire will become increasingly important as the season progresses and fantasy owners feel increasingly desperate, but we understand that as many as 90 percent of the readers will have some hesitancy about their rosters as they walk out of the their fantasy draft.

So, if you don't like your draft picks, we offer these waiver-wire pickups for Week 1: