The Worksheet: Week 2 Fantasy Football, All You Need To Know

Welcome to Week 2 of The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar.

What is The Worksheet from Rich Hribar?

The Worksheet is a comprehensive weekly fantasy football preview for each NFL game. Rich Hribar analyzes the matchups for every notable fantasy player for every game every week of the NFL season.

Everyone hopefully had a great Week 1 and started the new season off on the right foot.

Week 1 was an up-and-down adventure.

We had two games that were delayed due to the weather.

Favorites went 11-5.

After a high-scoring preseason inspired hope that we would hit the ground running, offenses came out extremely flat.

Only four games went over the total, one of which had the lowest total of the week.

Baltimore and Buffalo tried to juice up offensive statistics in Week 1, but even factoring that game in, offenses averaged 20.4 points per game, the third-lowest rate over the past 10 years in Week 1.

We only had 38 passing touchdowns, the third year in a row we had fewer than 40 passing scores in Week 1.

From 2016 to 2022, we averaged 51.4 passing scores per Week 1.

Passers averaged 6.7 yards per pass attempt, the third Week 1 in a row below 7.0 Y/A to open a season.

Running backs also struggled.

The position has 16 rushing scores, the fewest in Week 1 since 2017.

Running backs averaged a first down or touchdown on 18.4% of their runs, the lowest rate to open a year since 2017.

Running backs scored 342.4 rushing points for fantasy after 428.2 a year ago in Week 1.

Wide receivers scored their fewest amount of fantasy points in Week 1 since 2017.

Wideouts have scored fewer Week 1 points in four consecutive seasons.

The silver lining is that quarterback rushing was way up.

Quarterbacks set new Week 1 records for rushing attempts (167), rushing yards (824), and rushing touchdowns (13).

Penalties were also up, which I am sure everyone is thrilled to find out.

The 239 accepted penalties in Week 1 were the most at the start of a year since 2019.

While scoring was down from last season, we did have a few positives to build on.

The Week 1 sack rate was only 6.7%, the lowest rate in the first week since 2021.

Scoring was down a bit because there were fewer turnovers.

There were only 30 turnovers, the fewest in Week 1 since 2016.

Things are still far too early in development to run wild with what happened in Week 1 as something that will be continuous this season, but we keep moving along with the NFL and adjust to what they throw at us.

Major grains of salt still need to be applied when taking an evidence-based approach early in the year.

After one week last season (well, two even), the Saints had the highest-scoring offense in the league.

Anthony Richardson, Derek Carr, C.J. Stroud, and Geno Smith were QB1 scorers.

Rhamondre Stevenson had over 20 fantasy points.

Allen Lazard was the WR3 in scoring.

Isaiah Likely was the sixth-highest scorer overall.

Both Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill went over 100 yards, something they only did once each the rest of the season.

You get the point.

We are still working with small samples as part of a small sample.

Do not run wild with anything we just experienced in Week 1.

For the most part, early on, we are focusing on initial usage notes to grasp onto moving forward to diagnose spots where players let down expectations or exceeded them.

If you have been following this post for the past few seasons, tangible information builds up, and this post expands with information.

This is my 12th year doing this series, writing up every game.

I have always been someone who gets stronger as we move on.

This article will be updated throughout the week to reflect major news or injury implications.

I encourage you to use the game-by-game tables and data points here in conjunction with the player rankings that will be available every Wednesday. Enjoy the games!

Click the matchups below for the individual game previews.

Week 2 Fantasy Football Matchups