Cowboys vs. Giants Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 1

The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar, breaks down everything you need to know about the Week 1 matchup between the Giants and Cowboys on Sunday Night Football.

Find a breakdown of every Week 1 NFL game in our Worksheet Hub.

Trust = spike production for that player

Cowboys vs. Giants Fantasy Quarterback Preview

Dak Prescott

Prescott had another strong season in 2025, completing 67.3% of his passes (12th), averaging 7.6 yards per pass attempt (10th), posting a 5% touchdown rate (14th) and a 1.7% interception rate (12th), while taking a sack on only 4.9% of his dropbacks (9th).

Those rate stats are excellent when paired with the volume Dallas threw the ball.

Prescott had the second-most pass attempts in the league (600).

He led the league in completions (404) for the second time in the past three seasons, throwing 30 touchdowns.

36.7% of Prescott's passes resulted in a first down or touchdown, which was 11th in the league.

The Dallas defense looks improved on paper this year, but Prescott still has one of the best offensive supporting casts in the league to lean into for efficiency.

He is a sturdy QB1 with added upside here if the Dallas defense still has the issues they had a year ago.

The Giants have a lot of turnover on defense under the new regime.

Dennard Wilson was hired as defensive coordinator under John Harbaugh.

Wilson was with Harbaugh in Baltimore in 2023 as the defensive backs coach and spent the past two seasons as the Titans' defensive coordinator.

Things fell apart for Wilson in Tennessee last season, as they were a bottom-third defense in passing yards, touchdowns, and interceptions.

He will have his hands full with this defense.

The Giants were 20th in passing points allowed per game in 2025 (15.0), allowing a 65.3% completion rate (18th), 7.1 yards per attempt (19th), and a 4.8% touchdown rate (18th),

They were 21st in pressure rate (34.9%).

The Giants also have a lot of personnel changes, the biggest being the trade of Dexter Lawrence.

The team added D.J. Reader and Shelby Harris as defensive line starters, bringing back Brian Burns and Abdul Carter.

Arvell Reese was selected in the first round to play weakside linebacker and add pass rush versatility.

Tremaine Edmunds was added as middle linebacker in free agency.

Greg Newsome was signed to take over for Cor'Dale Flott at right cornerback.

Colton Hood (Round 2 pick) and Ar'Darius Washington (free agency) were added as safety depth.

One of the league's best offenses will immediately test how quickly those changes come together.

Jaxson Dart

Dart made 12 starts as a rookie.

The Giants went 4-8 in those games, with Dart completing 63.7% of his passes for 6.7 yards per pass attempt, 15 touchdowns, and 5 interceptions.

He also rushed for 487 yards and 9 touchdowns.

Dart's rookie season generated plenty of excitement about this offense's upside.

Now he needs to protect himself and stay on the field.

The rushing contributions were a significant surplus to Dart's production and the offense, but Dart was evaluated five times for a concussion as a rookie, including the preseason.

He was forced from Week 10 early with a concussion that led to him missing the following two weeks.

Dart had a high ceiling as a runner when he was not restricted as a rookie.

He had three top-three scoring weeks as a starter, with five top-six weeks and eight top-10 weeks.

But he was largely dependent on his rushing, so that component needs to remain static for gamers if we don't see a spike in passing output.

42.5% of Dart's fantasy points came via rushing.

The only quarterback with a higher rate of rushing dependency who appeared in more than four games was Justin Fields.

When Dart threw the ball, he ranked 24th in points per pass attempt (0.416).

To give Dart the benefit of the doubt, he did not have much help from his pass catchers, since Malik Nabers ran only 11 pass routes with Dart before his season-ending injury.

But we also do not know when Nabers will look like himself this season.

The team lost Wan'Dale Robinson while adding Darnell Mooney and Malachi Fields to the receiver room.

Isaiah Likely was added as a tight end.

The Giants look like a team that wants to run the football a lot and play in heavy formations.

Matt Nagy was hired as the new offensive coordinator, and Greg Roman as an assistant.

Roman's offenses have run 12 personnel 34.8% of the time across his stops.

Nagy comes from a high utilization of 2TE sets at Kansas City.

The Chiefs were second in the league in 12-personnel rate over the past three seasons (30.1%) with Nagy there, and fourth in 13-personnel rate (7.9%).

It does not stop there.

The Giants also added fullback Patrick Ricard, who is familiar with Harbaugh and Roman.

It has been a while, but the Giants also look to have the makings of a formidable offensive line.

They selected Francis Mauigoa in the first round.

If Mauigoa is good out of the box as a rookie, this is an offensive line that has some strong spots on paper with Andrew Thomas and Jermaine Eluemunor at the tackles.

I prefer to use Dart as an upside QB2 in leagues with that luxury, treating him more as a boom-or-bust swing in 1QB formats.

If this were the 2025 Dallas defense, things would be wheels up.

The 2025 Cowboys were a historically bad defense, allowing a league-high 18.5 passing points per game.

In Dart's lone game against them (grain of salt for being Week 18), he was the QB8 (20.4 points), completing 22 of 32 passes for 230 yards and 2 touchdowns, adding 32 rushing yards to his line.

But in a new offense, with Nabers still being brought on slowly and Dallas expected to potentially make a jump in defensive success, I want to price in some volatility.

The Cowboys have made wholesale changes on defense.

The first was hiring Christian Parker as the new defensive coordinator.

Parker spent the past two seasons with the Eagles, serving as the defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator.

Dallas also made a slew of personnel moves after last season's debacle.

Rashan Gary was added, pairing him with Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark.

DeMarvion Overshown (11 games missed) and Malik Hooker (5 games missed) were injured last season.

Tee Winters and Otito Ogbonnia were signed in free agency on the front seven.

Jalen Thompson and Cobie Durant were signed as upgrades in the secondary.

Dallas also used two first-round picks on Caleb Downs and Malachi Lawrence.

The question is how fast things can gel for Dallas this season, but I believe this unit will be much better in 2026.

Cowboys vs. Giants Fantasy Running Back Preview

Javonte Williams (TRUST)

Williams had a bounce-back season with Dallas last year, turning 287 touches into 1,338 yards and 13 touchdowns.

That landed him a new three-year contract worth up to $24 million, a palatable deal for a 25-year-old running back.

Getting to work in a pass-heavy offense in jailbreak game scripts, 32.5% of his runs came against light boxes (3rd-highest rate in the league), by far the highest rate of his career.

Williams propelled that opportunity into a 44% success rate as a rusher (11th among backs with 100 more attempts).

He also averaged 3.56 yards after contact per rush, which was fifth in the league.

As good as Williams was, he did close the year quietly for fantasy.

He did not log an RB1 scoring week in any of his final eight games, missing the final two weeks of the regular season.

The thing that kept him in check for fantasy was receiving output.

Williams only averaged 3.9 yards per reception on his 35 catches.

That is the second-lowest yards per catch for any running back with 25-plus receptions in a season in league history.

That is not a complete one-off, either.

Williams has now averaged fewer than 5.0 yards per catch in three of his past four seasons.

Dallas has plenty of receiving targets, so the ball can go elsewhere, which is not a major concern for the offense's functionality.

Even if Williams does shed passing work this season, he is only 26 years old and has no immediate threat to his touchdown upside in a high-scoring offense.

Williams played 82.4% of the offensive snaps inside the 10-yard line, a rate only bested by Ashton Jeanty (95%), Christian McCaffrey (90.8%), Saquon Barkley (90.2%), and Jonathan Taylor (85.1%).

Williams handled 29 of 36 backfield opportunities in that area of the field, with 18 of 23 backfield touches inside the five-yard line.

The starting Dallas offensive line played together for only 24.6% of offensive snaps, ranking 25th in the league.

Terence Steele was the only lineman to play the full season, with Tyler Guyton (10 games played), Cooper Beebe (11), and Tyler Booker (14) all missing multiple games at varying stretches.

Things are already off to a bad start on that front, with Tyler Smith expected to miss four to six weeks with a thumb injury.

On the positive side, the Giants were a brutally bad run defense in 2025, though that's still in question given the moving parts on defense.

Last year, the Giants allowed a league-high 5.5 yards per carry to running backs with a league-worst 55.8% success rate.

They allowed a league-high 15% of running back runs to gain 10 or more yards.

For good measure, they also allowed 15 rushing touchdowns to backs, which was 24th in the league.

In his lone game against the Giants last season, Williams totaled 130 yards and a touchdown on 24 touches.

Cam Skattebo

Skattebo was a highlight from the group of New York backs in 2025, turning 125 touches into 617 yards and 7 touchdowns in his eight appearances.

Skattebo had the best rushing success rate (39.6%) of the backs, compared to a 37% rate for Devin Singletary and a 31.8% rate for Tyrone Tracy.

He averaged 3.04 yards after contact per rush (27th out of 49 backs with 100 or more runs in 2025) compared to 2.66 yards after contact for Tracy (42nd) and 2.42 yards after contact per rush for Singletary (47th).

He gained more yards than expected on 46% of his runs, which was third in the league behind D'Andre Swift (48.6%) and James Cook (46.9%).

Skattebo made five starts, with games of 90, 104, 110, and 94 total yards in his four full games before suffering a gruesome injury in Week 8 that ended his season.

He dislocated his right ankle, fractured his fibula, and ruptured his deltoid ligament.

If Skattebo is anywhere near where we left off last year, he is easily the most exciting pick in this backfield group because he offers the most three-down ability paired with production near the end zone.

In the four games before his injury, Skattebo handled 73.3% of the backfield touches (RB8), running a route on 56.6% of the dropbacks (RB9) with 14.4% of the targets (RB8).

He played 86.4% of the red zone snaps in those games (RB4) with 17 red zone touches (RB4).

The Giants also added fullback Patrick Ricard, who is familiar with Harbaugh and Roman, and they selected Francis Mauigoa in the first round.

Najee Harris, Tyrone Tracy, and Devin Singletary are all still here to provide just enough fear that a new regime could spread opportunities more than when we last saw Skattebo.

However, speculation suggests this is still Skattebo's backfield for now.

With some of that potential priced in, Skattebo is still an RB2 option for gamers with added upside if Dallas still has issues on defense early in the season.

Dallas made improvements against the run last year after acquiring Quinnen Williams.

With Williams on the field, Dallas allowed 4.4 YPC to backs with a 64.3% success rate and 0.94 yards allowed before contact per rush.

Without Williams on the field, they allowed 4.8 YPC with a 54% success rate, allowing 1.54 yards before contact per rush.

Rashan Gary was a better run defender than pass rusher with Green Bay last season, while Malachi Lawrence can help out the run defense as another addition this offseason.

Cowboys vs. Giants Fantasy Wide Receiver Preview

CeeDee Lamb

Lamb ended 2025 with 75 catches on 117 targets for 1,077 yards and 3 touchdowns.

While Lamb fell short of preseason expectations as a front-end scorer at the position, there were positives to draw on.

Lamb was still the WR12 in points per game in a year when he missed three games outright and played fewer than 50% of snaps in three other games because of injuries.

An ankle injury just 7 snaps into Week 3 was the real setback for him after opening the season with two 100-yard outings.

Although the counting stats were not as strong as previous seasons, Lamb did average a career-high 14.4 yards per catch while posting 2.38 yards per route (WR9).

A large part of that was that Lamb played less inside than in previous seasons.

Lamb was in the slot for a career-low 34.8% of his snaps.

Playing more outside pushed his target depth up to a career-high 11.9 yards downfield.

17.9% of Lamb's targets came on throws of 20 or more yards downfield, his highest rate since 2021.

Deeper targets add more variance, and Lamb was also impacted by the addition of George Pickens, which skimmed some usage off the top.

Lamb was targeted on 25.8% of his routes, which was his lowest rate in a season since 2021.

The three years in between, Lamb was targeted on 27.4%, 29%, and 29.1% of his routes.

That per-route target rate was still good for WR15, which is strong for a player in his offensive environment.

Pickens also ran hot while Lamb did not.

Lamb only converted 2 of his 12 (16.7%) targets in the end zone for scores.

Before last year, he had converted 36.1% of those opportunities.

The Dallas defense will be better this season, but I expect this to remain one of the most pass-heavy offenses in the league in terms of pass-rate expectations adjusted for game scripts.

I am still treating Lamb as a fantasy WR1, especially in this spot.

The Giants were 21st in points allowed to outside receivers (20.8 per game), allowing 8.6 yards per target (25th) and a 5.6% touchdown rate (22nd) to those receivers.

Paulson Adebo struggled in his first season with New York, allowing a 66.7% catch rate and 11.1 yards per catch.

Greg Newsome was added to replace Cor'Dale Flott, but he also struggled last year in Cleveland and Jacksonville, allowing a 67.9% catch rate, 12.1 yards per catch, and 5 touchdowns in coverage.

Lamb did lose slot reps last season, but he still played over a third of his snaps inside.

Dru Phillips is back as nickelback.

He allowed a team-high 543 yards and coverage last season.

The Giants allowed 8.3 yards per target (22nd) and a 4.6% touchdown rate (16th) to inside receivers in 2025.

George Pickens

Pickens flourished in his first season with Dallas, leading the team in targets (137), catches (93), yards (1,429), and touchdowns (9).

All of those were easily career highs.

His 18 end-zone targets were tied for second-most in the NFL.

53.3% of his targets resulted in a first down or touchdown, the fifth-highest rate for a wide receiver last season.

No receiver ahead of him came close to his overall target count, either.

Pickens had 137 targets, while the next-highest player on that list (Terry McLaurin) had 60.

Pickens received an expanded target tree for the first time in his career.

61.3% of his targets were within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, the highest rate of his career.

After relying on deep target rates of 32.1%, 24.5%, and 29.1% while in Pittsburgh as a rookie, that rate dropped to 16.1% in Dallas last season.

That gave Pickens access to a menu of targets with a higher success rate.

Pickens played 92% of his snaps out wide, too.

Whispers this offseason suggest he could move around more in 2026.

Lamb's availability did affect Pickens to some degree, which is worth keeping in mind.

On 185 routes with Lamb sidelined, Pickens was targeted on 25.4% of those with 2.61 yards per route.

With Lamb on the field (422 routes), Pickens was targeted on 21.3% of his routes with 2.24 yards per route.

He was a bit more volatile after Lamb returned to end the season, posting three more WR1 scoring weeks but also five more games outside the top-24 over the next 10 weeks.

Even with that in mind, Pickens is still adjacent to how we handle Tee Higgins, which makes him a high-upside WR2 who can run into spike weeks.

There is an avenue for that here based on the matchup notes we covered above with Lamb.

Malik Nabers

Early signals point towards Nabers being active in Week 1.

We would love to see him log full practice time, and we have to account for a potential buildup in snap share, but his playing at all in Week 1 was a question mark when we entered the summer.

2025 was close to a lost year for Nabers.

He played in three full games, closing those weeks as the WR29 (5-71-0 on 12 targets), WR2 (9-167-2 on 13 targets), and WR87 (2-13-0 on 7 targets) playing with Russell Wilson.

Nabers then suffered a season-ending torn ACL in Week 4, running only 11 pass routes in Jaxson Dart‘s first game.

Expecting Nabers to be eased into action to a degree, he is a volatile WR2/WR3.

That said, the snaps he does play should be high-leverage, still giving gamers a chance to cash in a splash play or a touchdown.

Malachi Fields

Fields is in line to work as the WR2 in this offense.

In limited preseason action, Fields pulled down all three of his targets for 34 yards and a touchdown.

That touchdown was a 15-yarder from Dart.

In their small sample together, Dart targeted Fields on 20% of his routes.

His size (6-foot-4 and 218 pounds) and activity in the run game should boost his route participation on what we are projecting to be a run-heavy team.

Fields should be a package player in the red zone as well.

He ended his career as a strictly downfield target earner.

His 16.4 air yards per target were third in this class.

37.1% of his targets came on throws of 20 or more yards downfield, the highest rate in this class.

Some question marks remain about how many targets this offense can support.

That makes Fields more of a boom-or-bust WR4/FLEX in Week 1, and someone I would look at as more of a single-game DFS option.

But with Nabers potentially limited and the Dallas offense able to push the scoreboard, there is appeal here if you are willing to accept a low floor.

Ryan Flournoy

Flournoy is coming off the best year of his rookie contract, catching 40 of 56 targets for 475 yards and 4 touchdowns.

Flournoy has a clean line as the WR3, but he is more of a single-game DFS play for the matchup since so much of his upside is tied to contingency value.

KaVontae Turpin plays just enough snaps (31% route rate) to tug away a Flournoy when everyone is active.

Flournoy was targeted on just 13.5% of his routes with Lamb and Pickens on the field last year.

Darnell Mooney & Odell Beckham

Both Mooney and Beckham should play on Sunday night with the dominoes that fell this preseason and Nabers potentially being eased into action.

Calvin Austin suffered a season-ending injury, and the Giants released Darius Slayton, freeing these two up for snaps.

They are only extreme flyers for single-game DFS.

Mooney is coming off a down year in Atlanta, catching 32 of 72 targets for 443 yards and 1 touchdown.

His 44.4% catch rate was the lowest of his career while averaging a career-low 6.2 yards per target.

We haven't seen him play in a regular-season game since the 2024 season with Miami, but Beckham tapping into a big play against Dallas on Sunday night would be poetic.

Cowboys vs. Giants Fantasy Tight End Preview

Jake Ferguson

Ferguson was a reliable target again in 2025, securing 82 of 102 targets for 600 yards and 8 touchdowns.

He was much better in PPR/TE Premium formats (TE5) than he was in standard leagues (TE10).

You won't get much flash from Ferguson, but he serves a Zach Ertz-esque role in an offense we know will throw the football.

Ferguson averaged a career-low 7.3 yards per reception.

That is the third time over his four seasons that Ferguson has averaged single-digit yardage per catch.

He posted 3.7 yards after the catch per reception (62nd), paired with 4.7 air yards per target (50th).

Even in the high-scoring Dallas offense, Ferguson was more of a contingency bet for fantasy production.

He did his best work early in the year with CeeDee Lamb sidelined.

Through seven games, Ferguson caught 51 passes with 6 touchdowns, drawing a target on 27.6% of his routes with 1.59 yards per route run.

Then, over the final 10 games, he had just 31 receptions and 2 touchdowns, drawing a target on 15.4% of his routes and averaging 0.93 yards per route.

He also saw a dip in run-game viability.

Dallas ran the ball on 27.9% of Ferguson's snaps, which was a career low.

The only tight ends with a lower rate were Mike Gesicki (17.2%) and Evan Engram (15.5%).

That was not only because Dallas was pass-heavy due to game conditions.

Ferguson had 72.8% route participation in his games, ranking TE12 for the season.

Ferguson is a floor-based TE1/TE2, with added appeal in full-PPR/TE-Premium formats.

He did have 12 targets in the shootout between these teams last year in Week 2, catching 9 passes for 78 yards.

Isaiah Likely

Likely will be 26 this season after catching 135 passes for 1,568 yards and 15 touchdowns over his rookie contract with the Ravens.

Moving to the Giants gives Likely the runway to finally get out of the shadow of Mark Andrews and log full-time snaps.

Over his rookie deal, Likely never played more than 60% of the offensive snaps in a season, running a pass route on only 49.5% of the team's dropbacks.

With Andrews off the field over his rookie deal, Likely was targeted on 18.7% of his routes for 1.70 yards per route run.

That target rate leaves some room for improvement (it would have ranked 26th among tight ends over the past four years), but those yards per route run would have ranked eighth at the position had that sample held playing without Andrews.

While that takes a step of faith in remaining in place in a larger role, Likely has been consistently talked up this summer as a primary target for Dart.

Likely was targeted on 2 of his 6 routes run with Dart this preseason.

With Nabers still expected to ramp up, Likely has appeal as a back-end TE1.

The ceiling will come down to touchdown equity and how much Likely can be involved in neutral game scripts, since Theo Johnson is still in play to work into the run game.

I think about Likely like Dalton Kincaid, but in a worse offensive climate.

For his career, Likely's offenses have run the ball on only 41.2% of his snaps.

More Week 1 Fantasy Breakdowns From The Worksheet: