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 matchup for every notable fantasy player for every game every week of the NFL season.

Hopefully, everyone had a great Week 1 and started the new season off on the right foot.

From a first-round pick “holding in” up until late in the week, another first-round pick in handcuffs hours before kickoff, and the consensus No. 1 pick overall sitting out on Monday Night Football, the opening week had wild twists and turns.

We also had a ton of activity on the field.

After an extremely down Week 1 in 2023, things were a touch better this season to open things up.

Offenses scored 21.6 points per game in Week 1 this season compared to 18.8 a year ago.

We had 71 touchdowns on offense in Week 1 after 61 in 2023.

Even with the increased scoring output, NFL passing games still struggled to open this season.

The league averaged 6.7 yards per pass attempt, down from the 7.0 rate in Week 1 in the 2000s.

We only had 35 passing touchdowns, the fewest for Week 1 since 2006.

The 188.3 passing yards per game were the fewest in Week 1 in the 2000s.

This boosted the run game.

The 121.5 rushing yards per game in Week 1 were the most for the opening week in a season since 2008 and the second-highest rate in the 2000s.

The 36 rushing touchdowns were the most in Week 1 for the 2000s.

Is the running game back?

Well, sort of.

The rise in mobile quarterbacks left a thumbprint on the passing and rushing numbers.

Quarterbacks rushed for 787 yards in Week 1, their most to open any NFL season in the 2000s.

The 156 rushing attempts by quarterbacks were also a new high.

A lot of this is following what we covered this offseason when diagnosing the state of the league.

Things are still far too early in development to run wild with what happened in one week 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 this early in the year.

After one week last season, Mac Jones was the QB2 in overall scoring and Hunter Henry was the TE1.

Tutu Atwell was coming off posting the fifth-most yards by a wide receiver and his only 100-yard game of the season.

To my heart’s delight, Tony Pollard scored 2 touchdowns in Week 1 last season!

He scored 4 over the rest of the season.

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

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 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 each Wednesday. Most importantly, enjoy the games.

Click the matchups below for the individual game previews.

Week 2 Fantasy Football Matchups