Rams vs Panthers: Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 1

• In two years under Sean McVay, the Rams have the league’s best road record at 14-3.
• The Rams are 3-0 in the Eastern time Zone under McVay, covering in all three games. 
• Rams games on the road went under the game total a league-high 77.8 percent (7-of-9 games) of the time in 2018.
• In Jared Goff’s six full games played with Cooper Kupp, he threw 16 touchdowns to three interceptions. He was a top-12 scoring quarterback in five of those six games.
• In Goff’s other 10 games, he was a QB1 just three times, throwing 16 touchdowns to nine interceptions.
• Goff threw just 10 touchdown passes on the road in 2018 with 7.6 yards per pass attempt, opposed to 22 touchdown passes at home and 9.0 yards per attempt at home. 
• Brandin Cooks scored 21.6 points per game in the six games in which he, Robert Woods, and Kupp all played at least 80 percent of the offensive snaps. 
• In the other 10 games, Cooks averaged just 12.1 points per game with one 100-yard game and one WR1 scoring week.
• Christian McCaffrey led all backs in snaps played (965) and snap share (91.3 percent).
• McCaffrey’s 14.4 receiving points per game were the most in a season for a running back since Marshall Faulk in 2001.
• McCaffrey ran for 36.5 more yards (86.9) per game at home than on the road in 2018, the largest gap for all running backs in the league.

Trust (spike production for that player)

• Christian McCaffrey: Tied with both Todd Gurley and Alvin Kamara for the most games (27) with double-digit PPR points since entering the league, McCaffrey never came off the field in 2018. He even handled 12 carries inside the 5-yard line last season compared to just five for Cam Newton. The Panthers can say all the right things about reducing his workload in 2019, but the depth behind McCaffrey is nearly non-existent.
• Brandin Cooks: He was electric when this offense was fully intact a year ago. The Panthers were tied for the league-lead in passing touchdowns allowed on deep targets in 2018 with 12.

On the Cusp (proxy of a player’s average)

• Todd Gurley: We have no idea what type of expectations we should have for Gurley’s usage out of the box this season, but we have to assume this is the healthiest we’re going to get him while Darrell Henderson showed this preseason that he still has a learning curve to hurdle. The tea leaves this preseason suggest Malcolm Brown could play a bigger role than Henderson will earlier in the season behind Gurley. The Panthers’ defensive front is the strength of their defense this season and they already ranked sixth in the league in points allowed to opposing backfields in 2018.
• Cam Newton: A preseason foot injury has early-season rushing output in question. This is coming off an age-29 season in which Newton had a reduction in rushing output per game and designed rushing calls. We always prefer him to be running for his ceiling potential, but with the Rams’ ability to score points, there’s still shootout potential in the range of outcomes here.
• Panthers WRs: The gap is tight between both D.J. Moore and Curtis Samuel. Both also moved inside to play the slot at similar rates to avoid the boundary coverage of Marcus Peters and Aqib Talib. In 11 games with Talib in the lineup last season, the Rams allowed just 7.2 yards per target to opposing wideouts, five touchdowns, and 26.3 PPR points per game. In the eight games he missed, those totals were 10.8 yards per target, 16 touchdowns, and 46.5 points per game. The scoring upside for the game has both Carolina wideouts in play, but only as fringe WR3 upside options.
• Robert Woods/Cooper Kupp: When both were fully active last season, Woods averaged 17.2 points per game while Kupp posted 18.8 points per game. The only difference between the trio of Rams’ wideouts is that Cooks posted four top-12 scoring weeks over those games while Woods and Kupp combined for three. Kupp’s return leaves Woods to work more on the perimeter while Kupp has the best individual matchup inside against Ross Cockrell.

Bust (down-week production for that player’s standards)

• Jared Goff: His splits with and without Cooper Kupp active were night and day, but so were his home and road splits while the Rams’ games away from home last season consistently went under the game totals. Goff was a QB1 just once on the road in 2018. The Panthers’ defensive front projects to make them a high candidate to be a 2019 pass funnel defense- leaving Goff as a high QB2 with upside if the game reaches the implied game total.

If You Must (intriguing bench option or deeper league play) 

• Greg Olsen: We just don’t really know what to expect from Olsen. At age 34, he’s played just 16 games over the past two seasons. When on the field, he’s also had just four weeks higher than the TE15 in weekly scoring in those games. He also has more target competition than ever before while in Carolina. That said, if the Rams can clamp the Carolina wideouts, both he and McCaffrey can play large roles in the passing game. Opposing teams targeted their tight ends 25.5 percent of the time versus the Rams in 2018, the highest rate in the league.