The Worksheet: NFL Fantasy Football Game Previews, Week 1

Welcome to Week 1 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.

Week 1 Fantasy Football Matchups

Months of fantasy preparation were poured in over the summer, and all that work is about to be put to the test as Week 1 of the NFL season is finally upon us.

The NFL is inherently a fluid game, with things in constant motion.

What was true yesterday will not always be true tomorrow, and everything will be different by the middle of the season.

There is always a lot of ambiguity in the first week of a new NFL season.

With a fresh start to a new season, taking an evidence-based approach is easier said than done.

A year ago, we saw the Raiders (who had the worst record in the league) go into New England and handle the eventual AFC champions.

Geno Smith threw for 362 yards, the most passing yards that New England gave up all season.

The Patriots only allowed one other 300-yard passer last year.

In that game, Jakobi Meyers caught 8 passes for 97 yards for the Raiders.

Joe Flacco threw for 290 yards against the Bengals, a team he would eventually start for.

The Steelers and Jets played a 34-32 shootout with Justin Fields as the second-highest-scoring fantasy quarterback of Week 1.

Fields then had 4 fantasy points in Week 2.

Marquise Brown caught 10 passes in Week 1 last season, tied for the most in the league.

He never caught more than 5 in a game after that.

Keon Coleman capped the first Sunday of the 2025 season with 8 catches for 112 yards and a touchdown on Sunday Night Football.

He never hit 50 yards in a game the rest of the season.

Miles Sanders had more rushing yards than James Cook in Week 1.

You get the idea.

We are excited to have new data to dig into and calibrate moving forward, but we still have a long way to go.

While this article thrives on diagnosing players who will outproduce their expectations, the opening few weeks will be about establishing the baseline for accurately doing that as the season progresses.

You will see some “Trusts” peppered in for players I feel strongly about, but they will be far lighter early on.

We are still learning what we can apply to this season accurately, so those “Trusts” are more due to feel than mountains of objective data this early in the season.

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 1 Fantasy Football Matchups