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NFL · Weekly Report

Week 1

Caleb Williams led the week with 37.3 half-PPR points, Tyler Shough led it on usage.

311 players with a touch · 32 teams · half PPR · nflverse through 20260914

Everything Week 1 gave us: what happened, what the usage says about the week ahead, and who to add. Read the Opportunity Points column before the points column — it is the one that survives to next Sunday. Fixed order, every week, and short.

Week 2 has not been played yet — our box-score export is complete through week 1, so everything below is week 1 and what it implies for week 2. Nothing on this page projects a result; the forward-looking sections say who to add and who to start, and stop there.

Opportunity Points: the leaderboard that travels

Opportunity Points price a player's volume at what that volume returns on average: 0.44 a pass attempt, 0.61 a carry, 1.38 a target. The rates are fitted by least squares over 29,407 regular-season player-weeks from 2020 to 2024, and the metric knows nothing about whether anything reached the end zone.

It leads the page because it predicts better than the box score. Held out on 2025, a season the rates never saw, a player's Opportunity Points correlated 0.633 with his points the FOLLOWING week against 0.569 for the points he actually scored, over 4,504 consecutive-week pairs. Same direction in sample (0.614 against 0.557, n=21,258). Volume carries; efficiency mostly does not.

Share of offence is his Opportunity Points as a fraction of everything his team generated, which is the version of the number that survives a blowout.

1. 311 players touched the ball, and they averaged 7.8

360 offensive players appear in Week 1's box scores across 32 teams, 311 of them with at least one attempt, carry or target. Those 311 averaged 7.8 half-PPR points and scored 2,413 between them. Week 1 in 2020–2025 averaged 7.5 on the same measurement (1,879 player-games across 6 seasons), so this opening week came in 0.2 above the recent norm.

Don't overreact. This is one week. Every rate on this page is computed on a single game per player, which is the smallest sample the sport offers, and the reason the leaderboard is sorted by usage instead of by points is precisely that one week of points is mostly noise.

2. The first three rounds: who returned the pick, and who quietly cost you

32 players who went inside the top 36 of preseason consensus ADP (captured 26 August 2026, averaged across six platforms) were in action. They averaged 16.9 points against 7.8 for everyone who touched the ball — which is the gap an early pick is bought for.

The four who paid it back:

And the silent killers. No injury, no disaster on the stat sheet, just a third-round price for a bench-grade afternoon — the more expensive kind of miss, because nobody cuts them and the opportunity cost compounds:

3. Our own projection, graded against what happened

We published a DraftKings projection for every player on the slate before it started. Here is how it did, on the 252 players who were projected and then played: mean absolute error 5.04 DraftKings points, and a Spearman of 0.633 against what they actually scored.

For scale, ordering the same players by their Opportunity Points after the fact correlates 0.896 with the same actuals — which it should, since it is reading the box score the projection was guessing at. The number that matters is the 0.633, and it will be printed here every week whichever way it moves.

Where we were furthest off, in both directions:

4. Buy low: the workload is already there

Everyone here cleared 8 Opportunity Points and scored less than that was worth. The workload is the durable half, so this is the list to trade for and the one to hold through a bad box score.

5. Waiver targets, in priority order

This list is Waiver Wingman itself, not a second opinion written for the article: the same projection snapshot, the same league-scoring conversion, the same value-over-replacement ordering and the same bid model the tool runs for a member's own league. The one thing the tool gets from a member and a public page cannot is the league, so this run assumes the common shape — 12 teams, one QB, two RB, two WR, one TE and a flex, half PPR, with replacement level set at the worst fixed-slot starter and the flex left out of that count — and treats anyone drafted outside the top 168 of preseason consensus as available. Point it at your actual league and the order will change, because your roster changes what each of these is worth.

Bid ranges are Waiver Wingman's pooled prior: the 25th to 75th percentile of what a claim at that rank has actually cost, measured across 40 public Sleeper leagues and 2,566 paid claims sampled 2026-09-16. Shown as a percentage of your budget, because a dollar figure means nothing without one. The suggested figure is the median of that rank; move toward the top of the range if he would start for you this week and the bottom if he is bench depth. 2 of the 630 available players clear replacement level at their position, which is the honest size of this week's wire.

No ownership percentages, and that is a data gap rather than a style choice: nothing we run reads a rostered-percentage feed, so a number in that column would be invented. You know your league better than we do — in a shallow ten-team league half of this list is already rostered, and in a deep one none of it is.

Quarterbacks

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 15.5, the median among QBs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

Tyler Shough, NO (ADP 155.4). He threw for 410 on 56 attempts with 3 touchdowns and 2 interceptions and carried 4 times for 8 yards, worth 25.2 points. That volume priced at 27.1 Opportunity Points, 24.3% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 16.8 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 29.2. Start with confidence. The usage earned the points, so neither number needed luck.

Jacoby Brissett, ARI (ADP 244.3). He threw for 277 on 37 attempts with 1 touchdown and carried 6 times for 14 yards, worth 16.5 points. That volume priced at 19.9 Opportunity Points, 22.7% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 15.7 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 16.5. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

Jaxson Dart, NYG (ADP 95.6). He threw for 230 on 29 attempts with 3 touchdowns and carried 11 times for 54 yards, worth 26.6 points. That volume priced at 19.5 Opportunity Points, 25.9% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

Running backs

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 7.3, the median among RBs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

Bijan Robinson, ATL (ADP 2.0). He carried 21 times for 83 yards and caught 8 of 10 targets for 90 yards and 1 score, worth 27.3 points. That volume priced at 26.5 Opportunity Points, 48.5% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 18.3 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 31.3. Start with confidence. He was given a starter's work and did a starter's job with it; there is nothing here to explain away.

Jahmyr Gibbs, DET (ADP 1.0). He carried 29 times for 156 yards and 2 scores and caught 5 of 5 targets for 30 yards, worth 31.1 points. That volume priced at 24.5 Opportunity Points, 27.0% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 16.3 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 37.6. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

Kenneth Walker III, KC (ADP 17.8). He carried 23 times for 173 yards and 1 score and caught 3 of 6 targets for 18 yards and 1 score, worth 32.6 points. That volume priced at 22.2 Opportunity Points, 32.0% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. The usage earned the points, so neither number needed luck.

Receivers

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 5.5, the median among WRs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

Amon-Ra St. Brown, DET (ADP 8.0). He caught 10 of 14 targets for 67 yards and 2 scores, worth 23.7 points. That volume priced at 19.3 Opportunity Points, 21.2% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 17.0 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 28.7. Start with confidence. He was given a starter's work and did a starter's job with it; there is nothing here to explain away.

Chris Olave, NO (ADP 27.0). He caught 10 of 13 targets for 182 yards, worth 23.2 points. That volume priced at 17.9 Opportunity Points, 16.1% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 14.1 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 31.2. Start with confidence. He was given a starter's work and did a starter's job with it; there is nothing here to explain away.

Matthew Golden, GB (ADP 123.6). He caught 6 of 12 targets for 95 yards, worth 12.5 points. That volume priced at 16.5 Opportunity Points, 19.1% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 3.7 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 15.5. Start him. He is being handed the volume of a starter and has not been paid for it yet; volume is the half that shows up again.

Tight ends

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 2.8, the median among TEs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

Trey McBride, ARI (ADP 21.6). He caught 9 of 13 targets for 95 yards and 1 score, worth 20.0 points. That volume priced at 17.9 Opportunity Points, 20.4% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 13.1 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 24.5. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

Sam LaPorta, DET (ADP 72.8). He caught 5 of 8 targets for 48 yards, worth 7.3 points. That volume priced at 11.0 Opportunity Points, 12.1% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 9.4 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 9.8. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

Dalton Schultz, HOU (ADP 187.6). He caught 4 of 8 targets for 35 yards, worth 5.5 points. That volume priced at 11.0 Opportunity Points, 12.6% of everything his offence generated. We had him at 9.1 DraftKings points beforehand; he scored 7.5. Start him. Nobody gets this many looks by accident. The role is real even though the box score has not paid for it yet.

Paid for, did not show

Players we projected as real contributors who were not. The Opportunity Points column is the one to read before cutting anyone: a quiet week on real volume is a different problem from a quiet week with no touches, and only one of them fixes itself.

Efficiency: points per Opportunity Point

Points scored for every point their volume was worth, among the 125 players who cleared 8 Opportunity Points. Above 1.00 beat his usage. This is the column that does NOT predict next week — it is here so you can see which of this week's big numbers were earned and which were bought.

DFS: what a dollar actually returned

DraftKings points per $1,000 of salary, on the 218 players who were priced on the main slate and played. Salary is the price DraftKings set before kickoff; the points are what the box score gave back. A record of one slate, not a prediction of the next.

Negative regression candidates

The mirror of the buy-low list: they scored well past what their volume was worth. Not a sell signal on its own — but if somebody offers you a real price this week, this is the list to listen on.

More from ATO

Waiver Wingman · Weekly projections · Preseason ADP · Schedule · College weekly recap

Points are half-PPR on the same table the weekly scoreboard uses, computed from nflverse box scores. Opportunity Points price a player's pass attempts, carries and targets at what each returns on average, fitted over five finished seasons and graded on a sixth the fit never saw; the grade is printed in the report. Salaries and our pre-slate projections are DraftKings', and the value-per-dollar table is a record of one slate rather than a prediction of the next. Nothing here is betting advice.

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