Quarterback

Nick Foles, Jacksonville Jaguars, $27

Kansas City is coming to Jacksonville and they’re bringing to gifts to Nick Foles.

1. The No. 1 scoring offense from 2018
2. The No. 24 scoring defense

Playing the Chiefs forces teams to play high-temp and score points. Against a horrid defense, doing so is not that hard. Attacking this game, and its slate-leading 51.5-point total is going to be necessary to win Week 1. Mahomes and his MVP notoriety will be the more popular play but Foles and his weapons tap into the same upside this game offers. 

Jameis Winston, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, $31

Someone should be fired for pricing as the No. 12 passer on the slate. Winston will be a more popular quarterback on Yahoo but across all sites, passers generally have flat ownership relative to other positions. You don’t have to eat all of the chalk to roster Winston.

He faces off against San Francisco at home, in a game with a rising total; The total for this matchup has shot up two points since opening. 

As a team, Tampa averaged 320 passing yards per game last year. Now they get Chris Godwin in his second season and O.J. Howard in a full-time role as opposed to Cameron Brate stealing targets. Tampa and Jameis are set up to lead the NFL in passing yards again, plus, he no longer faces the threat of getting benched with Ryan Fitzpatrick out of town.

The options to stack in this game are abundant and no amount of ownership should scare you off Jameis. 

Running Back

Leonard Fournette, Jacksonville Jaguars, $20

Fournette will probably be a popular play at the position because of his insanely low price but Foles won’t be. That means stacking the two is a great way to build unique and correlated lineups that still have Fournette in them.

The Jags new coordinator, John DeFilippo, has also talked about getting Fournette more involved in the passing game making the correlation between Foles and Fournette even higher. With T.J. Yeldon out of town and Alfred Blue on IR, there is no longer a single player Jacksonville can plan to take Fournette off the field for. He’ll be a three-down back in the friendliest game on the slate for fantasy points. 

Chris Carson, Seattle Seahawks, $23

David Johnson is egregiously priced at 23$ and if the Yahoo DFS scene is smart, he’ll be one of the top-owned backs on the slate. That sets up Carson to be the ultimate pivot at the exact same price as Johnson.

Carson should get the benefit of an immensely positive game-script as Seattle host Cincinnati. The Seahawks are double-digit favorites against the A.J. Green-less Bengals. 

Carson was seventh in the NFL last year with 247 carries reached top-five in rushing yards with 1,151.

Carson is a good play on any site but he is a great way to fade the David Johnson chalk on Yahoo specifically. 

Wide Receiver

Josh Gordon, New England Patriots, $16

Gordon will likely go forgot for many Yahoo players as he only recently came back from a suspension. Pricing is lax on Yahoo as well so paying down at almost any position isn’t necessary to build a good looking team. Finally, the Pittsburgh vs. New England game doesn’t appear on the main slate for either Draftkings or Fanduel. 

Gordon is an unreal threat when on the field with Tom Brady. No player that Brady has targeted more than 50 times averages a higher adjusted yards per attempt when thrown to than Josh Gordon. At 11.5 AY/A, the Brady-Gordon connection has been dynamic. 

Last season, Gordon played 10 games for New England and he led the team in air yards because of his 13.6 average depth of target. He’s the high-variance play this slate needs.

John Brown, Buffalo Bills, $17

• Josh Allen led the NFL in depth of target last year at 11.2
• Through eight weeks (while Joe Flacco was his passer), John Brown was top-three in total air yards, behind only Deandre Hopkins and Julio Jones
• They now play on the same team

Brown has flashed slate-breaking upside on numerous occasions including his 116-yard performance in Week 4 of last year. He’s now paired with the quarterback in the NFL that his skillset matches best. It could take just two or three completions for Brown to win people tournaments yet again.

Tight End

O.J. Howard, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 19

Howard is the perfect stack with Jameis Winston because of how popular playing Chris Godwin is going to be on every single DFS site in Week 1. Godwin is a great play but he’ll also be immensely popular leaving room for O.J. Howard as a great leverage play. 

Howard has led the NFL in tight end yards per target in each of the past two years and now there’s more volume available for him. Adam Humphries and DeSean Jackson’s departures vacated over 2,000 air yards and 174 targets. Adding an influx of volume to Howard’s otherworldly efficient is the recipe for a phenomenal performance. 

Defense

Seattle Seahawks, $16

See: Carson, Chris

Seattle should stomp the Bengals and this is a solid correlation play with Carson. Lock in the Seahawks and forget about the other defenses if you’re playing Carson.