Five keys to winning Week 1 in Fantasy Football

Yahoo Fantasy contributor Sal Vetri offers his five findings that will help managers find success in the opening week of fantasy football including the sketchy spot, pickup and play, and biggest mismatch.

Video Transcript

These are my five key findings that will help you win your week one fantasy football matchup starting with finding number one and that's the best spot of the week.

And it's for Bills running back, James Cook against the Arizona Cardinals Pff has this Cardinals defensive line ranked as the 32nd unit in the NFL.

This gives an advantage to James Cook behind a quality offensive line in Buffalo and just a reminder, this guy put up nearly 1600 total yards last year and he'll kick off week one in a good matchup as a six point favorite and the Bills are projected to score the second most points on the week.

This is a great spot.

Now, finding number two is the sketchy spot of the week and this is for Aaron Jones, the bikings new running back against the Giants defensive line.

Look, Aaron Jones will be a top 20 running back most weeks in Fantasy, but you have to temper your expectations in this matchup against the Giants defensive line.

That's the bright spot of their team headlined by Dexter Lawrence and Brian Burns.

There's a risk that the Giants just load the box against Sam Darnell, which would be bad news for Aaron Jones, but there is some good news because the Vikings do have a good offensive line highlighted by their tackles, left tackle Christian Der Shaw and right tackle Brian o'neill, which can give some running lanes for Aaron Jones to have a quality week, but you should temper your expectations.

Finding number three is the pick up and play of the week.

We head back to Buffalo for their wide receiver Khalil Shakir who has a quality matchup against the Cardinals poor secondary.

And Shakir is the only starting wide receiver on this Buffalo team that has an established connection and has played in the past with quarterback Josh Allen expect that to go a long way last season once Shakir took over as a starter in week eight through the playoffs, he had 15 or more fantasy points in 42% of his games.

And now Stefan Diggs and Gabe Davis are gone, expect a big week pick him up if you can in your league.

Finding number four is a rookie to watch and that's the Giants rookie receiver Malik Neighbors against a Viking secondary.

That's pretty concerning FF has this unit as the 27th ranked secondary entering the season and they've dealt with some off season injuries.

They also cut their 2022 1st round pick in Lewis scene the other day and they lost a young and talented player in Kyrie Jackson in a tragic car accident earlier this off season, this unit just needs more time to figure out the secondary, but they don't have that time because week one is here and expect Malik, neighbors, the Giants first round pick to soak up a ton of targets in a quality matchup.

He's somebody to watch for and finding number five takes us to one of the most underrated pieces of fantasy football.

The trenches, the offensive line versus defensive line.

And this is the biggest mismatch for week one that mismatch is the Lions offensive line, arguably the best unit in the NFL against a Rams defensive line that has a lot of question marks now that they no longer have Aaron Donald and I believe this benefits the Lions running backs the most, especially David Montgomery who could see an increased role because his backfield running mate, Jamir Gibbs is returning from a hamstring injury.

So no matter the format you play and you must start David Montgomery in fantasy this year, these have been my five key findings that'll help you win your week one match up.

And as always, now, all you have to do is take this information and bring it to your friends to smack him around in week one.