The fantasy football conversations that begin to take place in late December and January when leagues are coming to a close and Super Bowls are being won and lost are quite unique. Picture being in a basement of a morgue giving a post-mortem of a sadly deceased patient, “Heart disease didn’t help nor did the high blood pressure and high cholesterol…combine that with diabetes and it was the beginning of the end”. I imagine professionals confirm cause of death in a more professional manner, but this is the type of report you might hear at the end of the fantasy season, “Man, I started so strong but as soon as CMC got hurt and Jalen Hurts started sucking it was the beginning of the end for my team! Somehow I persevered through that, made the Super Bowl and had the better team. But then the worst luck of all hits and I lose Mike Evans to injury in the first quarter of my championship!” You can almost use that as a script in the fantasy football universe, swapping out the recently deceased and preexisting conditions with player or team names and lists of injuries. With all that talk at the end of the 2021-2022 season, however, came the review of what was an even more chaotic train wreck than your regular leagues…the DFS season.
I have already given myself PTSD by reliving too much of the last season above, so I am eager to move on to week 1 thoughts for the 2022-2023 season, of which we are about to kick-off. That being said, it is one thing to have injuries and disappointing performances throughout the season but the amount of first and second quarter in-game injuries last season was as emotionally deflating as I can ever remember. You are sitting there at 4:30pm, and let’s say you have a 30-point JT performance from 1pm combined with another smoke show from Josh Allen. Then Cooper Kupp limps off the field in the first quarter of his game and your “OH MY GOD THIS MAY BE THE ONE LINE UP” just became another piece of dust in the wind!
NOW…
Here we are, August 8th, 2022…exactly one month away from the NFL opening Thursday night, when the Super Bowl champion LA Rams host the Buffalo Bills (my AFC pick to go to the Super Bowl this year), and the fantasy football community couldn’t be more excited.
I was incredibly pumped the other night to settle in, crack the knuckles, open up DraftKings, and start working on my 1st main slate week 1 lineup. Week 1 is always tricky with little to no value plays created by injuries from the previous week. However, as always, there are diamonds in the rough and true to form, “Toilets to Titles” is going to give you the lineups and insight necessary to feel like one of those guys in those ridiculous ESPN DraftKings commercials by the end of the season.
On a normal week I will be providing one main slate lineup for DraftKings. However, because it is week 1 and we are ALL over excited, I have included two below. We are a month out and these will be fluid up until game time on 9/11, but we are really liking some of the values we see below. Feel free to also leverage Twitter, Discord, etc. for more insight regarding these line ups!
DraftKings Week 1 Main Slate (1pm) Line up 1
QB – Justin Herbert vs LV ($7,600)
RB – Jonathan Taylor @ HOU ($9,100)
RB – Eli Mitchell @ CHI ($5,400)
WR – Mike Williams vs LV ($6,600)
WR – Tyler Boyd vs PITT ($4,800)
WR – Rondale Moore vs KC ($4,000)
TE – Irv Smith vs GB ($3,400)
FLEX – Travis Kelce @ AZ ($6,600)
DEF – Washington vs JAX ($2,500)
DraftKings Week 1 Main Slate (1pm) Line up 2
QB – Jaylen Hurts at DET ($6,800)
RB – Austin Ekeler vs LV ($8,200)
RB – Najee Harris @ CIN ($6,400)
WR – Justin Jefferson vs GB ($7,800)
WR – Michael Pittman @ HOU ($5,500)
WR – Kadarius Toney @TEN ($4,100)
TE – Josiah Deguara @ MIN ($2,900)
FLEX – Devante Parker @ MIA ($4,800)
DEF – Tennessee vs NYG ($3,500)
