The time has come to deposit money into your daily fantasy account, to set your lineups. That’s right, Week 1 is finally here when the Panthers head to Denver to take on the defending Super Bowl champions. It’s one of those games on the DFS slate that are often overlooked, but is it different in Week 1, considering these teams aren’t coming off a short week?
Each week of the NFL season, we’ll be discussing the Thursday night game and letting you know whether or not there are any players worth playing. A lot of times, there will be anxious fantasy players looking to stick someone into their lineup just to have a rooting interest in Thursday night games, but here, we will be level-headed and only play guys who warrant that.
So let’s take a look at the top fantasy relevant players from each position in Thursday night’s matchup, and determine whether or not they are worth the price of admission. If they aren’t, I’ll give you a recommendation for around the same price in a different game.
Quarterbacks
Cam Newton, Panthers (FanDuel $8600, DraftKings $7700, Yahoo $35)
As usual, Newton is priced among the game’s elite options on all the sites. So let’s start by talking about his matchup. The Broncos were a defense to avoid last year in fantasy matchups, but it’s important to know where they were trending. After allowing just eight passing touchdowns in the first 10 weeks, they did show some vulnerability in the season’s final six weeks where they allowed 11 passing scores.
The problem with expecting Newton to continue where other teams left off is that his offense may be working at less than 100 percent. After you witnessed the meltdown by their offense in Week 3 of the preseason, where Newton completed just 13 of 29 attempts while getting intercepted twice, it’s now looking like Kelvin Benjamin is still not 100 percent and will max out around 35-40 snaps.
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