Best NFL DFS Week 1 Watch List: Top DraftKings & FanDuel Picks
Published: Sep 03, 2024
The beginning of a new NFL season brings us more than just excitement as football fans. It brings us additional ways to line our pockets with some cold, hard cash and what better way to do it than winning some DFS contests?
Fantasy Alarm has a rich history of leading its subscribers to the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, from Bob Boris taking down $500,000 in the FanDuel Sunday Million to Millionaire Mike taking down the DraftKings Milli-Maker and all sorts of big, weekly winners in between. It’s been an absolute privilege for me to watch all of this unfold, and we plan to do it all over again this year. As always, it starts with the best NFL DFS Week 1 Watch List.
Best NFL DFS Week 1 Watch List For 2024
If you’ve been with us before, you know the NFL DFS Watch List was a creation of mine to help guide us towards the NFL DFS Playbook and building winning lineups over the weekend. You will see plenty of single-game showdown playbooks for the primetime games, but the primary Playbook and this, the best NFL DFS Week 1 Watch List, will focus solely on the Sunday main slate.
Keep in mind, this Watch List of mine is a living, breathing article and list of players. I will be watching all of the practice reports each day throughout the week, as well as all the injury notes that will affect performances on Sunday.
Don’t just read this best NFL DFS Week 1 watch list piece on Tuesday and think it will be the same on Saturday. As we all know, football just doesn’t work that way. But don’t worry, by Friday’s Fantasy Alarm Show on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio, you should know exactly who I’ll be playing in my main-slate DFS contests.
Top DraftKings DFS Week 1 Watch List
Anthony Richardson, QB Indianapolis Colts ($6,300)
The bargain price for a high-upside rushing quarterback has to stand out to you here, especially against a team like Houston who has strong pass-rushers who tend to over-commit. That leaves the rushing lanes wide open in RPO. The Colts have said they’re not changing his style of play even after last year’s injury, so expect a strong effort and high-end DFS points.
Javonte Williams, RB Denver Broncos ($5,500)
I’ve been pounding the drum all offseason, so why stop now? He’s more than a full year from the ACL injury and even Sean Payton has commented on how much better he’s looked this preseason. The full-point PPR scoring on DK makes him an even better play when you know the running back room in a Joe Lombardi system has ranked in the top five for receiving target every year for the last seven years.
Christian Kirk, WR Jacksonville Jaguars ($5,500)
Now that the Jaguars have two field-stretchers in Brian Thomas and Gabe Davis locked in, Kirk will be able to handle the majority of the intermediate routes that move the chains in a west coast offense. Trevor Larence is going to target him a bunch in this match-up and he gives you a rock-solid floor at a great price.
Dalton Kincaid, TE Buffalo Bills ($5,800)
I expect Kincaid to be Josh Allen’s primary target throughout the season and it starts here in a match-up against and Arizona team that has struggled against tight ends for years. In fact, they’ve ranked among the bottom-five in DVOA against the tight end position for three-straight seasons and haven’t done anything on defense to change that.
Best FanDuel DFS Week 1 Watch List
Jayden Daniels, QB Washington Commanders ($7,000)
We’re going to see just how effective the rookie can be in his first game as an NFL quarterback, but one thing we do know is that he likes to run the ball himself. Rookie quarterbacks tend to put a lot on themselves early on and if he doesn’t see his first read open, he’s more likely to run than find his alternative targets. That should help raise the floor.
Alvin Kamara, RB New Orleans Saints ($7,100)
I love the price tag here, but even more so knowing what a Kubiak/Dennison-coached ground game looks like. Kamara will be a featured asset in this offense and while Carolina has a new coaching regime, their defensive personnel is going to struggle against the run, just as it did last season.
Mike Evans, WR Tampa Bay Buccaneers ($7,900)
How many times does a guy have to record 1,000 in a season before we start putting some respect on his name? Evans will be Baker Mayfield’s favorite target again and Washington’s Benjamin St.-Juste is one of the worst cover guys in the game.
Pat Freiermuth, TE Pittsburgh Steelers ($5,300)
He should be the second-most targeted pass-catcher in this offense right now and with Grady Jarrett and Matthew Judon putting all the pressure on Russell Wilson, he should be looking to get rid of the ball pretty quickly. Freiermuth’s big frame and ability to get position on smaller cover guys also lock him in as a featured redzone target.
Player Pool
| $ Tier | QB | RB | WR | TE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High |  C.J. Stroud  $8,500 |  Bijan Robinson $8,800 |  Tyreek Hill $9,600 |  Dalton Kincaid $6,800 |
 Anthony Richardson $8,300 | Jonathan Taylor $8,600 |  Justin Jefferson $9,000 | Kyle Pitts $6,300 | |
 Evan Engram $6,200 | ||||
| Medium | Tua Tagovailoa $7,700 | Joe Mixon $7,300 |  Mike Evans $7,900 |  Jake Ferguson $6,000 |
 Caleb Williams $7,100 |  Alvin Kamara $7,100 |  Cooper Kupp $7,000 | ||
 Jayden Daniels $7,000 |  Zack Moss $6,900 |  DK Metcalf $6,900 | ||
| Low | Sam Darnold $6,700 |  Gus Edwards $6,000 | Courtland Sutton $5,500 | Hayden Hurst $4,800 |
 Chuba Hubbard $5,600 | Khalil Shakir $5,400 | |||
| Alec Pierce $5,100 |
Player News
Free agent WR Gabe Davis is visiting the 49ers on Monday.
It’s the first known interest we’ve seen of Davis, who was released by the Jaguars last week with a failed physical designation. The 49ers will likely be without Brandon Aiyuk to start the season, and the idea of adding another veteran to the room is appealing. Kyle Shanahan can turn a lot of football players into something fantasy-interesting, but Davis might be a step beyond even his schemes.
Falcons released WR Phillip Dorsett.
What was your favorite moment of Dorsett’s three-month run on a reserve/future contract with the Falcons? Was it when the signing was announced, or was it when the release happened? Dorsett will try to bounce to another team as wideout depth as he enters his age-32 season. He did not play NFL snaps last year and was only targeted three times by the Broncos in 2023.
Cowboys signed No. 149 overall pick RB Jaydon Blue to a four-year contract.
Blue’s deal is worth $4.627 million and includes a $427k signing bonus. The rookie joins one of the thinnest running back rooms in the league heading into this season and could have a realistic shot to earn a starting role as early as Week 1. While it’s unlikely Blue earns a significant workload that early, it seems highly unlikely that he’ll be held off by 28-year-old Miles Sanders and Javonte Williams, who hasn’t looked the same player since suffering a devastating knee injury in 2022, for the entirety of the 2025 season. Blue totaled 1,098 yards and 14 touchdowns last season at Texas while also catching 42 passes.
The Athletic’s Saad Yousuf believes “by the end of the year” Jaydon Blue will be Dallas’ “No. 1 guy” at running back.
Yousuf projects Javonte Williams being the “leading guy early in the season,” but eventually Blue “ends up getting more carries and leading the team in rushing.” Many young players take a month or two to get comfortable at NFL speed — or really, many coaches need that time to understand that the veterans ahead of them aren’t going to tote the load — so this sounds like a reasonable timeline to us. Given how often the Cowboys outwardly project the idea that they want to run the ball a lot, Blue certainly has a reasonable ceiling case as an RB2 or so down the stretch.
Saints signed WR Donovan Peoples-Jones.
Peoples-Jones didn’t play last season after combining for 155 yards on 13 catches between the Lions and Browns in 2023, the final year of his rookie contract. He’ll look to latch on in a depth role in New Orleans.
Browns placed LB Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (neck) on the reserve/PUP list.
Owusu-Kormaoah reported to Browns OTAs last month, but didn’t practice with the team after suffering a serious neck injury in Week 8 against the Ravens last season. The Browns released a statement saying that they “will not make any proedictions on Jeremiah’s football future at this time.” Landing on the reserve/PUP list means that Owusu-Koramoah will miss the entire 2025 season. Second-round pick Carson Schwesigner would seem to have a chance to compete for a starting role in his rookie season.