Quarterbacks
Start: Baker Mayfield (TB) vs. CLE
Baker Mayfield fell in both dynasty and redraft rankings going into this season because he fell victim to a classic trap. Double punishment. This is when a player gets hurt, so we ding his valuation, and then he continues to try to play through it and struggles to perform. Because of this, we ding him again, instead of attributing it to the injury, which we already dinged him for in the first place.
Week 1 is sure to give some managers confirmation bias, as he struggled to put up numbers against the Bengals defense, who came into the season ranked as a near-bottom-of-the-league unit. He had three fumbles and zero passing touchdowns, which decimated his fantasy score. However, he has the talent and the track record to ball out, as he’s been a top-12 quarterback in three out of the last three years.
This week, Baker gets a nice bounce-back opportunity going against the Cleveland Browns, who just got lit up by Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville Jaguars. Vegas has the Bucs projected for the eighth-highest team implied total of 25 points this week.
The Browns defense had one of the worst performances in Week 1, as their secondary completely broke down. They produced a dreadful 0.731 dropback EPA/play, which was the worst of all teams in Week 1. This translated to a poor success rate against the pass for them, as they allowed Trevor Lawrence to create a successful play 68% of each dropback.
Don’t overthink this one; Baker is coming into this one angry and ready to dominate. Fire him up with confidence against this pathetic Browns defensive unit.