Update: I’m hearing that Steele is the RB2 tonight and Perine will hardly be involved if he’s even active. I’d definitely fade Perine and I like betting Steele overs if you can.
CPT/MVP Plays: Jackson (Optimal), Mahomes (Optimal), Rice (Optimal), Andrews (GPP), Pacheco (GPP), Henry (GPP), Kelce (GPP), Likely (GPP Punt), Steele (GPP Punt)
Flex/UTIL Plays: Worthy (Optimal), Flowers (Optimal), Butker (Optimal choice of the kickers), J. Hill (GPP), Tucker (GPP), Chiefs D/ST (GPP), Ravens D/ST (GPP)
In the words of the legendary Bruce Buffer, “LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEEEE!” Week 1 of the 2024-2025 NFL Regular Season is upon us and we have an electric first game between the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens. The Chiefs are currently favored by 3 points at home in Arrowhead after these two teams met in a 17-10 Chiefs victory in the AFC Championship last season. We cannot wait for a season full of sweats with all of you and are ready to kick things off with a bang!
We will start our breakdown with a look back at what transpired in both the AFC Championship game last year in addition to the opening night game for the Chiefs last year as they are both relatively instructive to what we can expect to see play out in this one. In the AFC Championship, the Ravens were at home and favored by 4 points. Lamar Jackson saw 37% of the CPT ownership while pretty much all the Chiefs skill players (Mahomes, Kelce, Rice, and Pacheco) sat between 7-9% captain ownership. In the opening kickoff game for the Chiefs last year, Patrick Mahomes saw 30% ownership up top. In neither game did a QB turn out to be the optimal captain. What this tells us is that people flock to the big name QBs as the CPT/MVP options and we think these teams provide enough elite skill players that one of them is more likely to separate as the top scorer. This is a really tough spot for both offenses to flourish as we will discuss below, so do not feel as if you need to just jam the QBs in. Normally Mahomes would turnout a bit more chalky as it seems like the favored QB is the one people tend to gravitate towards in general, but rushing QBs also typically generate more ownership, so with that in mind it’s hard to separate them. Add in the fact that people have never been interested in playing the QB with Derrick Henry and it’s possible that Mahomes will be higher owned than Lamar and all his rushing upside. If you do want to play a QB as a CPT/MVP option, we would lean towards Mahomes in cash games and Lamar in GPP contests. Jackson’s rushing upside gives him an elite ceiling, while Mahomes’ carries the higher floor as it’s certainly possible that the Ravens lean on Henry and hold Jackson to a low score.
With that in mind, we will start our breakdown with the defending Super Bowl Champions. The Chiefs have to go up against the top-ranked defense in DVOA from a year ago. Mike McDonald, the architect of that defense, has left for Seattle but most of the main pieces are still around. The aforementioned Patrick Mahomes will be one of the highest-owned pieces on the slate and should provide a solid point floor to build off of. The Chiefs passed the ball at the 6th highest situation-neutral rate in the league last year, which just solidifies that floor. As a result., our lean would be to play him in the flex in this one if you do deploy him as we are not super keen on the ownership he is going to command up top. With that in mind, people always are keen to stack the pass catchers with the QBs when they do play them. Hollywood Brown has been officially ruled out for the Chiefs in this one, which means it is Rashee Rice SZN. He was the clear #1 receiver for the Chiefs last year and commanded more than 20% of the targets and air yards the final 8 weeks of the campaign. Of the Chiefs pass catchers, he is certainly our favorite of the bunch given the fact he is cheaper than Kelce, Henry, Pacheco, and Flowers. Speaking of him, Travis Kelce is a tough nut to crack in this spot. He really has nothing more to prove in this league and is now 35 years old and coming off a very down regular season last year. He is priced way up as the most expensive non-QB on the slate and we do not love him in this spot. On top of that, his Vegas yards prop for this game is just 57.5 yards. That is lower than the 71.5 mark he had in the Super Bowl, 62.5 mark he had in the AFC Championship against this same Ravens team, and 76.5 mark he had in his first game last season. However, in primetime games, he is always live to show up and break the slate with one of his 2 or 3 TD performances. For that reason, he is a very rare occurrence for us in that we would only deploy him as a GPP CPT option. We feel the chances for him to be an optimal flex play in this spot are pretty low given his high price tag. He probably needs to score to really pay off, and if he does that then he’d likely make the most sense at captain. Finally, we have to call out rookie Xavier Worthy. He made splashy play after splashy play in the preseason and is priced wayyyyy down on both sites. Rookie receivers are notorious for having slow starts in the NFL despite a ton of fanfare and this is a brutal spot for him to have to make his debut against this defense. He will garner a healthy amount of attention simply due to the name value, draft capital, and price. However, we are not as high on him as others will be and would stick to using him in the flex. Supposedly a rumor leaked that they want to get him a deep shot early, which is common sense that they would be planning that, but it may drive his ownership even higher.
One of our favorite plays to consider is Isiah Pacheco. In GPPs, he very well may just be our favorite CPT option of the entire slate. While the Ravens were a beast to pass the ball against last year, they ranked middle of the pack against the run. CEH is out with PTSD, which has left the running back room pretty dang barren. Pacheco notched a whopping 8 scores over the final 8 weeks of the regular season last year after he took control of the backfield and there is nothing really standing in his way here either as well. People are going to be super enamored with the passing game on the Chiefs side and the running game on the Ravens side that Pacheco could easily be a bit of a forgotten man in this spot. He is the starting running back playing for the favored team at home. There is a very clear game script to him absolutely nuking this game, especially if he rumbles into the end zone and vaults the Chiefs in front early in this one. He’s my top exposure this season in Best Ball, so it should come as no surprise that we are optimistic he starts the season well. If we’re right and he balls out this year, Week 1 would be the best time to use him in DFS while people are concerned about the potential workload split with Perine, who just arrived and seems unlikely to steal all that much work right away.
In terms of the value options here, we would play the ownership game and play the people who are projected to carry the least. All of Justin Watson, Mecole Hardman, and Skyy Moore are viable cheap plays that could run headfirst into a touchdown in the right spot. Noah Gray is expected to be one of the better point-per-dollar plays at his price point as people think he will play a bigger role for this team with Kelce aging. He would definitely be one of our preferred punts. However, of this bunch, our favorite play may actually be one of the backup KC running backs. Semaje Perine was just signed to be the third down back for the team and Carson Steele is the stone cold minimum and played a key role for them in the preseason. It will be important to take a look at the inactive list before this game to see which of them is fired up and ready to go. Regardless, both of them have better Vegas TD odds right now than chalkier options like the aforementioned Hardman and Gray and they will be very low-owned. Using one of them with Pacheco is fine but they’d be even better in lineups without him in case (God forbid) he gets injured.
Flipping over to the visiting Ravens, they have a score to settle with the Chiefs here. After running through the regular season as the undisputed best team in the league, they found themselves on the wrong end of the stick once again in the playoffs after their offense went into neutral against the Chiefs and their 2nd ranked defense. Lamar Jackson is one of the best plays on the slate and will be one of the optimal captain selections in this one as noted above. We think he probably should be used in the flex as a bare minimum given the floor he provides with his rushing upside that Mahomes does not quite have. With that in mind, we do want to call out that Jackson’s rushing prop in this one is set to 47.5 yards, which is a 19 yard drop from his line in the AFC Championship last year. The addition of Henry does not help him in this regard but he still should be scampering around like normal. We at RGP are very bullish on the Ravens offense in general this season because defenses really do require two separate personnel packages to defend Lamar and Henry well. With them on the field at the same time, it will be hellish to try to defend Lamar with heavy personnel or Henry with light personnel. We love both of them as viable CPT options on this slate, with Henry skewing more GPP than the stud QB. The one knock on Henry is that he does not catch many passes (his prop is just 1.5) and that does open the door to a role for Justice Hill. We would not play him and Henry in the same lineup due to the completely different game scripts required for both of them, but Harbaugh has been very bullish about Hill’s role in the offense all offseason. If the Ravens were to fall behind early and have to pass, it would not be shocking to see Hill take on a much larger workload in the passing game.
On the outside, there are a trio of receivers and two horses at tight end that will be competing for Lamar’s attention. Our favorites of this bunch would certainly be Mark Andrews, Zay Flowers, and Isaiah Likely. Andrews is comically cheap for his upside on DraftKings and is strangely not seeing a commensurate spike in ownership projections currently. He was the same stud he always was when healthy last year, seeing 20% target share overall and 38% target share in the red zone. He makes for an excellent GPP CPT option given he is projected for less ownership than Rice, Kelce, Henry, Pacheco, and Flowers. Flowers is their #1 receiver and they love to move him around the formation routinely. He is the safest of their wideouts but we question his ultimate upside with the tight ends in this offense. As a result, we would stick to using him as a flex play. Finally, Likely is a major X factor for the Ravens this year. They have been talking about deploying him simultaneously with Andrews all offseason and it seems like they are ready to unleash him. He only ran a route on 22% of dropbacks when Andrews was playing last year and that number is going to climb significantly this season. He easily could catch a TD and become a viable value CPT in this one, and most people probably won’t play him as they wait a week to see what his snap share will look like.
Finally, we will wrap things up with a look at the special teams and defenses. This is going to be a strong spot to target the kickers in all likelihood. People are not going to want to wait all offseason and play kickers in their DFS lineups for a game as exciting as this one. However, with two top defenses going up against each other, drives easily may stall out in this one. On top of that, we have two of the best kickers in the league on opposite sides. Our preference would be to play Harrison Butker given the fact he is cheaper and playing on the team that is favored in this one. However, Justin Tucker also is firmly in play. Defense wise, a TD seems to always pop its head up on showdown slates. Lamar seems to be the more likely to allow a scoop and score with the way he scrambles around, and they’re slightly more likely to be trailing late and forced to pass. As a result, we would prefer the Chiefs D/ST but the Ravens D/ST also is viable if you want to look their direction. Best of luck and let’s have a great NFL season!