Fantasy Football: 4 Things We Learned From Week 1
The Cowboys' Rookies May Not Be Fantasy Gold
Perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising that the Dallas Cowboys took a loss in their first game.
After all, their star quarterback Tony Romo is nursing an injury that will keep him sidelined until Week 7. And two of the three most touted skill position players on their squad right now -- backup quarterback Dak Prescott and starting running back Ezekiel Elliott -- are both rookies.
But those rookies entered Week 1 with stratospheric fanfare; Ezekiel Elliot was dubbed by some as the greatest running back prospect since Adrian Peterson, and Prescott's impressive preseason led the Cowboys to leave the door open to the possibility that he could take Tony Romo's job even if Romo came back fully healthy midseason.
Perhaps after Week 1 though, fantasy football enthusiasts need to curb their enthusiasm a bit. It's not like Prescott was bad per se. He didn't turn over the football, and he almost converted a sick touchdown pass to Dez Bryant that Bryant bobbled coming to the ground. And his 0.11 Passing NEP per drop back was right at the 2015 league average for quarterbacks.
But real football efficiency and stat-stuffing production doesn't provide a perfect correlation. And for fantasy football purposes, Prescott's preseason was electric, but his Week 1 game was middling, providing series after series of dinks and dunks on his way to a paltry 5.04 yards per attempt. As a result, the Cowboys' risk-averse gameplan for their rookie signal-caller left Elliot facing stacked boxes all day long.
Now of course, it didn't help that a major part of those stacked boxes Elliot faced contained the Giants' newly signed defensive tackle Damon Harrison, who Pro Football Focus' Sam Monson graded as the best run defender in the NFL in 2015. And for fantasy purposes, Elliot did still manage to find the end zone. But in terms of real on-field production, his -0.13 Rushing NEP per carry was pretty awful, though in fairness it's hard to fairly extrapolate too much from one down game. But unless the Cowboys take the reigns off of Prescott, and unless Prescott is willing to take some chances downfield, Elliot might continue to find it tough to find lanes to run through, affecting his fantasy production.
