FanDuel NFL DFS Week 1 Plays: Build Around Jahmyr Gibbs, Chris Olave & More

Kiss your Sundays goodbye; regular-season NFL main slates are back. For the 2026 season, I'll be bringing you my favorite FanDuel NFL DFS plays every weekend. This article will be released late on Saturday night and into Sunday morning, during prime building hours when we have as much injury information as possible without cutting it too close to lock.

Each week, I will provide you with my core plays (3) that I am building my single-entry lineup around, as well as my favorite value play (with a number of honorable mentions) and my favorite lower-owned play (again, with a handful of honorable mentions).

Five plays to build around and a small list of others to include in your player pool. Let's get into it.

Core Plays For The FanDuel NFL DFS Week 1 Slate

Jahmyr Gibbs | RB | DET ($9,100)

The chalk du jour on Sunday's slate; there's zero reason to get cute and fade Jahmyr Gibbs on the main slate given how loose Week 1 pricing is. He checks every box a DFS player looks for, outside of inflated ownership:

Projected Workload: With Isiah Pacheco on IR, Gibbs should be an every-down feature player (he would've been if Pacheco were active, too). Our Week 1 projections have him for 18.6 rush attempts and 5.2 targets for a projected stat line of 83.9 rushing yards, 3.9 catches for 28 yards and 1.4 total touchdowns. Nearly bulletproof.
Game Environment: The Saints vs. Lions game carries, at the time of writing, a 49.5-point total with Gibbs the focal point of the best offense on the slate against a team that ran more plays per minute (2.2) than any other team in the NFL last season.
Base + Ceiling Projection: He leads the entire slate in base projection (21.3 half-PPR points) and Xfinity best ceiling projection (32.6). That's not accounting for the 100-yard bonuses that FanDuel gives out for both rushing and receiving yards, either.

There's enough value on this slate to comfortably play Gibbs without sacrificing anywhere else in your lineup, and whenever you're presented with that opportunity, you'd be wise to take it.

Ja'Marr Chase | WR | CIN ($8,900)

I just mentioned the amount of value on the slate on top of already loose pricing, so fitting another top-end stud in your lineup is far from back-breaking in Week 1. While Bijan Robinson is a tempting option as the No. 2 stud in my lineup, especially with Cooper Rush slotted to start at QB, I wanted to get top-end exposure to a game that our NFL Betting Game Model has pegged for 50 points.

Chase has been nothing short of spectacular over the last two seasons, posting 360 targets (1st), 252 receptions (1st), 3,120 yards (1) and 25 TDs (you guessed it, 1st) since 2024. So long as Joe Burrow remains healthy, Chase is basically a set-it-and-forget-it pick in DFS lineups. We're projecting him for nearly seven catches (6.8) on 9.8 targets with 77 receiving yards and a 21.9-point ceiling. I love our projections, but that ceiling feels 10 points light. This should be a back-and-forth affair with Tampa Bay, and Chase has the highest ceiling in the entire game.

Chris Olave | WR | NO ($7,400)

It's not often you get a legitimate WR1 for such a discount on FanDuel, but here we are. With Jordyn Tyson on IR, we should see a similar workload for Chris Olave that we saw once Tyler Shough took over as the starter in Week 9 last season. Over that eight-game stretch, Olave ranked as the WR6 in half-PPR scoring on the back of a 29% target share (25% TPRR), 14.2-yard aDOT and 15.8 points per game (88 Utilization Score). These are alpha-WR1 numbers that we are getting for a $1,000+ discount in a dome game against a defense with a depleted secondary (no Brian Branch, Terrion Arnold).

While his ownership won't come light, Olave is a smash play at this price in all formats.

Top Value Play For Week 1 NFL DFS On FanDuel

Michael Mayer | TE | LV ($4,600)

I was fully prepared to fire up MarShawn Lloyd as the top overall value play on the slate until we got news on Wednesday that Raiders TE1 Brock Bowers was set to miss the first two weeks of the season (at a minimum.

Insert Michael Mayer. A popular streaming option at the TE position last season, the returns on Mayer were a bit of a mixed bag, though the underlying metrics point to a massive ceiling. Mayer registered five games with at least a 74% route rate in 2025:

Week 6: 80% routes, 32% target share (35% TPRR), 2.50 yards per route run, TE5
Week 7: 90% routes, 6% target share (6% TPRR), 0.90 yards per route run, TE40
Week 17: 89% routes, 37% target share (31% TPRR), 2.87 yards per route run, TE5
Week 18: 74% routes, 17% target share (17% TPRR), 2.04 yards per route run, TE20

Only one of those games saw him fall below 2.0 YPRR, a number that only one tight end topped for the entirety of the 2025 season (George Kittle, 2.18). It remains to be seen what this offense will look like with Kirk Cousins at the helm, but they draw arguably the best matchup in the NFL in Week 1 against the Miami Dolphins, and Mayer should be a focal point of the passing game, especially with Ashton Jeanty still potentially operating at less than 100%.

Honorable Mentions: Tyler Shough (QB, NO, $6900), MarShawn Lloyd (RB, GB, $4900), Jordan Mason (RB, MIN, $5400), Wan'Dale Robinson (WR, TEN, $5300), Mark Andrews (BAL, TE, $5200)

FanDuel NFL DFS Low-Owned Player To Target

Luther Burden | WR | CHI ($6,200)

With four higher-owned pieces operating as the core of my lineup, I want to find a lever to pull to get different from the field, and Luther Burden is my favorite way to do so. Projecting at sub-9% ownership in our NFL DFS projections, Burden's ceiling is sky-high in a Bears offense that HC Ben Johnson said wants to set the record as the highest-scoring offense of all time.

The matchup is a rather neutral one against the Panthers, but it should be a hobbled Rome Odunze that gets the worst of it opposite of Jimmy Horn, not Burden. And while the 2025 sample size on Burden is small, he ranked as the WR19 in targets per route run (24.9%) and, more impressively, the WR3 in yards per route run (2.71), trailing only Puka Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. As the WR who was drafted by the Ben Johnson regime, the entire front office and coaching staff have been raving about Burden all summer, with Johnson comparing him to Amon-Ra St. Brown, his former WR1. There's a very strong chance that this is the lowest price we'll see Burden have all season, and I want to get in before the price of the brick goes up.

Honorable Mentions: Baker Mayfield (QB, TB, $7500), Justin Jefferson (WR, MIN, $8100), Saquon Barkley (RB, PHI, $8100), Breece Hall (RB, NYJ, $6900), Christian Watson (WR, GB, $6400), Quentin Johnston (WR, LAC, $6000)