The biggest challenge going into week one of any fantasy football for your fantasy football rankings; Week 1 is this: You have no factual data to support anything from results of the current season. In fact, this early on, you don’t even have a small sample size other then the Pre-Season.
What value does Pre-Season Hold?
To be honest about this, really very little, other then evaluation of talent at offensive and defensive individual players. With Pre-Season just about in the books, what have you really learned from it? Not only is the sample size of playing time for each player so small, but the competition is most of the time even smaller to varying degrees. Add in the fact that coaches are doing just that: evaluation, this is the only positive thing you can use to your advantage, rather than looking to anything a team does in the Pre-Season as actual data to project, with unwillingness to go beyond simple, basic, offenses used to evaluate backup, and competitive positions.
Real Predictive Factors:
Better it is then, to focus primarily, at first on players that have performed over a period of a few years well, as opposed to taking a sample size from last year only. I baseball this is much easier, because the individual match ups mean so much more, and there is so much more raw data on pitcher vs type of batter at least, which is referred to as platoon stats, just to name of the very keys factors in fantasy baseball leagues.
When it comes to football, getting back on track with the season upcoming, here are the historic factors we can look at, dating back a few years now, however not taking into account the current defensive matchup, that being the most difficult to predict for the upcoming year. Therefore, we will only focus on large sample sizes of player performance over the past 3 years, dating back to 2014 and focus on those, using them in our performance metrics.
I will give a few examples to examine of these matchups in seeing what it is we could pinpoint, since the nature of these games, in actuality, the vegas odds will be of very little use. What I am looking for here is somewhat of a balance between high upside and consistency based on the highest scoring fantasy games the players from these teams have had, ranking those according.
Matchups: Week 1

Pats VS Chiefs Point Total Predict: 44 Points NE Favored – 3

Her’s and interesting Computer Prediction from CBS Sports on the Top 5 Backs to Actually Draft Based on Production and Overal ADP Value Here: CBS Sports Link
BTW, for my #1 Ranked Computer Rankings Resource Check out DraftDashboard
Who will get the most points from this Matchup: Most likely Grnk will benefit most from this matchup as KC is one of the few fantasy defenses that does put up numbers, and may actually hold Brady in check, however, not have a LB that can hold Gronk down, relying on a Safety to pick up up.

Packers VS Seahawks Point Total Predict: 47 Even Matchup: 0
Green Bay’s highest upside player over the last few years of course, is Rodgers. No GB player has blew up to achieve close to 30 points, probably due in part to Nelson injuries, but Nelson was very consistent, even though not delivering huge games.

While once again, the QB is the highest performing upsided player in the matchup, I mention Lynch because they are still attempting to replace him from 2014, so they will try their Running game splitting carries against this Defense. Too bad they haven’t replaced Jimmy Graham either.

Bears vs Falcons Point Total Predict: 49 Pts Atl Favored – 6
Why do I love this Matchup so much; 3 reasons: Expecting big games from their big 3. While this could be a blowout, not resulting in many points for the Bears, Chicago could also show up on defense and in the Running game to slow down this attack, and if having a good gameplan, ready to play, they might do so,

This should go decent for Howard, unless someone is being used in 3rd down and/or down from behind situations in the Chicago passing game, which I could see happening whoever is starting for Chicago, which according to the Chicago Tribune is going to be Glennon. In either case, and unproven starter.
There are of course more interesting matchups in the coming days, but that will complete this for the day.