2025 Week 1 DFS Coverage Shells

What’s going on, everyone! I hope you all had a great offseason and are excited to have football back this week!

I am stoked to once again write weekly DFS coverage matchup articles for the 2025 NFL season. I plan on chipping away at these throughout the week and publishing on Fridays to ensure the article’s substance is up to speed with any circumstances that arise.

There are a few different approaches for the first week of the season. You can buy into the “certainty” of returning players in offensive systems, and/or opposing defenses with little roster turnover featuring the same defensive coordinator, or you can take a shot in the dark on the “uncertainty” stemming from a new coaching staff, rookie draft picks, etc.

In this week’s article, it’ll be less coverage intense relative to ones going forward simply because there isn’t any 2025 data to parse through yet. For that reason I find myself being of most value to you by gravitating towards games with reliable priors.

For instance, the Cowboys’ new defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus was the Bears HC and defensive play caller from 2022 up until the middle part of 2024. Throughout his tenure in Chicago, there was never even a single week in which they never deployed man coverage.

Last evening in his Cowboys debut, Eberflus didn’t record a single defensive dropback in man. They played soft zone in an effort to take away single coverage matchups vs Eagles WR A.J. Brown, who ended the game with just 1 target.

You can find me on X (@fball_insights) where I post charts, graphs, and my thoughts on all things football.

Let’s get right to it!

CIN @ CLE

The Cincinnati Bengals begin their season on the road against a divisional foe in the Cleveland Browns this Sunday, with kickoff at 1:00 PM EDT. CIN is currently a -5.5 point road favorite. The 47.5 point game total is currently tied as the 3rd-highest of week 1, and the CIN 26.5 implied team total ranks 2nd among all offenses.

After having reached the Super Bowl in 2021, the Bengals have started with an 0-2 record in each of the last 3 seasons. Their slow starts, combined with an unreliable defense, last year contributed to missing the playoffs in 2024, despite incredibly productive years from QB Joe Burrow ($6,900) and WR Ja’Marr Chase ($8,100).

The Bengals open the first two weeks of this season against the Browns and then host the Jaguars.

After the Jaguars, their schedule goes as follows up until their week 10 bye:

• Week 3: @ Vikings

• Week 4: @ Broncos

• Week 5: vs Lions

• Week 6: @ Packers

• Week 7: vs Steelers

• Week 8: vs Jets

• Week 9: vs Bears

On paper, this is quite the gauntlet of opposing defenses, so given that and their notorious slow starts, CIN is probably dialed in to start off on the right foot.

Joe Burrow recorded 26 preseason dropbacks this August after having just 8 career preseason dropbacks prior to 2025. Ja’Marr Chase ran 15 preseason routes after having just 11 in his career prior to 2025 — all of which occurred as a rookie in 2021.

What’s interesting about this particular matchup is that Joe Burrow hasn’t been efficient against the Browns throughout his career:

Over the last four regular seasons, Burrow averaged 0.41 fantasy points per dropback against CLE and 0.54 against everyone else. Burrow averaged 14.9 PPG vs CLE and 22.2 vs everyone else.