Fantasy Football Winners & Losers From Week 1: Bucky Irving, Matthew Golden & More

15 of 16 Week 1 games are officially in the books, and, shocker, Sunday proved one thing—expect the unexpected.

Did you pick the Chargers over the Cardinals as 8.5-point favorites in your survivor league? Better luck next year.

Did you pick Colston Loveland in Round 4 of your fantasy draft and expect fireworks out of the gate? Enjoy your goose egg.

Whether the weekend went as planned or the complete opposite, it's a long season. While there is signal in a lot of what we saw in Week 1, it's still a small piece of the puzzle. Let's dive into the biggest fantasy football winners and losers from Week 1, focusing on players who were popular topics of conversation throughout the summer.

Note: These are not the players who scored the most (and least) fantasy points on the week, but ones whose underlying role signals something positive or negative for the remainder of the year.

Winners From Fantasy Football Week 1

Bucky Irving | RB | Buccaneers

Both the most surprising and my favorite winner, Bucky Irving shoved it down the throat of everyone who faded him at his fifth-round ADP or later this summer. Sean Tucker's absence in Week 1 could have something to do with the fact that Irving got 100% of the rushing attempts in the red zone, but it was his involvement in the passing game that came as the bigger surprise.

After the Bucs signed pass-game specialist Kenneth Gainwell this offseason, it was Irving who ran 61.1% of the routes to Gainwell's 36.1% (3.7% target share, 7.7% TPRR), with Irving earning 7 targets (31.8% TPRR) and 2.9 fantasy points per target. He maintained his expected role inside the 20s (53.3% of rush attempts, 61.5% of snaps overall) while Gainwell saw 33.3% of the rushes on 46.2% of the snaps.

There's going to be some level of committee in this backfield, but Irving looked as spry as he did his rookie season in Week 1, and the arrow is pointing straight up for the third-year running back if he maintains even close to this type of usage in the passing game.

David Montgomery | RB | Texans

Early in the offseason, it was both reported and believed that David Montgomery would be a workhorse for the Texans' run-first offense. Later in the offseason, the drumbeat for Woody Marks grew louder and louder, with the belief in a committee growing.

If Week 1 is any indication, this is clearly Montgomery's backfield. He commanded 64.5% of the rushing attempts, 100% of the red-zone rushes and 62.5% of the goal-to-go snaps. As a bonus, he ran 33% of the routes and posted a TPRR of 21.4%, out-touching Marks 23 to 10.

The Texans, despite the massive shootout with the Bills, will be involved in plenty of low-scoring, positive-game-script environments that will cater to feeding Montgomery the rock. So long as he stays healthy, it looks like the early-offseason chatter of a workhorse role was legit. Don't be surprised if this isn't his last three-TD game of the season.

Dalton Kincaid | TE | Bills

Year after year, it's always been "If Dalton Kincaid just plays more, he's going to smash." Well, we might have arrived.

One-week sample sizes be damned, everything we saw on Sunday points to a massive Kincaid ceiling in 2026. He played 76.9% of the snaps after not sniffing that number in a single game last season. The result? He ran 68.8% of the routes with a 21.4% target share (27.3% TPRR) and 5.91 yards per route run. He finished with 18.0 PPR points and showcased his ability to win downfield in a tough matchup. He has legitimate top-five positional upside if this sticks and if he's on the waiver wire in your league, make sure that isn't the case come Wednesday morning.

Matthew Golden | WR | Packers

The highlight plays and boxscore boom came from Packers WR1 Christian Watson, but it's hard to find a late-round WR sleeper that had a more encouraging Week 1 than second-year first-rounder Matthew Golden.

He led the Packers wideouts in snap percentage (82.1%), target share (30%; 12 targets), route rate (87.0%) and targets per route run (30.0%) while playing 100% of the snaps in goal-to-go situations. His 2.38 yards per route run were dwarfed by Watson's 3.87 thanks to the latter's 81-yard touchdown in the first quarter, but are a marked improvement from his rookie season. Golden seems locked into a full-time role, and with Jordan Love looking his way so often, he's positioned to absolutely smoke his preseason ADP.

Losers From Fantasy Football Week 1

Luther Burden | WR | Bears

I'm hesitant to call Luther Burden a complete loser from Week 1, but disappointment didn't feel quite strong enough. In a game where Rome Odunze was hobbled and only played 48.6% of the snaps while running 57.9% of the routes, Burden still only saw 71.4% of the snaps and 71.1% of the routes.

An early fumble may have put him in a soft doghouse, but what stuck out more was how much WR3 Kalif Raymond was on the field and involved (60% snaps, 57.9% routes). He (Raymond) posted a team-high 34.6% target share (40.9% TPRR) compared to Burden's 19.2% target share (18.5% TPRR), and in a game that saw the Bears flirt with 60 points, Burden was limited to 5 catches and 63 yards.

Better days are ahead for Burden, and I am very much still in on both him and fellow disappointment Colston Loveland, but it was a bit concerning seeing him not dominate the playing time in such a back-and-forth affair with Odunze not operating at 100%.

Bhayshul Tuten | RB | Jaguars

Many drafters' favorite mid-round breakout/sleeper running back this season, Bhayshul Tuten's Week 1 role left a lot more question marks than exclamation points. We expected a committee with Chris Rodriguez after the two were listed as co-starters on the first official depth chart, but in a game where the Jaguars dominated from start to finish, it was discouraging to see the pendulum not come close to swinging more in Tuten's direction:

Oh boy. Jags weren't lying about going full RBBC.

Tuten:
- 48.2% snaps
- 53.6% rush attempts
- 40% routes (10)
- 0% RZ rushes
- 0% Goal-to-go snaps

Rodriguez:
- 41.1% snaps
- 21.4% rush attempts
- 48% routes (12)
- 100% RZ rushes
- 100% goal-to-go snaps

Headache.
— Joe Metz (@JoeMetz34) September 14, 2026

We could see Tuten pull away from Rodriguez as the season goes on, but as things currently stand, this backfield is one to avoid in your starting lineup while both remain viable-to-strong bench stashes with contingent upside in a high-powered offense.

Travis Etienne | RB | Saints

After Alvin Kamara was ruled out on Sunday morning, the hope was that newly acquired RB Travis Etienne would be a three-down back in an up-tempo matchup against a susceptible defense.

Multiple of those things proved to be wrong. The game was a slog until the fourth quarter/overtime, and Etienne was not a three-down back. He did soak up the pass-down work in the backfield (48.4% routes, 17.3% target share, 30% TPRR, 9 targets), but it was the base and red-zone work where we saw he took a back seat.

Despite playing only 29.1% of the snaps, RB2 Kendre Miller saw 39.1% of the rush attempts (even with Etienne's 39.1%) and siphoned 100% of the red-zone rush attempts while Etienne was iced in that area of the field.

This raises the question—will Etienne lose this base work and return some of the pass-down usage when Kamara returns? While we obviously don't have the answer after one week, we do have questions ahead of Week 2 that we didn't expect to have before we entered Week 1.