Matthew Freedman's Favorites & Fades: The Best and Worst Plays For Fantasy Football This Week
Fantasy

Matthew Freedman's Favorites & Fades: The Best and Worst Plays For Fantasy Football This Week

Find all of Matthew Freedman's weekly favorites and fades for fantasy football here, in one place.

Published

This is the landing page for Matthew Freedman's Favorites & Fades, his weekly in-season series that publishes each Wednesday of the 2026 NFL regular season. Every week, Freedman produces nine pieces of fantasy football content (an introduction plus eight positional breakdowns) identifying the quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and tight ends he is upgrading and downgrading for the full slate of games. All nine links are collected here and updated each week, so this is the only page you need to bookmark.

Each week, the introduction and two of the eight positional breakdowns are free. The rest of the series is available to FantasyLife+ subscribers.

Use promo code FREEDMAN for 10% off theFantasyLife+ package.

Week 1: Freedman's Favorites & Fades

  • Introduction: It's what it sounds like. Some weeks it will be long. Others, short. If you skip it, you might survive. But will you thrive? Probably, yes. The choice is still yours.
     
  • QB Favorites: The QBs Freedman is moving up his weekly fantasy football rankings, including matchup upgrades against the league's worst pass defenses and scoring upgrades for offenses with high implied team totals.
    • The Best QB Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football
       
  • QB Fades: The QBs Freedman is moving down for a variety of deleterious reasons: Elite pass defenses, low implied totals, ugly weather and injuries to their skill-position players and offensive linemen.
    • The Worst QB Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football
       
  • RB Favorites: The RBs Freedman is upgrading against defenses that surrender the most fantasy points to the position, in backfields that have opened up (potentially due to injury) and as home favorites with a run-heavy game script.
    • The Best RB Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football
       
  • RB Fades: The RBs Freedman is downgrading against defenses that allow the fewest fantasy points to the position, in offenses dealing with injury issues and as road underdogs with a disadvantageous game script.
    • The Worst RB Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football
       
  • WR Favorites: The WRs Freedman is bumping up, with a focus on matchups, implied team totals, vacated target share caused by offensive injuries, defensive secondary injuries and game environment.
    • The Best WR Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football
       
  • WR Fades: The WRs Freedman is pushing down because of matchups, shadow coverage from the league's best cornerbacks, implied team totals, offenses compromised by injury, crowded target trees, etc., etc., etc.
    • The Worst WR Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football
  • TE Favorites: The TEs Freedman is upgrading as streaming options against defenses that can't cover the middle of the field and beneficiaries from teammate injury. (How many more of these do I need to write?)
    • The Best TE Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football
       
  • TE Fades: The TEs Freedman is downgrading as TD-dependent options in bad spots and starters facing linebacker and safety groups that hold up in coverage (Last one. Nailed it. Definitely didn't mail in those last few blurbs).
    • The Worst TE Plays for Week 1 Fantasy Football

How Freedman Builds His Favorites & Fades

Each positional breakdown highlights players moving up or down for three reasons:

  • Betting factors and situational spots: Implied team totals, spreads, home-field advantage, surface and travel splits, divisional trends and historical against-the-spread records for QBs and head coaches.
  • Defensive matchups: Defense-vs.-position data, various dropback and rush data, often impacted by injuries on the opposing side of the ball.
  • Usage expectations: Snap rates, target share, workload and roster changes, depth chart moves and injuries that redistribute opportunity.

The result is a weekly upgrades/downgrades guide that provides insight for season-long, daily fantasy, and Guillotine Leagues™ as well as NFL betting.

Publishing Schedule

The introduction and eight positional breakdowns go live Wednesday during the regular season, and the links on this page are refreshed at that time.

Because the series is written on Monday and Tuesday, injury information is necessarily incomplete at publication. Freedman's updated injury reads appear in his rankings, which follow this schedule:

  • Tuesday AM: Publish
  • Thursday AM: Refresh
  • Thursday PM: Thursday Night Football changes
  • Saturday PM: Update
  • Sunday AM: Revise
  • Sunday PM: Finalize based on news prior to the 1 p.m. ET kickoff

For daily fantasy football news and analysis in between, subscribe to the Fantasy Life Newsletter.

About Matthew Freedman

Matthew Freedman is a fantasy football writer now in his 11th full-time season. As an analyst, Freedman is a seven-time top-20 finisher in rankings accuracy and a long-term profitable player prop bettor. Favorites & Fades is the evolution of the weekly positional breakdown series he has published every season of his career. Browse his full archive of weekly written content.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Freedman's Favorites & Fades publish?

The introduction and all eight positional breakdowns publish on Wednesday each week of the NFL regular season, and this page updates with the new links at the same time.

What is the difference between a favorite and a fade?

A favorite is a player Freedman is upgrading in his weekly rankings relative to consensus. A fade is a player he is downgrading. A fade is not automatically a bench call: It is a signal that a player's range of outcomes has shifted downward for that specific week.

Is Freedman's Favorites & Fades free?

Each week, the introduction and two of the eight positional breakdowns are free. The rest of the series is available to FantasyLife+ subscribers.

What scoring format does the series use?

Half-PPR, unless a piece states otherwise.

Does the series account for injuries?

Yes, both offensive and defensive injuries drive a large share of the weekly upgrades and downgrades. Because the articles are written Monday and Tuesday, late-week injury news is reflected in Freedman's rankings rather than in the articles themselves.

Get the Full Package

To access all of Freedman'sfantasy football rankings, hisweekly written content, theFantasy HQ League Hub, ourweekly player projections and hisNFL Game Model, use promo code FREEDMAN for 10% off theFantasyLife+ package.

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