David Carr: Packers, Raiders have shots at instant legitimacy, plus a fantasy play for Week 1

It’s Week 1 of the NFL’s 100th season, and the most interesting games are the bookend games, Thursday and Monday, because of the offenses involved and the defenses they’ll be facing.

First, Green Bay and Chicago. Then, Oakland and Denver.

For the Packers, what it comes down to, honestly, is the scheme. With new coach Matt LeFleur, they have a Sean McVay-, Kyle Shanahan-type offense. They’re using condensed formations to create clean releases for their wide receivers, which was a problem for Green Bay last season. Aside from Davante Adams, the Packers struggled big-time getting open against man coverage. They faced a ton of it because of that, an inordinate amount against a veteran quarterback like Aaron Rodgers.

LeFleur is going to make defenses play them differently.

That’s going to tell the whole story – not just the game, but really the rest of the season.

Teams can’t just play man coverage against the Packers, because they’ll get picked, they’ll get out of position. They have to line up and play what I like to call vanilla looks.

If you’re Aaron Rodgers, you see what look they’re in against those tight formations and then you get into the best play possible.

It’s going to be heavy run and a lot of play-action and Aaron doesn’t necessarily like that – he doesn’t like turning his back on the defense. But the stats show that he actually has a better quarterback rating using play-action than he does when dropping back to pass.

So if they can utilize that and his ability to see defenses to get into the right play, they’re going to have much more success than they did last year when they were running static formations and their receivers were struggling to win against man coverage.

They’ll basically have what they have in Los Angeles with the Rams, but instead of Jared Goff, they’re going to have Aaron Rodgers.

That’s not a knock on Jared; there’s just a big difference between where Jared is in his career and where Aaron is in his.

That shifts the pressure to Chuck Pagano, the Bears’ new defensive coordinator. He’s taking over for Vic Fangio, who’s now the Broncos’ head coach.

Fangio is a fantastic defensive coordinator. He’s a guy who really believes that he can guess, based on percentages and tendencies, what play an offense is going to run. He’ll put his guys in position to stop that play, and a lot of times he’s right.

Pagano will be tasked with repeating that against what I think is going to be a much-improved Green Bay Packers scheme. As much as Pagano would like to get into certain things – he likes multiple blitzes, he likes to do different things – he better make sure that he’s right because he can bring a certain blitz and if it doesn’t match up with the look they’re getting from the Packers’ offense, Aaron can score very quickly.

Gruden-Fangio matchup will be one to watch

With the Raiders, they’ve solved a lot of the issues they had last year.

But who do they run into? Vic Fangio.

He’s going to have a good game plan against Jon Gruden and he’s going to get the absolute best out of Von Miller, which is a scary prospect.

Fangio says he doesn’t think Von Miller has even scratched the surface of what he can be. That should concern everyone in the AFC West.

But Antonio Brown is a fantastic talent and as Gruden said, they’re going to find every way known to man to get him the football.

That’s going to be a challenge for the Broncos to figure out where Antonio Brown is lining up every play. But, aside from that, the Raiders have some real weapons now.

Jordy Nelson and Jared Cook were supposed to be their weapons last year. But by the second half of a forgetable season, guys like Marcell Ateman were starting games at wide receiver for the Raiders. This year, they don’t have room for Ateman on the active roster.

This year, Tyrell Williams can take the top off a coverage. He’s also a big body, and Derek Carr loves throwing to those guys. The Raiders have Darren Waller at tight end, and he is going to be sneaky – he could be better than Cook, who was targeted more than anyone on that team last season and caught 68 passes. Josh Jacobs, he’s going to get a lot of touches. He finishes downhill, catches the ball well out of the backfield.

The Raiders have a favorable matchup Monday night, even against Vic Fangio and what he brings to Denver. The Broncos are a good team, but they’re going to have a lot to deal with.

Defense wins championships, and fantasy leagues …

David Carr was talked into joining a fantasy football league a few years ago by his brother, Darren. He won it. His strategy: Pick a defense off the waiver wire each week that had a chance to score points based on its matchup. This week, the choice is the Baltimore Ravens.

The Ravens lost a lot of pieces on defense, but they added Earl Thomas and they’re playing the Miami Dolphins.

The Dolphins basically let everyone go, traded everyone away, and are rebuilding.

Ryan Fitzpatrick is the starting quarterback, but he doesn’t have a left tackle after they traded Laremy Tunsil to Houston. The Dolphins started the week not knowing who was going to play left tackle, which is never a good thing. They got Julien Davenport in the trade, but he has to learn the offense and last season gave up a lot of sacks. Fitzpatrick probably doesn’t feel as good about that starting nod now.

I wouldn’t necessarily think the Ravens were one of the top defenses picked in fantasy drafts after losing (Terrell) Suggs, losing C.J. Mosley, losing Eric Weddle. But this week if the Baltimore defense is available they’re my pick, just based on that matchup.

David Carr answers your questions

David Carr will answer a reader’s question in his column. Submit your questions by email to sports@fresnobee.com (please put “David Carr” in the subject line)