Why do my teams start out slowly?
 

Thoroughly unscientific impression - my FOF teams, even ones I care about and actually tend to, often start the season more poorly than would be expected.

My best guess is that I'm doing something wrong with preseason, and my cohesion is messed up by having a lot of starters on the bench during the last exhibition game(s). Past that, I don't think I have any further ideas.

If it's true that a random QS team is more likely to lose in Week 1 than in Week 10... anyone have any theories why that might be so?

Impossible to say without knowing what you do with game planning. Are you changing the plan, tweeking it each week?

From an also unscientific, limited sample, I would agree with your best guess -- my feeling* is that if I seat key players in PS4 and PS5, specially OL and defense, the respective unit(s) tend to start slow.

I'm not sure what the penalty is for it, but do a lot of your key starters have "Seasonal Rust?"

You suck in Week 2 in IHOF for the last 15 years. Scheduling issue? (OVL = .633)

	wins	losses	ties	pct
1	11	4	0	0.73333
2	6	9	0	0.40000
3	9	6	0	0.60000
4	11	4	0	0.73333
5	8	7	0	0.53333
6	9	1	0	0.90000
7	9	6	0	0.60000
8	12	3	0	0.80000
9	5	5	0	0.50000
10	5	5	0	0.50000
11	10	5	0	0.66667
12	7	7	1	0.50000
13	12	2	1	0.83333
14	10	4	1	0.70000
15	8	6	1	0.56667
16	8	6	1	0.56667
17	9	5	1	0.63333

To add to that, week 2 (and 12, 14 and 16) in FOF are always played against teams from the other conference. And the schedule puts them opposite the same interconference opponents every 4 seasons: for example, every regular season Chesapeake vs Maassluis game has been played in week 14.