Carolina receivers, including Tetairoa McMillan, have a great Week 1 matchup against the Bears secondary. David Jensen / Getty ImagesSept. 9, 2026 1:34 pm EDT Updated Adjusted Points Allowed (APA) is a fantasy football matchup metric (DAMN!) that I’ve developed to measure a defense’s true strength of schedule each week by accounting for the quality of the opponents they have faced. These will get stronger and more predictive as the season rolls along – early numbers are more heavily projecting expectations and some 2025 performance.Standard “Points Allowed” metrics aren’t a great way to evaluate the true strength of a matchup on a weekly basis. For instance, if a defense faces poor talent they might appear better than they really are. Conversely, if they’ve faced elite stars in their early games, they might appear more vulnerable to opposing fantasy players. APA solves this by calculating expected fantasy points allowed based on positional matchups, giving you a far more accurate gauge of defensive difficulty.This is a good way to break close ties between similar players for your starting lineup. You should not be benching true fantasy stars because of a low APA mark (e.g. Josh Allen against the Houston Texans in Week 1).How to read the APA rankings