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Ask the Experts

Which player coming off injury are you least likely to draft?

ASK THE EXPERTS appears weekly from training camp through the Super Bowl with answers to a new question being posted Thursday morning. How the guest experts responded when we asked them: Which player, coming back from injury, are you least likely to draft this season?

DAVID DOREY

Jamaal Charles will go to some other team, even in the 20th round before I would spend anything on him. Two bad knee injuries in consecutive years and over 30 years old. I don’t care what he looks like in training camp.

Dorey is the co-founder and lead NFL analyst for The Huddle and author of Fantasy Football: The Next Level. He has projected and predicted every NFL game and player performance since 1997 and has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, radio and television.

MICHAEL NAZAREK

That is an easy one... Andrew Luck (shoulder surgery) can't even commit to being ready to play in Week 1, so he's off my draft board. I've seen him go as high as the fifth round. That is crazy at this point.

Nazarek is the CEO of Fantasy Football Mastermind Inc. His company offers a preseason draft guide, customizable cheat sheets, a multi-use fantasy drafting program including auction values, weekly in-season fantasy newsletters, injury reports and free NFL news (updated daily) at its newly re-designed web site. He has been playing fantasy football since 1988 and is a four-peat champion of the SI.com Experts Fantasy League, a nationally published writer in several fantasy magazines and a former columnist for SI.com. He's also won in excess of $20K in recent seasons of the FFPC High Stakes Main Event. www.ffmastermind.com. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.

IAN ALLAN

Jamaal Charles is 30 and has had multiple ACL surgeries. He had issues last year with his knee swelling up before Kansas City shut him down (then released him in the offseason). His game was always about quickness and speed, and I think that’s gone. He might be done. Not one of the top 80 running backs on my board.

Allan is a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame. A co-founder of Fantasy Football Index in 1987, he generates most of the writing, player rankings and analysis for that publication. His work can be seen in Fantasy Football Index magazine and also at www.fantasyindex.com.

ALAN SATTERLEE

I am not saying Alshon Jeffery is going to be a complete bust (he certainly has intriguing talent), but there's almost no chance he will be on any of my teams. Jeffery gets a low-end 3rd-round grade in ADP, but to me that's drafting him at his absolute best-case scenario upside. Jeffery has now missed significant time in three of five seasons -- I just don't trust him. In terms of ADP, I would much rather take a high-end running back in the third round and wait to take a receiver coming back in the fourth or fifth. Really, I'd rather have safer receivers later like Jamison Crowder, Golden Tate and Kelvin Benjamin anyway then spend a high pick on Jeffery (Benjamin may not seem "safe" per se but he's safer than Jeffery ultimately in my opinion).

Satterlee is the Fantasy Football Insider for the Charlotte Observer and is syndicated in a few other newspapers in the southeast. Satterlee first started playing fantasy football in 1990.

SCOTT SACHS

Jamaal Charles is always a risky choice. He defines feast or famine, and it's a roll of the dice each and every season whether or not the injury bug bites him. With Denver having an open mind on the running back situation, the sirens may be singing to draft J-Chas, but I'm stuffing my ears with cotton!

With two perfect seasons and multiple league championships to his credit, Sachs runs Perfect Season Fantasy Football, featuring LIVE Talk & Text Advice. He won the 2011 and 2016 Experts Auction League and also the 2012 Fantasy Index Experts Poll.

SAM HENDRICKS

Rob Gronkowski. You are either going to agree or adamantly disagree with this call but there it is. I am tired of drafting him early and him missing half of the season. Over the past four years he has averaged 11.5 games, 55 catches, 850 yards and 7.5 TDs. Great for a draft masters format but tougher when you have to start a decent tight end every week. 2014 and 2015 saw him play in 15 games...great! Last year (and 2013) he had major injuries. He had back surgery in December and appears to be back on track, but fool me once shame on you, fool me twice... Now watch him have a monster 16-game season.

Hendricks is the author of Fantasy Football Guidebook, Fantasy Football Tips and Fantasy Football Basics, all available at ExtraPointPress.com, at all major bookstores, and at Amazon and BN.com. He is a 25-year fantasy football veteran who participates in the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) and finished 7th and 16th overall in the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Football Players Championship (FFPC). He won the Fantasy Index Open in 2013. Follow him at his web site, www.ffguidebook.com.

ANDY RICHARDSON

All of them? I considered saying Sammy Watkins. I somehow won a league last year despite drafting Watkins in the third round, and it's hard to see me risking being burned with him again. But instead I'll go with Adrian Peterson. Great though he's been, he's going to an offense that he seems a poor fit for, he's going to have to compete with other talented backs for carries (and even random fullback and tight end carries near the goal line). And I expect he'll probably get injured again.

Richardson has been a contributing writer and editor to the Fantasy Football Index magazine and www.fantasyindex.com since 2002. His responsibilities include team defense and IDP projections and various site features, and he has run the magazine's annual experts draft and auction leagues since their inception. He previews all the NFL games on Saturdays and writes a wrap-up column on Mondays during the NFL season.

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