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Ask the Experts

Which Week 1 performance will be a fantasy?

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 Week 1 performance will turn out to be a fantasy -- not likely to be repeated going forward?

JUSTIN ELEFF

Austin Hooper will definitely not be scoring any more 88-yard touchdowns, but you knew that already. So give me Jared Goff instead, even though I have been arguing for him all summer. It's not that I didn't like what I saw from Goff on Sunday; I did. It's not that I don't believe in him long-term; I really do. It's just that football is a game of adjustments, and when better defenses (the Colts are tissue-soft) come around to believing they have to defend the Rams' downfield passing game, Goff's numbers will come back to earth some. That could be good news for Todd Gurley, and it might help Cooper Kupp as much as it hurts Sammy Watkins. But 2018 is more Goff's breakout year.

Eleff hosts the Fantasy Index Podcast, available in the iTunes Store now. He has worked for Fantasy Index off and on all century.

JODY SMITH

While Tarik Cohen is in a good spot to earn a role as the change-of-pace runner and third-down back, he's highly unlikely to come anywhere near the breakout performance he had in Week 1. Cohen produced 113 yards of offense and a touchdown on only 28 snaps. He touched the ball 13 times in those 28 snaps and put up an unheard of 25.3 PPR points -- that's just under one point per snap. That's an unsustainable rate for all but the most elite players in football, but will be especially difficult for a guy listed at 5-foot-6 and 179 pounds to repeat.

Smith the co-owner of Gridironexperts and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association. Jody was named the Most Accurate Fantasy Football Expert by Fantasypros in 2012.

SAM HENDRICKS

Kareem Hunt. He averaged 8.7 yards per carry. Had 246 total yards and scored three times. All in all 41 points in PPR leagues. All against a befuddled and incoherent NE defense. It was a fantasy. A perfect storm. Is he good. Yes! Is he going to be that good in any other games this season.....doubt it.

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.

IAN ALLAN

Alex Smith put up the big numbers at New England, but I thought for most of the game, he looked very much like the Alex Smith we’ve been watching for years — throwing a lot of check-down balls underneath. In his four years in Kansas City he’s averaged 222 passing yards, with 76 touchdown passes in 61 starts. Among quarterbacks who’ve started at least half the time, he ranks next-to-last in both categories (ahead of only his former teammate, Colin Kaepernick). I think that’s what he is. Smith is not a candidate to be a breakout quarterback, I think — won’t be a top-15 quarterback. I still view him as a below-average backup quarterback in typical fantasy leagues. If he was starting the season today, I would look for about 235-240 passing yards per game, with about 23 TDs.

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.

MICHAEL NAZAREK

Steelers tight end Jesse James won't repeat his two-TD performance again in 2017, especially since he will eventually lose the starting job to Vance McDonald in the coming weeks.

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.

SCOTT SACHS

When you consider the tight end position for fantasy, who were the top choices going into Week 1? One would have expected Gronk, Jimmy Graham, Reed, Kelce, Eifert, Ertz, of course, but Austin Hooper? It was definitely a fantasy shocker, especially considering Atlanta has five primary weapons in Matt Ryan's aerial arsenal, three very productive wide receivers, plus two running backs who can both catch the ball out of the backfield. So as awesome as Week 1 was for Hooper (2 catches for 128 yards, including an 88-yard TD that featured a truly exquisite stiff-arm), let's relax and remind ourselves that ever since the retirement of Tony Gonzalez, the position for the Falcons is utilized primarily for blocking and remains an afterthought in their passing game.

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.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI

Alex Smith and 300-yard games do not go hand in hand. Kansas City, remember, pushed their chips into the middle on draft day, selecting Smith's eventual replacement. Although there are some nice puzzle pieces in this Kansas City offense -- and I'm completely over the moon for Kareem Hunt -- I still don't consider Smith a top 20 fantasy quarterback. The offense isn't proactive enough, and Smith isn't aggressive enough.

Pianowski has been playing fantasy football for 20 years and writing about it for 17. He joined Yahoo! Sports in 2008 and has been blogging 24/7 on RotoArcade.com ever since.

ALAN SATTERLEE

I like a lot of the players that had big blow-up weeks this week and see their success continuing in general. If I had to pick one that won't I’ll go with Nelson Agholor. There was a lot of hype on Agholor coming out of the preseason and no doubt he lived up to that in Week 1 totaling a 6/86/1 stat-line. I do think Agholor will continue to be a solid WR4/5 player for depth and bye-week options, but he’s isn’t going to finish as WR6 (as he is now) or come close to his full-season projection of 96 receptions, 1,376 yards and 16 TDs. Agholor is still the 3rd (at best) or 4th target in the passing game for Philadelphia. He’d be a good sell-high candidate right now before this smooths out. The Eagles come into a fairly difficult stretch of games starting this week at Kansas City, before facing the Giants, Chargers, Cardinals and Panthers over the next five weeks.

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.

ANDY RICHARDSON

Shane Vereen caught 9 balls for 51 yards last week, and no question he'll be part of the offense -- maybe play more than New York's conventional running backs, who won't go anywhere behind that line. But Vereen was having a pretty blah night until catching 5 passes on a last-minute drive that I'm not even sure why the Giants bothered with and that the Cowboys weren't really defending. Vereen is a functional third-down back and desperation PPR option, but that's about it. Among No. 3 wide receivers who caught 2 TDs in Week 1, I'll take Kenny Golladay but pass on Bennie Fowler.

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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