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: Who will be the MVP of the fantasy playoffs?
SCOTT SACHS
Philip Rivers is my choice as the AFC West has morphed into a hotly contested race with the top 3 teams all knotted up at 6-6. The suddenly surging Chargers face three suspect secondaries in Washington, KC, and the J-E-T-S in the next three weeks. Their balanced aerial and ground attack features underrated No. 1 wideout Keenan Allen who seems to get better each week. Add in their top TE tandem of Gates/Henry, receivers Benjamin, Williams and Williams, plus Ekeler, Gordon -- all give Rivers a myriad of weapons against any defense, let alone the upcoming underachievers.
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.
ALAN SATTERLEE
I'll hit on a few. The first is players on Atlanta and New Orleans. These two teams will play each other twice in three weeks, in what should be high-scoring affairs. Alvin Kamara should deliver titles. I also think Devonta Freeman will finish up strong. The Falcons and Saints also have nothing but all dome games or warm weather left. I also think Ben Roethlisberger could help deliver some fantasy titles. I am sticking with Roethlisberger this week against Baltimore with Jimmy Smith out, plus Big Ben is on fire and at home. Week 15 should be a shootout against the Patriots (again at home for Roethlisberger). Then in Week 16, it's on the road but against the Texans who allow the 2nd-most fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks.
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.
IAN ALLAN
I think the Steelers are sitting on the top running back and a top wide receiver. They really lean on LeVeon Bell and Antonio Brown, and three of their final four games are at home. Baltimore has a good defense, but Bell has had a lot of good games against — over 120 rushing yards in his last two. Plus he’s catching a ton of passes. And Brown right now is playing about as well as any wide receiver ever has.
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.
DAVID DOREY
My guess would be Cam Newton with three straight home games now – MIN, GB and TB. Devin Funchess should throw into that after the MIN game clears. Panthers have all home games which means all good weather.
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.
JUSTIN ELEFF
Championships tend to be won by owners who both got a little lucky and never stopped paying attention to how the season was unfolding. The answer here is just as likely to be a late-year free agent as that difference-maker you took in Round 1 (Antonio Brown) or Round 2 (Todd Gurley) or Round 7-ish (Russell Wilson). So why not a tight end, and why not Arizona latecomer Ricky Seals-Jones? RSJ has been targeted at least 5 times in each of the last three weeks, and his closing schedule could hardly be better: home against a Titans defense that just coughed up 79 yards and a touchdown to fellow wait-who-again TE Stephen Anderson, then at Washington (currently allowing the fifth-most fantasy points to opposing tight ends), then home against the Giants (first-most, by a lot). And the best part? He might still be available in some leagues.
Eleff hosts the Fantasy Index Podcast, available in the iTunes Store now. He has worked for Fantasy Index off and on all century.
SCOTT PIANOWSKI
In a year where so many big-name wideouts have been hard to trust, Keenan Allen has turned it on at the right time. I expect him to feast on his remaining schedule, helping drive the surging Chargers to the playoffs.
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.
ANDY RICHARDSON
Things look great for Philip Rivers and Keenan Allen the rest of the way: Washington, Kansas City, the Jets and (for those who have Week 17 games) the Raiders. Brutal matchup for Cam Newton with the Vikings this week, but he's home against the Packers and Bucs the next two weeks after that. Alex Smith and Travis Kelce already bounced one of my teams last week; I'm still not over it (what with Smith's ridiculous 70-yard run the difference in a 5-point loss). They have the Chargers in Week 15, which is bad, but at least it's home, and Week 14 and 16 are great: Raiders and Dolphins.
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.