Ask the Experts

September 10, 2020

Who will meet in Super Bowl LV?

KC-NO, but dark horses too

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 meet in Super Bowl LV?

JODY SMITH

Hard to bet against Kansas City representing the AFC once again. If anything, they may be even better in 2020. The NFC looks more wide open, but it would be nice to see Drew Brees get one final shot with the Saints in what should be his final season,

Smith’s work can be seen at FantasyData.com.

SCOTT SACHS

Kansas City should be the favorite again in the AFC. It's possible that Patrick Mahomes will be even better in the next couple of years, especially if CEH lives up to the hype. Their defense/special teams benefit in that most teams are forced to play catch-up late in games making their offense one-dimensional, while their return game is elite with Hardman and Hill. My top 3 NFC contenders include Dallas, Tampa Bay and New Orleans in that order. I'm rooting for TB12 in TB, but Dallas is loaded, hard to pick against them.

Sachs runs Perfect Season Fantasy Football, offering LIVE Talk & Text consulting. He has multiple league championships including 2 perfect seasons. Scott is a past winner of the Fantasy Index Experts Poll and a 2-time winner of the Experts Auction League.

IAN ALLAN

Kansas City, I think, looks very good. They’ve got the quarterback, they’ve got the veterans around him, and I think it will be an advantage in this pandemic-affected season to have everything coming back in place. As for who’ll they’ll be in the big game, I’ll go with the Cowboys. They may benefit from playing in the NFC East, with more easy games. They've got four against the Giants and Washington. The other contenders on the NFC side will be beating up on each other more, possibly helping Dallas secure home-field advantage.

Allan co-founded Fantasy Football Index in 1987. He and fellow journalism student Bruce Taylor launched the first newsstand fantasy football magazine as a class project at the University of Washington. For more than three decades, Allan has written and edited most of the content published in the magazines, newsletters and at www.fantasyindex.com. An exhaustive researcher, he may be the only person in the country who has watched at least some of every preseason football game played since the early 1990s. Allan is a member of the FSTA Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame.

SAM HENDRICKS

Kansas City versus New Orleans. Drew Brees gets one last chance. The Gods favor the Saints in their last moment of glory. Kansas City...well when you are the defending Champs...you are favored until someone knocks you down.

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 and 2018. Follow him at his web site, www.ffguidebook.com.

DAVID DOREY

This could be a very wild season if COVID is an issue at all so flipping a coin - I'd expect the teams that do well and advance are the ones that have a minimum of changes to install and digest through the year. I like the Ravens to advance with that defense that should be even more of a difference-maker this year. The NFC has to favor the Saints trying to get Brees that last Super Bowl win before the team undergoes a lot of change when he leaves.

Dorey co-founded The Huddle.com in 1997. He's ranked every player and projected every game for the last 23 years and is the author of Fantasy Football: The Next Level. David has appeared on numerous radio, television, newspaper and magazines over the last two decades.

JUSTIN ELEFF

When Kansas City looked most out of sorts last year, with Patrick Mahomes hobbled by an ankle and even (briefly) felled by a knee, I kept saying they would win the Super Bowl because having the best quarterback is the very best place to start. Now Mahomes is due for better luck, not worse, and no one else in the league is truly in his league. I can see the arguments for Baltimore and Dallas and New Orleans and others, but all roads still run through K.C., where no lead is ever safe and Mahomes definitely has more rings coming. He gets his second one right away.

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

MICHAEL NAZAREK

Kansas City will beat New Orleans 35-32 in the Super Bowl this season. Patrick Mahomes will be the MVP.

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 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 nearly $30K in recent seasons of the FFPC High Stakes Main Event. www.ffmastermind.com. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.

ANDY RICHARDSON

It's hard to repeat. But am I bold enough to pick any AFC team to rise up and knock off Kansas City? I'm not. I do think the Ravens should clean up in the AFC North, and just maybe they'll be so strong they can seize homefield advantage in the AFC. (Like that matters much in 2020.) But betting against Patrick Mahomes just seems misguided. I think we're going to get the San Francisco-New Orleans title tilt we wanted a year ago in the NFC, and Drew Brees should come out on top.

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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