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: What were your best and worst calls of the 2020 NFL season?
DAVID DOREY
My best call was Derrick Henry, though even I did not project him to break 2,000 rushing yards. He was a beast nearly every week and usually was there in the later part of the first round or even early second. You cannot understate the impact of having a player that can crank out 25- to 30-fantasy point games. My worst -- and it hit me on a lot of my teams -- was being high on Cam Akers. I think he is getting up to speed over the last month or so, but running backs do not usually take long to perform well and it was clear he was not considered ready for the first half of the season. And that killed fantasy teams that had drafted him expecting a fantasy starter.
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.
SCOTT SACHS
In the Fantasy Index Experts Auction League, a few I hit pretty big on included Tom Brady, Nick Chubb, Kareem Hunt, Jarvis Landry and Justin Jefferson. Some merely good ones included Baker Mayfield, Antonio Gibson, Gronk, Kupp. Total whiff on Kittle, Edelman, Jimmy G., Sony Michel, Parris Campbell. In a Twitter FFB Analyst league, I traded away McCaffrey for Nick Chubb around Thanksgiving week, very proud about that one. The worst move I made in that league involved having Rivers stashed on my roster all year to use during the bye week for Patrick Mahomes, but on Sunday morning I decided to drop Rivers and add Derek Carr, who proceeded to have one of his worst games of the season.
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
Aaron Rodgers in the second half of the 2019 season averaged 210 passing yards per game, with 10 TDs. The Packers brought back the same coaching staff and didn’t get him any pass-catching help. Instead, they traded up to select his replacement in the first round. So Rodgers wasn’t a guy I was even thinking about at all as a top-10 quarterback. And I still don’t understand how or why it happened. I had a few good selections as well, but those aren’t as fun.
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.
MICHAEL NAZAREK
Entering the season, I ranked Saquon Barkley as the No. 2 RB in PPR formats. That was not a very good decision. On the flip side, in Week 16, several subscribers doubted my top 10 ranking of Dolphins RB Myles Gaskin coming off the reserve COVID-19 list. I personally spoke to a few of them and convinced them to start him. As a result, they won fantasy championships that week when Gaskin produced 20-plus points against the Raiders with two scores.
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.
SAM HENDRICKS
Best Calls: Aaron Rodgers, Stefon Diggs, Darren Waller and Calvin Ridley in most drafts. Worst Call: Zeke Elliott.
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.
ANDY RICHARDSON
Convinced that Patrick Mahomes would be a significant weekly edge at quarterback, I drafted him in the second round of multiple leagues. Mahomes was great and had a number of big weeks, of course, but was not dramatically (if at all) better than a number of quarterbacks selected three rounds later (Allen, Murray, Watson), six rounds later (Rodgers) or not drafted at all (Herbert). I will never select a quarterback in the first two rounds again. For good calls, I'll go with Calvin Ridley and T.J. Hockenson, guys who worked out very nicely all season.
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.