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 who changed teams this offseason are you most interested in?
SCOTT PIANOWSKI
Russell Wilson is getting an offensive remodeling at just the right time, surrounded by loads of skill talent (and perhaps better scheming) in Denver. Remember how badly Tom Brady needed an upgrade at the end of his New England tenure? The Buccaneers fit Brady like a glove, and Wilson will likely get the same boost from the Broncos. I realize the quarterback position is loaded and you can do well at pretty much any price point, but Wilson is a proactive target for me as we near the start of August draft season.
Pianowski has been with Yahoo Sports since 2008, covering a variety of sports. On the rare occasions when the computer is turned off, he enjoys word games, poker, music, film, game theory, and a variety of condiments. He lives in suburban Detroit. Pianowski was inducted into the FSWA Hall of Fame in 2021.
MIKE NAZAREK
I'm excited to see Tyreek Hill in a Dolphins uniform to see if he can help take Tua Tagovailoa to the next level as a starting quarterback in the NFL, as well as help him become a solid fantasy starter.
Nazarek is the CEO of Fantasy Football Mastermind Inc, celebrating 25 years online! His company offers a preseason draft guide, customizable cheat sheets, a multi-use fantasy drafting program including auction values, weekly in-season newsletters, injury reports and free NFL news (updated daily) at its web site, www.ffmastermind.com. 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. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.
JASON WOOD
This was a whirlwind year for wide receiver movement, with Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, A.J. Brown, Amari Cooper, Marquise Brown, Robert Woods, Christian Kirk, and JuJu Smith-Schuster all finding new homes. But Allen Robinson is the receiver I'm most excited about because he so clearly goes from a suboptimal organization to the reigning Super Bowl champion Rams. Robinson is a perfect fit as the No.2 in the Los Angeles passing attack; he's better than Robert Woods and should enjoy single coverage most of the time with Cooper Kupp commanding defensive backs' attention on the other side. Matthew Stafford is exponentially better than Robinson's usual signal callers. The stars are aligned for a monster season for the veteran.
Wood is Senior Editor at Footballguys.com and has been with the company since its start in 2000. For more than 20 years, Footballguys has provided rankings, projections, and analysis to help fantasy managers dominate their leagues.
LENNY PAPPANO
Marquise Brown's fantasy stock gets a boost with the move from Baltimore to Arizona. The Cardinals project to throw it more than the Ravens. And Kyler Murray looks like an upgrade over Lamar Jackson based on their play over the past couple of seasons. (Brown and Murray are teammates from their college days at Oklahoma where the pair flourished. Brown posted 57-1,095-7 and 75-1,318-10 lines those 2 years). It’ll be a crowded pass-catching corps after DeAndre Hopkins returns from his 6-game suspension. But Brown is capable of getting off to a hot start – and then keeping that momentum rolling. Consider him a borderline WR2 with big spike-week potential.
Pappano is the owner and operator of Draft Sharks, founded in 1999.
IAN ALLAN
For PPR scoring, I’ve got only one transplant player in my top 40: Davante Adams, just outside the top 10. While Hunter Renfrow and Darren Waller are nice players, I am very confident Adams will be the most productive player there – a top-10 receiver. Tyreek Hill and A.J. Brown are also good wide receivers, but with the situations they’re moving into, I wouldn’t be thinking about either of those guys in the first three rounds of a 12-team draft (unlikely, in fact, that I’d ever select them in the fourth round).
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
Russell Wilson by a mile. The versatile quarterback steps into the perfect situation in Denver. Point one, he is the man. The offense will run through him and be tailored for him and his skill sets. So no fighting over balls or touches like running backs or wide receivers who changed teams and have to make the case to "throw me the damn ball". Point two, he finally has a decent two-headed running back monster in Melvin Gordon and Javonte Williams. Can you say breathing room. Point three and perhaps most importantly he has good OL. And finally he has enough talent at wide receiver to spread the ball around. Not saying it's better than his old team but Jeudy, Sutton and Tim Patrick can carry the load.
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 30-year fantasy football veteran who participated 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.
SCOTT SACHS
Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams, and AJ Brown are the obvious choices in the top-tier wide receiver group. However, in the tier below, it will be very interesting to see how Hollywood Brown, Russell Gage, and Allen Robinson impact their new teams. In Arizona, Hopkins is out 6 games and Kirk is gone, so college BFFs Kyler Murray and Hollywood Brown get to reunite, hoping for the same kind of magic that college buds Burrow & Chase enjoyed in 2021. Russell Gage is in the perfect spot at the perfect time, opening up as the No. 2 with the GOAT slinging him a bunch of vacated targets that Gronk & Godwin would have benefitted from. New Ram, Allen Robinson, also moves opposite Cooper Kupp, again the perfect team at the perfect time. I'm getting my shares of all three!
With 2 perfect seasons and multiple league championships to his credit, Sachs runs Perfect Season Fantasy Football, featuring LIVE Talk & Text Advice. He is a 3-time Winner of the Fantasy Index Experts Auction League, as well as a previous Winner of the Fantasy Index Experts Poll.
PAUL CHARCHIAN
I'm most interested to see how much Tyreek Hill's efficacy changes under Tua Tagovailoa. In Kansas City, Hill was perfectly paried with Patrick Mahomes' deep ball prowess. Will we find out that Hill was more important to Mahomes than vice versa? Can Hill's freakish athleticism offset Tua's modest arm? There are dozens of fascinating questions to be answered.
Charchian is the CEO at GuillotineLeagues.com. Guillotine Leagues are a new way to play in which the lowest-scoring team each week gets chopped from the league, and all the players go to the waiver wire. Charchian was inducted into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.
ANDY RICHARDSON
Lots of candidates, but I'll go with Russell Wilson. We've seen this story before with the Broncos, and it resulted in two Super Bowl appearances and a win with Peyton Manning. I don't know if Wilson is on that level; maybe there's been a decline. But hard to deny he was limited at times in a Seattle offense that didn't cater to his strengths, while Denver will have no such limitations. Very interested to see who becomes his favorite target among the pass catchers, and where the value lies. AFC West is going to be a lot of fun to watch this 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.