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 the Super Bowl this season?
SAM HENDRICKS
The Buffalo Bills are the most talented team in a stacked, tough AFC. The experience they have recently gained with their playoff losses just motivates them to get over the Super Bowl hurdle. The team has upgraded through the 2022 draft and put it all together behind the best quarterback in the NFL at the moment, Josh Allen. And...Green Bay Packers from the NFC. Aaron Rodgers will wheel and deal and scrape the Pack back to a Super Bowl. Their path is clear because the NFC North is so weak. The NFC playoff picture is pretty murky other than the Rams returning.
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.
MIKE NAZAREK
Buffalo Bills 31, Tampa Bay Buccaneers 24. Super Bowl MVP quarterback Josh Allen leads the high-powered Bills offense past the G.O.A.T. Tom Brady in an entertaining championship game. After the game, Brady retires again... then unretires again a few months later.
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
Two years ago, Tom Brady left the New England Patriots shockingly for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and won the Super Bowl. Last year, Matthew Stafford left the Detroit Lions -- where he couldn't win a playoff game allegedly -- for the Los Angeles Rams, and he won the Super Bowl. This year, Russell Wilson will make it a third straight year a talented veteran signal-caller will change teams and lead his squad to the title. Denver's roster is laden with talent but had been hamstrung by awful quarterbacking. Wilson has always been an elite player, hamstrung by an old-school, conservative head coach. This year we'll see how a motivated Wilson can dominate when he's unshackled. As for the NFC, it's wide open, but credit to the Eagles, who have arguably the deepest and most talented roster on both sides of the ball as anyone in the conference. Their offensive line is arguably the league's best, and they've given Jalen Hurts the alpha receiver he so desperately missed in 2021.
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.
IAN ALLAN
If the first Super Bowl had been played a year earlier (after the 1965 season, rather than in 1966) the matchup would have been Packers versus Chargers. A repeat of that game looks good. The Packers have some receiver issues to figure out, but that’s otherwise a very good, well-rounded team. I think the defense is better, and I think they’ll do more with their running backs this year. With the Chargers, I like that they have top-5 players at both of the key positions (quarterback, left tackle) and they have them both on cost-controlling rookie contracts. That’s allowed them to spend elsewhere on the roster. (On the downside, they’re in the league’s toughest division, with the potential to not even make the playoffs.)
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.
DAVID DOREY
Have to love the chance that the Bills finally advance to the Super Bowl. Their team is just so complete and stocked with talent on both sides of the ball. They could potentially own the best offense and defense. For the NFC it is less clear. Each Super Bowl usually has a dark horse team in it, and I'd wager that will come from the NFC where you could justify -- or criticize -- a half-dozen teams as decent candidates. I think I'd come down on Philly as the more likely. That'd be an interesting Super Bowl to be sure; I'd like the Bills to finally get the ring.
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 PIANOWSKI
I love the Chargers this year, a deep roster built in part because the franchise quarterback is still on his first contract. The AFC West will be a gauntlet, but the Chargers have the best depth in the conference. I'll give you a weak vote for Philadelphia in the NFC, though I am not sold yet on Jalen Hurts as a real-life QB. Again, this is a nod towards roster depth, on both sides of the ball. The last game of the year: Chargers 26, Eagles 20.
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.
SCOTT SACHS
This Thursday's primo matchup between the Bills and the Rams to kickoff the NFL season looks like a preview to Super Bowl LVll. Held in Arizona this time, the Duel in the Desert will most likely feature a Buffalo and L.A. rematch. The true contenders in the NFC is a small select group, while the AFC is loaded with contenders at least 10 deep. Buffalo has progressed each year under Josh Allen and I'm pretty confident in choosing them. Los Angeles, however, may be prone to Super Bowl letdown. While they may be best on paper, repeating as champions on the field is incredibly difficult.
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.
ANDY RICHARDSON
It's hard not to believe it's finally the Bills' turn. The AFC West should be a season-long dogfight where none of those teams emerges as the top seed, because they'll all be beating each other. I'm not sure any of the teams in the AFC South are good, and the Bengals are the only team in the AFC North that doesn't seem to have major flaws. The AFC playoffs should go through Buffalo, and the Bills will make it back to the Super Bowl. In the NFC, all these teams look flawed, too, but top to bottom, the Packers should have the talent to run away from their division, and perhaps they can finally get back to the Super Bowl. I'll go Bills-Packers.
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.