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 nobody (or modest fantasy performer) will be a star in Week 18?
PAUL CHARCHIAN
Over the last three games, Arizona's slumping defense is giving up 200 total yards per game to running backs. The 49ers are effectively locked into the No. 2 seed, and I don't expect to see much of Christian McCaffrey. That should open the door to promising rookie Jordan Mason. He scored his first NFL touchdown last week, he's averaging 6.6 yards per carry, and he's PFF's third-ranked running back.
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.
IAN ALLAN
I like Jarrett Stidham. I think he’s going to put up top-5 quarterbacking numbers. I understand the “dance with what brung ya” mentality, but I would be willing to waiver-wire Stidham ahead of any number of quarterbacks who have started most of the first 17 weeks. I think Josh McDaniels can scheme up a passing game, and I think Stidham can operate it. He showed that last week, with 365 yards and 3 TDs. He’s got nice weapons, with Adams leading the way and Waller looking like an elite tight end again. Kansas City allows a lot of passing production, including a league-high 32 TD passes. KC will score a bunch of points itself, of course, but I consider that to be a plus — should be a higher-scoring game.
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
Give me Trevor Lawrence at home facing the same Titans that he logged 369 passing yards and three scores on in Week 14. This time he's at home and a win means the Jaguars reach the playoffs for the first time since 2017. The Titans are still stout against the run and encourage opponents to throw against their biggest weakness -- covering receivers.
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.
ANDY RICHARDSON
Buffalo's trade-deadline exchange with the Colts of Zack Moss for Nyheim Hines never made much sense to me. Moss had at times looked like Buffalo's best running back, and the Bills barely used Hines after bringing him in. In any case, the Jonathan Taylor injury opened the door for Moss to be the lead back, and he's been a very effective runner for them the past three weeks, despite the general offensive ineptitude. Now he faces the league's sorriest run defense, or at least one of the two along with Chicago, and both teams should be running the ball, killing the clock and streaking into the offseason. Moss going for 100-plus rushing yards and a touchdown or two would not surprise me at all.
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.