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Ask the Experts

What is your biggest 2023 fantasy regret?

Pollard, Lawrence, Dotson among letdowns

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 is your biggest fantasy regret this season?

MIKE NAZAREK

This is an easy one. I firmly believed that Trevor Lawrence would take the next step and become an elite fantasy producer. While the team has won, he's obviously not an elite talent for fantasy, at least not with his current group of receiving targets. Fortunately, I only drafted him in one money league, but he will most certainly cost me a chance to win that league this season.

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.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI

I would like to burn everything I wrote about Jahan Dotson before the season. I thought Dotson had a good chance to lead Washington in touchdown catches, and a plausible chance to be their No. 1 receiver. Despite a pass-heavy Commanders offense and a quasi-breakout year from quarterback Sam Howell, Dotson has mostly been invisible.

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.

LUKE WILSON

That's definitely been Christian Watson for me. Partially because I got him in literally every single league and partially because I was routinely taking him in the fourth round, but primarily because of how just everything that I thought would work in his favor (transition from curmudgeon Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love, lack of viable alternatives in the passing game, etc.) was just wrong. I knew Watson was high-risk, but that isn't helping my broken heart mend any faster.

Wilson is a Fantasy Index contributor who also hosts the FI Podcast and weighs in with fantasy advice regularly in the FI Discord server. He's not the former Seahawks tight end, but he is the proud father of two large boys.

JASON WOOD

Tony Pollard. He was my No. 5-ranked running back and drafting him in the second half of the first round was an easy choice. As fantasy analysts, we all make lots of incorrect calls, but Pollard stands out because his poor performance has come despite the dominoes falling in Dallas the way I expected. Dallas is a legitimate playoff contender. They're currently have the 2nd-highest scoring offense in the NFL, the defense keeps them in positive game scripts, and head coach Mike McCarthy believes in running the ball. On top of that, there's no rookie breakout tailback who's taking away snaps. He's playing over 70% of team snaps, yet ranks RB26 on a per-game basis. He's the one piece of the Cowboys offense not performing well.

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

I think I need to do a better of recognizing that some of the teams I think are going to be unusably awful will be better than I’m expecting. Heading into this year, I saw the Cardinals, Bucs, Rams and Texans as the league’s four worst teams. Those were the offenses that I didn’t have much interest in; when the whole offense is bad, the individual stats don’t tend to be great. But all four of those offenses have exceeded my expectations, and all four had some players who’ve been valuable fantasy assets. I need to be more open to the likelihood that some of these later-round dart throws are going to land.

Allan is the senior writer for Fantasy Football Index magazine. He is a member of the FSGA’s Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame. He is an avid runner, swimmer and cyclist.

SAM HENDRICKS

Drake London. I thought he was going to continue a good connection with his quarterback Desmond Ridder. The last five games of 2022 he caught an average of 6 balls for 70 yards. So much for the connection as Ridder is not even starting. And London looks like a shell of himself.

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

Washington's Jahan Dotson is a puzzle. His quarterback throws more than any other, yet his production has been sporadic. Dotson finally had 2 straight good weeks, flashing 12/177/2 combined, then this past game put up a 0 on just 2 targets. In a similar theme, Jaxon Smith-Njigba seemed like he was poised for a breakout with 3 consecutive productive games, but came up with just 9 points this week. In the sleeper category, now that Kyler Murray is back, hopefully Michael Wilson can come close to his spectacular 26-point Week 4 outburst sometime in the near future. With Hollywood Brown garnering CB1 attention, Wilson has a potential mismatch against most defenders.

With 2 perfect seasons and multiple league championships to his credit, Scott 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.

DAVID DOREY

With about 14 teams to manage, there are more than one. The worst for me was Miles Sanders. Comes off a good year with the Eagles, heads to Carolina where they want to throw the ball to him as a receiver out of the backfield AND let him be the No. 1 running back. Chuba Hubbard was already old news and just a backup. D'Onta Foreman played great there in 2022. But -- that has not happened. I had a lot of Van Jeffersons picked up at the end of drafts as well, but that was a cheap throwaway. Sanders is a pick I wish I could make over again.

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

Trevor Lawrence is the one that really stands out. I have a team where nearly all my picks have been even better than I anticipated, most notably A.J. Brown, Keenan Allen and Sam LaPorta. But Lawrence, who I felt sure would move up near the level of the top quarterbacks selected in the first 4-5 rounds, has been a weekly dud. Some of it is touchdowns, with the team running in more scores than I expected. But it's not just a fantasy issue; Lawrence himself just hasn't elevated his level of play or the offense. Disappointing. and the one negative on a team that could otherwise be a juggernaut. The other one who shows up on more of my teams is George Pickens, but we've talked about him a lot this year. It's not all his fault -- he can't throw the ball to himself -- but it's been weird the number of recent games where he's just not doing anything.

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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