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 for the 2024 season?

DAVID DOREY

My biggest regret is painfully clear. In most years, I am stuck drafting from behind the No. 8 spot. It just always has been that way. But for 2024, it was freakish how often I drew the No. 1 pick. And so on four of my 14 teams to manage, I ended up with Christian McCaffrey. There was no question as to him playing if you recall, he was a game-time scratch for the first Monday night game of the year and then the nightmare kicked off. Recall too that Elijah Mitchell was his primary backup until August 27th when he went onto IR. At first, I had the wrong backup and Jordan Mason went very late by zero-RB drafters scraping anything they could find. Then twice, I missed Mason in drafts when he went within a few picks of where I convinced myself I could get him. And the final time he was on the waiver wire before the season started, and I put in a bid for $350/$1000 feeling certain I was overpaying and no, someone else bid $400 on the SF backup even though McCaffrey was slated to start Week 1. So while I own Guerendo in all cases, I missed out on Mason. And each of those four teams are still below .500 because effectively I had no players taken prior to the end of Round 2. The lesson is do not take an overused No. 1 back from the previous year. And at least make sure they have a clear and available backup. Very painful year on those teams.

Dorey co-founded The Huddle.com in 1997. He's ranked every player and projected every game for the last 26 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.

MIKE NAZAREK

Drafting Kyler Murray as a step below the elite quarterbacks, but a step above the "safe" quarterbacks. Yeah, he was anything but safe this season, disappointing more often than not! Backing him up with Kirk Cousins was also not a good move in one league. Everyone out there complaining that Josh Allen had a poor game or two should have tried to choose between Murray and Cousins on a weekly basis to see what a real headache is! LOL.

Nazarek is the CEO of Fantasy Football Mastermind Inc, celebrating 29 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 website, 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 $36K in recent seasons of the FFPC High Stakes Main Event. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.

SCOTT PIANOWSKI

I didn't see this Saquon Barkley season coming. I thought he would have difficulty scoring short touchdowns and that's proven true (Jalen Hurts owns that job), but somehow Barkley has 13 touchdowns from an average of 28.5 yards. I can't remember a recent fantasy season where the older running backs were this much of a home run. Some of the other guys I did land on, but I never strongly considered Barkley in August and that's been painful.

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.

JASON WOOD

Christian McCaffrey is shaping up to be one of the worst consensus 1st-overall picks in fantasy football history, and I deeply regret not taking his preseason injuries and complete lack of participation more seriously. I find little solace in knowing that much of the industry shared my indifference because, ultimately, I am responsible for my own rankings and projections. While it’s important not to overvalue preseason injuries—especially with potentially elite players who can still help you win if they return to form a few weeks into the regular season—McCaffrey’s situation pushed the limits of our collective patience. He was shut down for the entire summer, leaving us with nothing but vague coaching and GM platitudes to balance against the obvious risks.

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.

ANDY RICHARDSON

It is a light week for answers; clearly people's regrets are so raw and painful they can't even discuss them. So I will provide a whole bunch of them.

In most leagues, Saquon Barkley was either a second-round pick or a late first-rounder. So I think he'd have to go down as the biggest regret for anyone who didn't draft him but could have.

There have been so many disappointing wide receivers. I personally was not in on rookies like Marvin Harrison and Malik Nabers, but those guys were second- and third-round picks in a lot of leagues. There is doubtless a lot of regret.

Looking at the players I selected Rachaad White over -- Josh Jacobs, Joe Mixon, Alvin Kamara -- just painful. The only saving grace was that I protected that pick with Bucky Irving, but White helped me dig an early hole in a couple of leagues that Irving was not able to fully get me out of.

Sam LaPorta helped me win a TE-premium league last year, and I could think of zero reason why he wouldn't be just as good or better in his second season. So I selected him in the second round in a couple of leagues. Trey McBride is just one of the players at his position who would have been a much better choice.

But looking at my most important league, the biggest regret is easy for me: Patrick Mahomes. I selected him in the fourth round, thinking I'd landed one of the top few fantasy quarterbacks, and instead I got the key reason why I suffered a few narrow early-season losses, especially because my backup in that league, Baker Mayfield, was dramatically outperforming him on my bench. James Cook was the player I would/should have taken there had I not made the mistake of drafting a quarterback early. Never. Again.

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 writes a weekly gambling newsletter, Index Bets, during the NFL season and also previews all the games on Saturdays and writes a wrap-up column on Mondays.