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 has been the biggest disappointment? Can he turn things around?
SAM HENDRICKS
A. J. Brown...ugh. Drafted him late in the 1st round. Expected WR10 at least. He has averaged 11 FP in his eight of nine possible games. Unfortunately it has been a boom and bust (mainly bust) with three double digit FP games (two of which were 20+) and five single digit days. To be honest I think it is the Philadelphia OC to blame. Too painful to talk about actually especially since he is on my Fantasy Football Players Championship Main Event team. Slight but not much hope of a resurgence. He is getting double-teamed while DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert run free. Yuck!
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
As there are so many worthy candidates for underachievement shout-outs, I'll only focus on players warming the bench in my primary league, where I'm currently 8-2. Let's start with DK Metcalf. He has just 1 TD in the last 4 weeks and has been inconsistent overall. Courtland Sutton has regressed. He has been lapped by Bo Nix's college teammate, Troy Franklin, and has just 1 TD and 2 single-digit outputs in his last 6 games. Zay Flowers had a great first 2 games, but laid an enormous egg with just 3.3 points in week 3. Since then, he has been in the 10+ point range, with no TDs since week 1. In his last 3 games combined, Jordan Mason produced a total of 14.5 fantasy points with 0 TDs. He had his chance when Aaron Jones got hurt, but Jones is back now. Any hope for improvement for any of these players the rest of the season? Although Metcalf has a great match-up against Cincinnati this week, as does Flowers against Cleveland, for now those two will only be in my lineup if a starter is hurt or on a bye.
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. Follow on X: https://x.com/ffbcoach
MICHAEL NAZAREK
Hands down, it has to be WR A.J. Brown. He may be the team's WR1, but they can win without using him and he knows it. I believe he will be traded in the offseason. In the meantime, I'm stuck with him on multiple fantasy teams this season.
Nazarek is the CEO of Fantasy Football Mastermind Inc, celebrating 30 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 $40K in recent seasons of the FFPC High Stakes Main Event. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.
IAN ALLAN
I thought Darnell Mooney would be a solid depth wide receiver -- probably a top 40 player at his position. He's Atlanta's fastest wide receiver, and Michael Penix has a stronger arm than Kirk Cousins. I thought there would be a connection there. Mooney, recall, finished with the 2nd-most receptions of 20-plus yards in the league last year. Only Justin Jefferson had more. But it hasn't happened. There seems to be no rapport between those two. If anything, they've gotten worse as the season has progressed (connecting on only 1 of 8 passes last week in Berlin). I will now quietly withdraw my request for a roster spot for Mooney.
Allan co-founded Fantasy Football Index in 1987. He is a member of the FSGA Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame.
JASON WOOD
Surveying the landscape through 10 weeks, and it's clear that wide receivers are the main source of frustration. Quite a few consensus Top 30 receivers are well short of their preseason ADP. No one exemplifies that more than Brian Thomas, who sits outside the Top 40 right now despite being a top 12 to 15 overall selection in nearly every league. Anything that could go wrong has gone wrong, from a bad start with drops and a poor catch rate, to quarterback Trevor Lawrence showing zero growth under Liam Coen, and now Thomas is injured. I have little hope he'll bounce back into a must-start this year, but would flag him as a dynasty buy low target for teams that are trying to build assets for 2026 and beyond.
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.
SCOTT PIANOWSKI
I didn’t think Justin Jefferson was capable of being merely the WR17 in a healthy season, but here we are. It’s not for a lack of opportunity — the Vikings continue to pepper him with targets (64 the last six weeks), and there were plenty of red-zone looks last week against Baltimore. Although sophomore QB J.J. McCarthy remains a work in progress, I’m going to bet on quarterback whisperer Kevin O’Connell to get this figured out. Be patient with those in purple.
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.
ANDY RICHARDSON
I leave out injured players, which lets Joe Burrow off the hook. No such luck with the guy I drafted as my 2nd quarterback everywhere, Trevor Lawrence. I remember being slightly troubled by his demeanor even before he was drafted, but set those concerns aside, thinking Liam Cohen might do the same with him that he did with Baker Mayfield. Uh, nope. Lawrence will probably have a long NFL career, if he wants it, but ascending to the level of what's normally hoped for from a top pick? We can say for certain it's not going to happen. Honorable mention to some guys who were supposed to be No. 1 receivers entering the season, DJ Moore and Jerry Jeudy. (Not all Jeudy's fault, but still.) Last but not least, I don't imagine I'll be drafting a 31-year-old tight end ever again. People want to point fingers at Bo Nix and the wide receiving corps, but Evan Engram is far and away the biggest disappointment in the Broncos offense.
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.