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 changed your opinion most -- for good or ill -- this postseason?
PAUL CHARCHIAN
Assuming the Buccaneers have a functional quarterback in place next year, tight end Cade Otton looks like he's going to be a reliable contributor for those who want to wait on the position. In season, Otton averaged only 2.7 catches for 27 yards. Granted, it's just a two-game sample size, but in the postseason, those numbers ballooned to 6.5 catches and 77 yards. Otton could be aided by extra targets in 2024. It would be weird to see Mike Evans play elsewhere, but he's an unrestricted free agent. And Chris Godwin's sharp decline in productivity makes his 2024 role unclear.
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.
DAVID DOREY
The glaring player to me is Aaron Jones of the Packers. As a drafter of his in many leagues this year, I was more than a little disappointed for a player that was often injured and less productive than expected when healthy. He blew up in the last month with a string of five straight 100-yard games starting in Week 16 when he had already done all the damage to those fantasy teams. The Packers offense looks far better to end the year, so there is a reason to value him much higher than last year. But I'm going to probably let him pass. There is some reasoning that they underused him in the season to save him for the playoffs, which certainly appears to have worked to great effect. But he turns 30 this year and AJ Dillon is likely gone as a free agent. The Packers will bring in someone else if only for depth, but they also need to cover any more injuries and set the stage for the following year when 31-year-old Jones will be a free agent. I mean, I'm not bitter... much...
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.
IAN ALLAN
For me, the postseason underscored that Stefon Diggs isn’t a big-time receiver anymore. He’s a starter, but I don’t think he’s a feared No. 1 guy anymore. The 8 balls thrown his way against Kansas City resulted in 3 catches for 21 yards, with Diggs failing to come up with a pivotal long ball late in the game. Diggs had four straight 100-yard games early in the season, but that seems like a long time ago now. In his last 10 games, he’s caught only 47 of the 80 passes thrown his way, for 422 yards, with one touchdown. While some of the decline can be attributed to other factors — teammates and the design of the offense — Diggs is 30, perhaps at the point where he’s declining physically. And he’s also seems tough to work with — volatile. I saw some young receivers in the postseason (Puca Nacua, Rashee Rice, Nico Collins) that I certainly will be ranking higher than Diggs on my board entering the 2024 season.
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.
JASON WOOD
It's exceedingly dangerous to extrapolate one or two games just because they feel more important in a playoff setting. So my primary answer is "no one" and everyone else should be taking the same approach. NFL seasons are already statistically small samples prone to massive volatility, so my best advice is to fade anyone who gets heat because of a strong playoff but didn't look as good during the season.
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 SACHS
After a distressing late season fade, Travis Kelce rose like the Phoenix in the first round of the playoffs, coming up with a solid 7/71/0 against Miami. Following up on the frozen tundra of Buffalo -- and fueled by Swifty & Beer Bro vibes -- Kelce went off for 5/75/2 in a hard-fought road win. Against Baltimore, KC is going to have to throw to win, which bodes well for Kelce again.
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.
ANDY RICHARDSON
Most will recall that we were alone in being higher on David Montgomery than Jahmyr Gibbs last preseason. And for the first half of the season, we were right -- when healthy, Montgomery was the better start, racking up touchdowns and rushing yards. But next preseason, I expect we'll be higher on Gibbs, who looks like he's just scratching the surface of his potential. He was a lot better against Tampa Bay last week, and I think he'll be better against San Francisco this week. Maybe he'll be overdrafted (it will still be a committee of some sort), but Gibbs looks like the kind of guy who's going to put up huge numbers in his second season.
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.