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: For you personally, what were the best and worst things about Week 1?

TOM KESSENICH

Biggest reward - D'Andre Swift. I've been touting him as a value pick the entire drafting season. He's been a consistent RB2 but people did not wise up to that. I wasn't expecting 30+ points but I wasn't surprised to see him do well in the opener. Ben Johnson loves him and he's going to be a focal point of the Chicago offense as long as he remains healthy.

Biggest disappointment - Michael Pittman. I'm well aware that Aaron Rodgers has painfully little left at this point of his career but I thought his lack of talent would lend itself to more intermediate throws and benefit Pittman. Instead, all Rodgers seemingly wants to do is target his RBs. It's obviously just one game but I am a bit concerned Rodgers' rapidly declining skills may render Pittman more worthless than I had hoped.

Kessenich is the Director of High Stakes Contests for SportsHub Games. He runs the NFFC, NFBC and NFBKC and is a fantasy sports Hall of Fame inductee.

MICHAEL NAZAREK

Giants TE Isaiah Likely was easily my biggest reward. I hyped him to my subscribers all summer and he starts with a BANG as TE1 for the week! That said, the injury suffered by Patriots WR A.J. Brown (ankle) really hurts one of my dynasty league teams. It was tough to see him start poorly in 2025, and now in 2026, he's out another 6 weeks to begin the season? OUCH.

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 more than $40K in recent seasons of the FFPC High Stakes Main Event. Nazarek can be reached via email at miken@ffmastermind.com.

LUKE WILSON

I was pleased to see Derrick Henry more than justify his 2nd round ADP and continue outrunning Father Time, and I'm glad that the Jalen Coker Revolution I thought could be at hand will actually benefit me in a couple of leagues. But I'm heavily invested in the whole Chicago offense: Multiple owns on Caleb Williams, Loveland, Burden and Swift. I took Ben Johnson at his word when he said he wanted to break the all-time scoring record this year, and through one week he has shown me he was not just whistling dixie. Whether it's because he knows the defense is going to need the help or he just wants to put his bust on the Mount Rushmore of fantasy-friendly head coaches, the stars look to be aligning for the Bears to have their most prolific offense since the merger. Not concerned about the slow starts for the young receivers — they'll all get theirs, and soon.

They couldn't get over the hump, but the two iterations of the Greg Roman Chargers did reliably crash the gate: 2-0 in 2024, 3-0 last year. After a summer of excitement over the arrival of McDaniel, a deep cast of potentially fantasy viable names, and a seemingly quite amenable opening schedule, many were expecting a screaming start for Justin Herbert & Co.. So for the Bolts to not only lose to the visiting Cardinals, but to never even hold a lead and get soundly outgained in total offense by a team with a journeyman quarterback is too shocking to wave off as opening night jitters. With premium ADP far and wide tied up in this offense, L.A. needs to take the rival Raiders out behind the woodshed this weekend.

Wilson is a writer and contributor to both Fantasy Football Index magazine and website www.fantasyindex.com, currently answering weekly questions while running the Fantasy Index Mailbag.

SAM HENDRICKS

Biggest reward was winning week 1 of my FFPC Main Event game. Trey McBride had some question marks but I took him in the 2nd round and he paid off in this TE premium format with 29 points! Winning the first week of a 12-week regular season in a high-stakes fantasy league is huge. Biggest disappointment was Kyle Pitts and his goose egg in many of my best-ball leagues. Colston Loveland's zero hurt but I tended not to draft him much this year.

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.

JASON WOOD

My biggest reward was undoubtedly Isaiah Likely, who I ended up pushing into my Top 6 at the position and, as a result, landed on more than a dozen rosters. It's clear he'll be one of Dart's featured targets, even with Malik Nabers in the lineup.

My biggest disappointment was continually drafting Quinshon Judkins over David Montgomery. I had them in the same tier but default to the much younger, fresher player. Yet, we saw this week that Montgomery is going to be a bellcow while Judkins is going to be stymied by arguably the worst team in the NFL.

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

Jayden Waddle was a guy I wanted no part of, and that seems to be holding up nicely so far. While he's got some talent, I just can't see him putting up numbers commiserate with where he was selected. The Broncos have a limited quarterback, and they have other talented pass catchers. Courtland Sutton is their best contested ball catcher, and it looks to me like Pat Bryant is ready to do more. Glad to not be holding any Waddle stock. For disappointments, I will put DeVon Achane at the top of my list. I had him comfortably among my top 10 running backs coming in, making his lesser start troubling. If he's not going to put up good numbers against the Raiders, who is he going to perform against? They may miss some of Mike McDaniel's play-calling ability (though McDaniel's new offense was also among the big disappointments), and the team might simply not be good enough.

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.

TONY HOLM

Since I've been thumping the Zay Flowers drum all preseason that he's the next Jaxon Smith-Njigba, actually getting JSN production for a half was vindicating. Now we wait on what I hope is not a recurring hamstring issue for him. Seeing San Francisco successfully split backfield touches between Christian McCaffrey and Kaelon Black has to be a potentially big disappointment for many fantasy managers' first round pick. We can hope it was just because San Francisco got so far out in front of the L.A. Rams and that in tighter games, it should still be a lot more of McCaffrey but still.. it's worrisome.

Holm works for Fantasy Sharks, whose rankings and content can be found at fantasysharks.com.

SCOTT SACHS

Javonte Williams and Kenneth Walker had questions surrounding them going into the first week. Could Javonte pick up where he left off and further solidify his RB1 status in Dallas? Could Kenneth Walker take on a bigger workload and take pressure off of Mahomes coming back from injury? Both backs delivered 2 TD performances (Javonte had another one taken off the board) and look poised for big years. Disappointing that Sam Darnold got hurt before many fans were in their seats. Luckily, he only has a glute injury and won't be placed on IR.

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

SCOTT PIANOWSKI

I think the Chargers let all of us down. Mike McDaniel was supposed to orchestrate a fun offense, and I also thought the defense was a good streamer against Arizona. Instead, the Cardinals were the better team for three hours. It's possible that Ladd McConkey is the Jenga piece of the Chargers offense; without him everything falls apart.

On the plus side, the Baltimore offense looked fresh and unstoppable, and the Bears are the perfect fantasy carnival - explosive offense, leaky defense. If the Ravens and Bears can stay healthy, they're going to produce a lot of fantasy winners.

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

Some of my bests and worsts were the same. Isaiah Likely and Devaughn Vele, most notably, were guys I have been fond of all along, but regrettably there are teams where I opted for a different tight end or different sleeper wide receiver instead. It's great to believe in guys and get early wins, but disappointing when you weren't in enough to have them everywhere. Most rewarding, though, was seeing Trevor Lawrence keep things going from late last year. It made no sense that he was not being regarded as a top-5 quarterback entering the season, and an encouraging debut for him. Honorable mention: D'Andre Swift. Most disappointing was Rico Dowdle. I thought he'd be featured or at least the lead back in Pittsburgh; that didn't happen in Week 1. Just one week, but not a promising one.

Richardson has been a contributing writer and editor to the Fantasy Football Index magazine and www.fantasyindex.com since 2002. He is responsible for various site features, writes a weekly gambling newsletter, Index Bets, during the NFL season and also previews all the games on Saturdays.