Have you ever wondered how frequently the top experts gamble and go against the popular opinion with their weekly rankings and projections? What about how often they’re correct with those risky predictions?
Earlier in the week, we examined the accuracy of the advice from two of the most popular experts covering fantasy football: Matthew Berry (ESPN) and David Dodds (FootballGuys). Today, we thought it would be interesting to answer the two questions above related to the gambling tendencies of each expert at the RB position.
We’re simply taking a test drive here so we’ll be sure to include additional positions (and experts) in future posts if you find this info useful. And, yes, that sentence is absolutely code for “Hey guys, this data is a beast to pull so we want to make sure you really like it before we take a deeper dive.”
Ok, with that admission out of the way, let’s take a look at the table below. It summarizes the 2009 accuracy results related to the key betting tendencies for Dodds and Berry at the RB position.
[table “10” not found /]
*Notes: Consensus refers to the combined opinion of all experts in our accuracy study. Accuracy scores were determined using FantasyPros’ PAY™ scoring method.*
Key Findings:
- Wow, both experts played it straight up and agreed with the consensus opinion a lot, huh? Nearly 79% of the time! Dodds had an accuracy edge when this happened but it was by a fairly small margin.
- When taking a risk and going against the consensus opinion, Dodds fared much better than Berry. Judging by the small % of times they went against the popular opinion, neither expert was a riverboat gambler but Berry might have needed a life vest had he been near water.
- It’s tempting to look at the accuracy numbers and wonder why an expert would ever bet against the consensus, right? I mean, both guys had much better scores when agreeing with the popular opinion. Does this mean the experts should start to play it conservative in order to produce more accurate picks? My answer to this: No! The data is misleading! I won’t bore you with the details but it’s clear from looking at the numbers that the expert decisions in the far right column were much more difficult than the ones in the column two spots to the left. Just know that when going against the consensus, anything above 50% is going to be a good score because it means the expert did better than the popular opinion on those picks.
So, yeah, this is kind of cool but what does it mean? (I totally feel like this guy asking that question, by the way). Well, it clearly tells us that Dodds did a better job of hitting on his RB gambles than Berry in 2009. What it doesn’t tell us is how these guys did compared to the entire field of experts. That would obviously be interesting to know in order to figure out who the ultimate Gambling King is amongst the fantasy football experts. For the purposes of our quick analysis, though, Dodds finished in the money when going out on a limb with his RB predictions while Berry ended up in the red. Whether or not this holds true in 2010 will be interesting to follow.
Feel free to let us know what you think about this type of data. If it’s interesting we’ll add in more experts and positions. If it’s a total bore and you feel like you just wasted 10 minutes of your life then we’ll shift gears and focus on something better. The choice is yours!
Photo Credit: Link
