You’re probably already tired of hearing about Arian Foster. The bottom line is, you either rode Foster to a resounding win, got pummeled by a team that had him, or are kicking yourself for not starting him. Or maybe you’re just wondering why the heck you didn’t grab him in the 3rd round of your draft last week! I’m loving the fact that I snatched him up in my main league, but I promise not to make this post all about me and my star running back.
Instead, let’s take a quick look at which fantasy experts came closest to predicting the breakout performances from Sunday…and which experts completely whiffed on them. This is just a teaser. In a couple days we’ll announce week 1 accuracy scores for the 30+ fantasy experts that we currently track!
Sunday Stud: Arian Foster (RB), Houston Texans
Let’s start with my star running back (oops). His Expert Consensus Rank (ECR) for Week 1 was RB #13. His best expert rank was RB #7. I was thrilled to see that Matthew Berry was one of the guys that had him ranked this high (he deserves a little love after the jab from a previous post). Two other experts ranked Foster this high – Scott Pianowski of Yahoo and the Yahoo Staff Composite (an average rank based on Yahoo’s four fantasy experts).
It’s too early to be handing out preseason draft prediction awards, but I should also note that the Yahoo guys all had Arian Foster ranked much better than his Draft ECR and ADP. Brad Evans in particular was bullish on him, with a draft rank of RB #8. All this info is available to you – just go to Arian Foster’s player page and check out his Week 1 and Draft Rank tabs.
In terms of missing the dart board completely, it looks like SI.com’s projection had Foster as the #32 running back. Something tells me he’ll rank exactly 31 spots higher than that prediction this week. It’s probably a good time to note that I would not advise judging an expert’s accuracy based on one pick! But if you own Foster and benched him because of SI.com’s advice, you probably already canceled your SI.com subscription. Oh wait, that’s the magazine with the yearly swimsuit edition. Never mind. Sports Illustrated, keep up the good work!
Sunday Stud: Hakeem Nicks (WR), New York Giants
Three touchdowns. What more can you ask for? Based on his ECR of WR #21 in week 1, I’m guessing a lot of you are asking yourselves the painful question of, “why didn’t I start him!” Had you listened to David Dodds and Sigmund Bloom of the Footballguys, you would have started him with confidence. These guys had Hakeem Nicks ranked as the 12th best Wide Receiver. Kudos to Walter Cherepinsky from Walter Football too – he had him pegged one spot lower at #13.
Looking at Preseason Draft Ranks, Paul Greco of FantasyPros911 (not to be confused with our site, FantasyPros) was the most confident in Hakeem Nicks, with a draft rank of WR #11 compared to an ECR of #18. David Dodds of Footballguys was high on him too, with a draft rank of WR #12.
So who shot the air ball this week? FantasySharks had Nicks as their #56 WR. Yes, I had to triple check this one. Apparently he’s only a deep threat. I’ve got to give the Sharks some kudos though. They had some nice predictions (Chad Ochocinco and Matt Hasselbeck, to name a couple), and they are not afraid to go against the consensus opinion. I love it when experts stick to their opinions instead of conforming to what everyone else thinks. It will be interesting to see how accuracy ratings turn out for them.
Here are a few other Sunday standouts:
Just click on the player name to get an instant read on which experts had the player pegged correctly:
Matt Forte (CHI) – 30 points
Tom Brady (NE) – 22 points
Chad Ochocinco (CIN) – 22 points
Jay Cutler (CHI) – 21 points
Darren McFadden (OAK) – 21 points
Carson Palmer (CIN) – 21 points
Miles Austin (DAL) – 21 points
David Garrard (JAC) – 20 points
Rashard Mendenhall (PIT) – 20 points
Matt Hasselbeck (SEA) – 19 points
Wes Welker (NE) – 18 points
Austin Collie (IND) – 17 points
I left off guys like Peyton Manning, Chris Johnson, and Michael Vick because they’re either expected to be total studs or there’s no way anyone could have predicted the injury that thrust the player into the limelight. Also, please note that all the Week 1 expert ranks were taken from rankings that were published prior to the the Thursday night game.
We hope “keeping track” is something you guys dig. We’ll be doing it all season long. Full access to our accuracy scores are for our members only, but the good news is, membership is FREE. Please sign up if you haven’t already done so. Thanks!
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