We’re officially halfway through the fantasy football season which means we’re getting close to crowning this season’s most accurate fantasy football expert. Judging by how tight the standings are, it’s still anyone’s race to win so we should be in for an exciting second half as the experts duke it out.
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, though, let’s check in on how the experts did in week 8. We’ll examine which experts did the best job with their picks and also take a look at how the Year-to-Date leaderboard is shaping up.
Week 8 Leaderboard
[table “54” not found /]*Overall standings evaluate experts’ weekly rankings at the QB, RB, WR, & TE positions
Notes:
- Congratulations to the Staff at KFFL for notching their first top 5 finish of the year and for doing so in style as week 8’s most accurate expert site. The strength of KFFL’s picks came primarily at the WR position (#1 rank) as they ended up well ahead of the competition. Notably, they were higher than most on many of week 8’s top WRs including Mike Sims-Walker (JAC), Terrell Owens (CIN), Larry Fitzgerald (ARI), and Mike Williams (TB). These picks, along with their ability to anticipate several underachievers (Randy Moss, Lee Evans) helped KFFL take home the top honor for the week.
- Another first time entrant to the weekly top 5 is Kevin Roberts (NFL Soup). Roberts finished the week with the second best accuracy score and he did particularly well with his predictions at RB (#3 rank) and WR (#4 rank). For his RB picks, Roberts rode big days from Jamaal Charles (KC) and BenJarvus Green-Ellis (NE) as he had both players ranked better than the expert consensus. And when it comes to the WR position, Roberts is no stranger to success as he currently sits as the #1 ranked WR prognosticator in our Year-to-Date standings. This past week, not only did Roberts correctly pick the top fantasy WR (Calvin Johnson), but he also had a good read on several surprise performers including Larry Fitzgerald (ARI) and Anthony Armstrong (WAS).
- For the second time in the past 3 weeks, the Staff Composite from Yahoo! Sports has cracked the top 5 of our weekly standings. The Staff Composite combines the picks of four Yahoo! experts into one set of rankings. Week 8’s performance was especially impressive as each one of these experts made it individually into the top 10 of the standings: Brandon Funston (#4), Andy Behrens (#5), Brad Evans (#6), and Scott Pianowski (#9). With their picks pulled together to form the Staff Composite, the Yahoo! experts were able to notch the 3rd best accuracy score of the week with their best positional rankings occurring at QB (#3 rank) and RB (#4 rank). A key to the success at the QB position was that they managed to rank 7 out of the top 10 fantasy QBs as well or better than the Expert Consensus. This includes several of week 8’s breakout players such as Matthew Stafford (DET) and David Garrard (JAC).
Year-to-Date Leaderboard
[table “55” not found /]Notes:
- For those who missed it, one of the items we discussed last week in our bi-weekly New Times blog post was that there’s been a strong correlation between the top experts in 2009 and 2010. This week’s YTD leaderboard continues to showcase this phenomenon as 4 out of the top 5 rated experts (#2 – #5) finished in the top 5 of our contest last year. The only newcomer to this year’s top 5 is our #1 expert, John Paulsen (The Scores Report), and he was not a participant in last year’s study (note: Paulsen’s PR team assures us that he would have also finished in the top 5 last year had he been a participant!). More than anything else, this reinforces that there is true skill involved in fantasy prognostication and that it’s not just blind luck.
- The biggest mover in the YTD standings this week is David Dodds (FootballGuys). Dodds had been lurking in the shadows right outside of the top 5 for several weeks and he finally broke through to move up to the #3 overall spot in this week’s leaderboard. As it stands right now, Dodds’ most accurate rankings have occurred at the RB position (#3 rank) which isn’t surprising considering that he was our #1 ranked RB prognosticator in 2009. Additionally, he finds himself moving up in the standings at the other key positions we track and continued improvement at these positions will help him emerge as a real threat to take home the crown as the most accurate expert in our study.
Please note that you can visit our accuracy scores page if you’re interested in seeing how everyone in our field of nearly 40 experts stacks up against one another. The entire standings are offered at no cost to our registered members. Simply sign up for FREE and you’ll be able to view all of the accuracy scores!
We’ll be back again next week with a wrap-up of Week 9. In the meantime, feel free to share your feedback or to ask any questions you have regarding our accuracy process. Thanks!
