For fantasy football owners, the stakes don’t get any higher than they are right now with league championships on the line this weekend. The same is true for the experts in our accuracy competition. They’ve battled it out all season and we’re now just one week away from crowning 2010’s most accurate expert. Despite the consistency atop our leaderboard, one good or bad week still has the potential to determine who takes home the majority of our accuracy awards. Simply put, we should be in for an exciting conclusion to our competition!
Before we get too ahead of ourselves though, let’s take a look back at week 15 to see which experts gave the best advice. We’ll also examine the Year-to-Date standings to find out who is in position to make a run for the overall title.
Week 15 Leaderboard
| *Overall Week 15 Accuracy Scores | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rank | Expert | PAY™ |
| 1. | Josh Moore – 4for4.com | 60.5% |
| 2. | John Paulsen – The Scores Report | 59.9% |
| 3. | Scott Pianowski – Yahoo! Sports | 59.4% |
| 4. | Site Rankings – Ultimate FF Strategy | 58.5% |
| 5. | Kevin Roberts – NFL Soup | 58.4% |
*Overall standings evaluate experts’ weekly rankings at the QB, RB, WR, & TE positions
Notes:
- Kudos to Josh Moore (4for4.com) for putting together the most accurate player rankings in week 15. It’s fair to say that it’s been quite a run for Moore over the past few weeks: He finished in 2nd place in week 14 and now he has taken home the top honor in week 15. Talk about stepping up your game for the playoffs! This past week, Moore specifically did an excellent job with his advice at the WR position (#1 rank). He was all over Vincent Jackson’s (SD) breakthrough game as he had him ranked the highest (WR #8) of anyone in our field of 40+ experts. Moore also had key studs like Austin Collie (IND), Jeremy Maclin (PHI) and Jacoby Ford (OAK) ranked better than over 80% of the experts. These picks ultimately helped to power his top rating for the week.
- Speaking of experts stepping it up for the playoffs, John Paulsen (The Scores Report) is back in the top 5 this week after finishing #1 in week 14. This is virtually par for the course for Paulsen considering that he’s been the most accurate expert in our contest for nearly 3 months. Similar to Josh Moore, Paulsen did his best work in week 15 at the WR position (#3 rank). It seems obvious but a key to his success was that he did a good job of pegging the top studs. Specifically, his rankings were more accurate than the Expert Consensus for 7 out of the top 10 WRs. This includes players such as Vincent Jackson (SD), Mario Manningham (NYG) and Santana Moss (WAS). Of course, it’s also important to have an eye for the guys that might underperform relative to expectations. Paulsen accomplished this as well by slotting Dwayne Bowe (KC) and Santonio Holmes (NYJ) lower than the majority of experts.
- Another expert that has had a strong run down the stretch is Scott Pianowski (Yahoo! Sports). With his 3rd place finish in week 15, Pianowski has now landed in the upper portion of the leaderboard for the 3rd time in the last 5 weeks. He did so this past week in large part due to a string of solid QB (#2 rank) advice. Not surprisingly, Pianowski had Michael Vick (PHI) rated as his #1 QB but he was also a believer in several veterans (John Kitna, David Garrard) that put up top 10 fantasy numbers. With his strong showing, Pianowski is now the 9th most accurate expert for the year.
Year-to-Date Leaderboard
| Overall YTD Accuracy Scores | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank TW | Rank LW | Expert | PAY™ |
| 1. | 1. | John Paulsen – The Scores Report | 61.7% |
| 2. | 2. | David Dodds – FootballGuys | 60.8% |
| 3. | 4. | Josh Moore – 4for4.com | 60.4% |
| 4. | 3. | Andy Behrens – Yahoo! Sports | 60.4% |
| 5. | 5. | Chet Gresham – Razzball.com | 60.1% |
Notes:
- You know that an expert is having a great season when he comes in second place for the week and it actually lowers his YTD accuracy score. Such is the case for John Paulsen (The Scores Report), who has now held down the #1 position in our competition for 11 consecutive weeks. In doing so, Paulsen has extended his lead over David Dodds (FootballGuys) for the 3rd week in a row. If he can stay the course for one more week, he’ll be able to stake his claim as 2010’s Most Accurate Fantasy Football Expert. With so much on the line, you can bet that there will be plenty of thought going into Paulsen’s week 16 rankings!
- With the way he’s vaulting up the standings, Josh Moore (4for4.com) is probably wishing there was another 3 months left in the season. In a manner of just 2 weeks, Moore has climbed 6 spots from 9th place to 3rd overall. This movement in such a short period of time is a testament to the hot streak he’s been on with his picks. As the season nears the end, he’s proving to be one of the best in the business at predicting WR (#3 rank) and RB (#7 rank) performance. We’ll be anxious to see if Moore can keep his string of great advice going in week 16.
- The rest of the top 5 is holding strong in the standings. In fact, this is a good time to offer a pat on the back to these experts for their consistency. Specifically, David Dodds (FootballGuys), Andy Behrens (Yahoo! Sports) and Chet Gresham (Razzball.com) have all spent at least half of the season in the upper 5 of the leaderboard. Behrens himself has been there for 12 out of the 15 weeks. This is a tremendous run of reliability at predicting outcomes for a sport that, as we all know, can be fairly unpredictable at times. It’s especially impressive for Dodd’s and Behrens since they were top 5 experts last season as well (Gresham wasn’t a participant in 2009’s contest). It should be interesting to see if these experts can give Paulsen one last run for his money in week 16.
On that note, we’ll be back again next week to wrap things up and unveil 2010’s Most Accurate Fantasy Football Expert! In the meantime, you can visit our accuracy scores page if you’re interested in seeing how everyone in our field of over 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.
