With the weather wreaking havoc on games in week 14, it certainly wasn’t an easy time to try to predict fantasy football outcomes. About the only thing that was predictable was that Brett Favre would somehow manage to work his way to the front of Sunday’s weather headlines.
Given the uncertain conditions, it would seem like this was as good a time as any for the experts to go against the grain with their weekly rankings. We’ll examine whether or not this was the case as we break down the bold predictions that represent the top hits and misses from week 14.
Bold Predictions: Top Hits
Match-up*: Jay Feely (K #24) over Matt Prater (K #7)
Expert: Dave Richard – CBS Sports
Difference in Fantasy Points: +26.5
*Ranks in the Match-up header represent each player’s Expert Consensus Rank (ECR)
Yes, that’s right. We’re leading off this week’s slate of top hits with a kicker match-up. This can only mean one of two things: Either we’re desperate for quality bold predictions or there was an exceptionally great kicker performance that few saw coming. In this case, it’s the latter and the performance came from Jay Feely, who connected on 5 field goals (including a 55 yarder) in Arizona’s win over Denver. Feely didn’t stop there though. He also scored a touchdown on a fake field goal which amazingly broke a touchdown drought of over 9 quarters for Arizona. As a result of his busy day, Feely was a fantasy powerhouse (28.5 points). In fact, only 2 players (Darren McFadden and Michael Turner) scored more points than him!
Credit goes to Dave Richard (CBS Sports) for being one of the few experts to advocate starting Feely in week 14. Richard took a bold stance by ranking Feely (K #3) considerably higher than the Expert Consensus (K #24). This turned out to be an excellent piece of advice and those who followed it stood a great chance of ending up on the winning end of their fantasy match-ups.
Match-up: Kerry Collins (QB #31) over Ryan Fitzpatrick (QB #17)
Expert: Paul Greco (FantasyPros911)
Difference in Fantasy Points: +9.2
As a general rule of thumb, whenever a QB’s Expert Consensus Rank starts to approach the total number of NFL teams (32), it’s an indication that the experts don’t think too highly of the player. For Kerry Collins (QB #31), that was the case in week 14. One of the few experts who was relatively high on him was Paul Greco (FantasyPros911). Greco showed some faith in Collins by ranking him above (QB #19) every other expert we monitored. This turned out to be a wise decision as Collins surprisingly turned in the best game of his season with 244 yards passing and 3 TDs (including a glorious, stat-stuffing TD as time expired). This performance was good enough to make him the 5th best fantasy QB for the week and it helped to net Greco a solid upset prediction.
Match-up: Tim Hightower (RB #30) over LeGarrette Blount (RB #14)
Expert: Sports Illustrated
Difference in Fantasy Points: +20
This was a solid pick by Sports Illustrated on two fronts. First, they pegged Tim Hightower as a top surprise player and noted that he was facing one of the worst run defenses (Denver) in the NFL. It’s also possible that SI looked at Arizona’s starting lineup and saw the words, “QB: John Skelton”, and figured that the Cardinals might remove the forward pass from their playbook. Either way, they were one of only a handful of sites to rank Hightower in their top 20 RBs. Hightower rewarded this faith by having the best game of his career (148 yards rushing, 2 TDs) and this placed him as the RB with the 3rd most fantasy points for the week.
SI also did a good job with their ranking for LeGarrette Blount. He was a trendy pick to do well against the Redskins’ porous run defense but SI slotted him outside of their top 20 RBs. Without any goal line touches, Blount failed to generate much fantasy production (just 4.8 points). This meant that SI delivered one of the best bold predictions of the week by recommending Hightower over Blount.
Match-up: Ryan Torain (RB #41) over BenJarvus Green-Ellis (RB #20)
Expert: Brad Evans (Yahoo! Sports)
Difference in Fantasy Points: +9.5
Coming off of a 4 game layoff, the expectations weren’t too high for Ryan Torain in week 14. Then again, this is the Redskins we’re talking about so all expectations should be thrown out the window. In this situation, most experts were questioning if the Skins would employ a RBBC that would limit Torain’s touches as a way to ease him back from his hamstring injury. 24 carries for 172 yards later and we seemingly have our answer: Torain is the Redskins’ featured back and they plan to use him as such.
Kudos to Brad Evans (Yahoo! Sports) for anticipating that Torain would burst back onto the scene in his first game back from injury. While nearly half of the experts we tracked had him unranked, Evans was the only expert to slot him as a top 20 RB. Considering that Torain finished the week as the 5th best fantasy RB, this was a great decision that we hope Evans’ readers took advantage of.
Match-up: Deion Branch (WR #25) over Jeremy Maclin (WR #11)
Expert: Fantasy Sharks
Difference in Fantasy Points: +20
On the surface, it seemed like Deion Branch had a few things going against him heading into Sunday’s game. Between the snow storm and a match-up against a tough Bears secondary, it didn’t appear likely that he was about to have a career day. Of course, we should know by now that anything is possible with a Bill Belichick-coached team featuring Tom Brady calling the signals. This was certainly the case as Branch (151 yards receiving, 1 TD) and Brady torched the vaunted Bears defense in a manner that was almost unimaginable. Branch’s numbers represented a regular season career high in receiving yards and made him the 4th best fantasy WR for the week. Kudos to Fantasy Sharks as they were a believer in Branch (their WR #18) despite the seemingly unfavorable match-up.
Bold Predictions: Top Misses
Not surprisingly, there was also a set of bold predictions that didn’t work out quite as well as the experts had hoped. Click on each link below to get an instant profile of these picks that were off the mark.
- Thomas Jones (RB #26) over Chris Johnson (RB #6) – Fantasy Sharks
- Kyle Orton (QB #8) over Michael Vick (QB #1) – WhatIfSports
- Jermaine Gresham (TE #26) over Jason Witten (TE #4) – Sports Illustrated
- Jordy Nelson (WR #77) over Pierre Garcon (WR #23) – FanHouse
- Michael Jenkins (WR #72) over Deion Branch (WR #25) – WhatIfSports
- Derek Hagan (WR #62) over Pierre Garcon (WR #23) – Mike Krueger (FFToday)
- Tashard Choice (RB #25) over Darren McFadden (RB #13) – FanHouse
We’ll be back again next week to go over the top bold predictions from week 15. In the meantime, you can stay on top of all the latest fantasy football articles from over 125 experts by checking out our fantasy advice portal, The Handoff. And for all of our latest updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter.
