Wes Welker looks a little tired after his 28 point performance this past weekend. He topped all the players we had in our 10 toughest start/sit calls of the week, beating out his “opponent” Miles Austin (who put up 15 points against the Jets/Revis).
 
Our first week of the start/sit accuracy challenge was a smash hit with over 4,000 entries submitted! For those of you that participated, here’s where you can get your score (top 50 win prizes). I know some of you are using this game to make stupid side bets with friends so, uh, good luck with that too!
 
We’re also ready with Week 2, so make your picks now. Tip: Be sure to use the same email address if you want us to keep a track record of your scores for the whole season.
 
Some cool data from Week 1:
– Of our 4,057 participants, only 8 had perfect scores.
– The average person got 55% of the picks correct.
– The average starting lineup scored 125.2 points vs. 113.6 for the average bench.
 
Based on these numbers, it’s safe to say that our “10 toughest calls” from week 1 were very difficult decisions. Also, we spotted an interesting difference between how the “joes” and “pros” voted as a group. It seems like we (I’m a Joe too) put more stock into the defensive matchup than the experts do. Here are two examples where the expert voting (58 total experts) was close to 50/50 but the non-expert voting was closer to 30/70:
 
Dez Bryant (at NYJ) or Brandon Lloyd (vs OAK). Dez Bryant got no love from you all presumably because he was going up against the Jets Defense (Revis Island). Turns out Revis was on Miles Austin for part of the game, and it’s also unclear if Dez’s spectacular start and then disappearance was due to the Jets D or his own leg cramps.
 
Anquan Boldin (vs PIT) or Santana Moss (vs NYG). Boldin wasn’t a popular pick in the voting perhaps due to Pittsburgh’s reputation as the toughest overall defense, and perhaps because Santana Moss was going up against a NYG secondary that’s been exploited in some highly publicized games the past couple years.
 
So do experts put less weight on defensive matchups than we do? And if so, are we letting defensive matchups influence us more than we should? We obviously can’t tell from a couple data points, but it’s a trend we’ll be watching this season.
 
If you want to see more detail on the voting %, check out this report which is from the participants that filled out the form on our site (“FantasyPros Members”).
 
Finally, try out our other free contest, the $1,000 Beat the Expert game where you just need to beat Andy Behrens from Yahoo! Sports this week to win a prize. Good luck!
 
Photo Credits: 1 & 2