Week 12’s Most Accurate Experts

With ¾ of the fantasy season in the books, our race to determine 2011’s Most Accurate Expert is heating up. While a few blowouts in week 12 may have featured some ultimate garbage time stat padding (we’re looking at you, Vince Young), the experts in our competition are facing no such luxury. The accuracy contest is so close that only .2% points separate 1^st place from 5^th place. Simply put, we’re heading into the “4^th quarter” of a competition that has anything but the makings of a blowout.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at who delivered the best advice in week 12. We’ll go through the top 10 experts (out of 76). You can also view the YTD standings, which feature a shakeup atop the leaderboard.

Week 12 Leaderboard

*See how all 76 experts ranked for the week

Notes

• Congratulations to FantasyFootballNerd for serving up the most accurate rankings in week 12. This marks the 2^nd time this season that the site has finished in first place. Their rankings were especially strong at RB, rating #1 out of all experts monitored. The Nerd’s best pick was having the week’s biggest stud, Beanie Wells, slotted inside their top 10 RBs. Only a handful of other experts were as high on Beanie, undoubtedly due to his injury concerns. Besides hitting on additional top performers such as Chris Johnson (RB #10) & Cedric Benson (RB #12), the FFNerd was also ahead of the curve in downgrading several of the week’s notable underachievers: Frank Gore & Michael Turner. Gore was slotted as a low end RB2 play (RB #22) while Turner was placed outside of RB1 status (RB #14) despite being a consensus top 5 back. Neither player ultimately cracked the week’s top 34 RBs so the downgrades should have helped owners who heeded the advice.

• The staff at Fantasy Football Freaks turned in a 2^nd place showing based on the strength of their predictions at WR (#1 rank) and RB (#5 rank). The breakdown is fairly simple at the WR position: The FF Freaks were successful at pegging the week’s peak performers. Specifically, they managed to outrank the expert consensus for 8 of the top 10 fantasy players. That includes correctly spotting Victor Cruz as a top 10 WR as well as ranking another stud, Lance Moore, a full 14 slots (WR #31) ahead of the field. The Freaks also showed a surprising lack of confidence in Steve Smith (CAR) – the field’s WR #1 – by slotting him as just their WR #11, despite his seemingly favorable match-up @ IND. They were onto something with the pick as Smith produced a disappointing outing (3 catches, 68 yards). Meanwhile, for their RB predictions, the FF Freaks delivered by identifying both Chris Johnson & Marshawn Lynch as top 10 backs.

• Another site that was on-target with their picks is scoutPRO. Their projections system generated the week’s 3^rd best advice, in large part due to its WR predictions. ScoutPro’s biggest hit came from projecting Reggie Wayne as the 20^th best receiver – 26 spots ahead of the expert consensus. Wayne rewarded that faith by posting his best output of the season (5 catches, 122 yds, 1 TD). They also came through by slotting Laurent Robinson 10 spots ahead of the field at WR #13. Robinson responded by feasting on MIA’s secondary to the tune of 2 TDs en route to earning top 5 fantasy numbers. It didn’t hurt scoutPro’s cause either that no other site took more of a chance in ranking Eric Decker (WR #19). They wound up exactly pegging his rank at #19.

• It stands to reason that the Yahoo! Staff Composite would rate well given that two of its experts (Scott Pianowski & Brad Evans) rank in the top 10 themselves. As far as Pianowski is concerned, he made several of the week’s best calls at RB. Most notably, he was the only expert in the field to give Roy Helu RB2 status (RB #23). That was without a doubt a risky pick but it paid it off tremendously with Helu breaking out for 162 yards and a TD. When it comes to Evans, he’s known for taking gambles with his predictions and this past week was no exception. While most experts didn’t even like Vince Young as a top 10 QB, Evans was confident enough to slot Young in his top 5. Whether aided by garbage time stats or not, this was a big hit as Young tallied 400 yards through the air. Evans also gets credit for a nice sleeper prediction by having Donald Brown rated higher (RB #15) than all but one expert. All told, these picks served as key contributions to the top 10 rating for the Yahoo! Staff.

That wraps up this week’s accuracy report. As a reminder, the results for the entire field of experts are available over at the accuracy section of our site. You can see how the experts rank for the week and the season.

If you’re eager to make your own predictions, be sure to check out this week’s Beat the Expert Contest vs. Melissa Jacobs (The Football Girl). The contest is completely free with a $1,000 prize pool courtesy of our sponsor, FanDuel. Good luck!