We’ve been waiting for 212 days, and finally fantasy football season has arrived. You’ve surely begun the countdown to your fantasy football draft, so as always, we are offering tools that will help crown you champion of your leagues. One of our foremost goals is to do the brunt of the work for you so your only task is to enjoy the fantasy football season while it is here. One of these tools is our annual expert accuracy assessment. Now that we are here in late July, it’s time we release the standings on who the most accurate experts are.
Before we jump to the results, here are a couple of quick notes about our annual accuracy study:
- We analyzed 2015 preseason player rankings from 141 experts and took the results from QB, RB, WR and TE to give the experts an Overall rating.
- You may be wondering what happened to the PAY %s. We’ve updated to a new methodology that we feel is more flexible with increased transparency. You can read more info about the reasons for the change in our FAQ.
Without further ado, below are the experts with the best draft rankings.
Top 10 Draft Experts in 2015
Rank | Expert | Previous Top 40 Rankings |
1. | Joseph Dolan – Fantasy Guru | #3, #27 |
2. | Kevin Hanson – EDSFootball | #16, #17 #19, |
3. | Raymond Summerlin – Rotoworld | none |
4. | Kevin Roberts – Breaking Football | #21, #23, #27 |
5. | Mike Clay – ESPN | #28 |
6. | Matthew Hill – DataForceFF | none |
7. | Justin Boone – theScore | #11, #29, #37 |
8. | Addison Witt – Fantasy Team | none |
9. | Austin Lee – FootballGuys | #2, #13 |
10. | Derek Lofland – FFManiax | #2, #12, #31 |
*View the entire field of 141 experts | Create a 2016 cheat sheet of the top experts
Notes
- Congrats to Joseph Dolan – Fantasy Guru for winning our draft accuracy competition! Joseph is a force to be reckoned with, having competed just three seasons now, and finishing No. 1, No. 3 and No. 27 in those competitions. He was consistent across all four positions, ranking 10th for QBs, 12th for RBs, 5th for WRs and 15th for tight ends. Some of his more notable picks included ranking Todd Gurley the No. 18 RB (+9 vs. consensus), Blake Bortles No. 18 QB (+8 vs. consensus), Jarvis Landry right on target at No. 14 (+14 vs. consensus) and Gary Barnidge No. 40 (+17 vs. consensus). Only one expert was higher on Barnidge entering the season, where we saw him break out into the second best performing tight end in the league. In fact, Barnidge was such an obscure name, that less than 10% of our experts even ranked him within their top 50 tight ends. It is worth mentioning that Joseph finished a full 107 points higher than our second place finisher, which is higher than the difference between No. 2 and No. 12 in our rankings. Well done Joseph!
- Our runner-up, Kevin Hanson – EDSFootball, has made himself a home near the top of our leaderboard. In fact, this marks the fourth consecutive season that Hanson has finished in the top 20. This season, Kevin barely edged out Raymond Summerlin – Rotoworld for the second spot, primarily because of his masterful RB rankings which placed third among the 141 experts. Placing well in our competition is by means of attrition, winning many small victories, and that is precisely how Kevin tore up the running back rankings. For instance, Kevin wisely faded Ameer Abdullah to No. 33 in his rankings (-11 consensus) while he accurately slotted Adrian Peterson No. 2, while most experts had him No. 1, and was 4 slots higher on Danny Woodhead (No. 37) than the expert consensus ranking. Kevin also graded well with wide receivers, and part of that is due to his aggressive ranking (No. 15) on breakout star, Allen Robinson, who was ranked No. 25 ECR. Next season, Kevin will look to make it five straight top-20 finishes.
- We did not compile multi-year rankings this season because of the transition away from PAY%, but lets check in on our top five draft experts from 2011-2014. Our No. 1 ranked long-term expert has been Scott Pianowski – Yahoo! Sports. Scott won the competition in 2013, and found his way into the top 40 again this season, finishing No. 39. Last year’s champ, Bob Henry had a year of regression, dropping to 83rd in the rankings. The Sablich Brothers – The NY Times continued their consistent string of performances, placing No. 35 this season. Then rounding out the multi-year top-five, both Jeff Ratcliffe – Pro Football Focus (No. 16) and John Paulsen – 4for4.com (No. 17) finished in the top 20 again. Based on this season’s No. 2 and No. 10 finishes, Kevin Hanson – EDSFootball and Derek Lofland – FFManiax, who were 8th and 6th in last year’s multi-year rankings, continued to build their already strong reputations.
Surprise Players
As always, there were more than a few players that performed above expectations last season. The difference between drafting or passing on these guys would have had a major impact on any team’s fantasy fortunes. Below are the experts that had the best read on these players in the preseason (i.e. they had the player ranked higher than anyone else). ADP data is included in the table below to show just how far out on a limb each expert went with their ranking.
Player | Position | Top Expert(s) | Expert Rank* | ECR* |
Blake Bortles | QB |
Alex Gelhar – NFL.com
|
16 | 26 |
Kirk Cousins | QB | David Dodds – FootballGuys
Lenny Pappano – Draft Sharks
|
17 | 30 |
Cam Newton | QB | Dave McKay – The Fantasy Sports Brain
Benjamin Zeidler – FantasyFifty
George Banko – Fantasy Football Helpers |
4 | 12 |
DeAngelo Williams | RB | Alex Gelhar – NFL.com | 34 | 55 |
Thomas Rawls | RB | Eric Mack – Fantasy Fatcast | 55 | 91 |
David Johnson | RB | Andy Holloway – The Fantasy Footballers | 30 | 44 |
Devonta Freeman | RB |
Maurile Tremblay – FootballGuys
|
20 | 37 |
Jeremy Langford | RB | Graham Briggs – SoCalledFanEx | 59 | 100 |
Doug Baldwin | WR | Benjamin Zeidler – FantasyFifty
Chris Hadlock – Pigskin Addiction
|
37 | 58 |
Eric Decker | WR | Scott Engel – RotoExperts
Jeff Paur – RTSports
|
22 | 33 |
Allen Hurns | WR |
Kevin Roberts – Breaking Football
|
36 | 59 |
Allen Robinson | WR | Jeff Tefertiller – FootballGuys
Alex Gelhar – NFL.com
|
14 | 25 |
Jarvis Landry | WR | Joseph Dolan – FantasyGuru | 14 | 28 |
Jordan Reed | TE | Raju Byfield – WinMyFantasyLeague | 7 | 20 |
Gary Barnidge | TE | Neil Parker – Fantasy Sports LR | 33 | 57 |
*Ranks & ECR are at the positional level.
Busts
On the flip side, here are the notable disappointments from 2015 along with the experts that went against popular opinion with their rankings. Note that some players (e.g. Jordy Nelson) are not listed if their seasons were completely derailed by unforeseen circumstances. Consider yourself fortunate if you avoided everyone on this list!
Player | Position | Top Expert(s) | Expert Rank* | ECR* |
Andrew Luck | QB | Marcus Katkin – Blindside Football | 5 | 1 |
Peyton Manning | QB | Derek Lofland – FFManiax | 14 | 4 |
Aaron Rodgers | QB | Maurile Tremblay – FootballGuys | 4 | 2 |
DeMarco Murray | RB | Nick Wallace – Wally D. Fantasy Football | 21 | 9 |
C.J. Anderson | RB | Robert Lange – RotoWriters | 17 | 6 |
Eddy Lacy | RB | Raju Byfield – WinMyFantasyLeague | 9 | 2 |
Marshawn Lynch | RB | Matt Schauf – Draft Sharks
Matt Harmon – NFL.com
|
8 | 5 |
Andre Ellington | RB | Mike Rigz – Gridiron Experts | 33 | 19 |
Keenan Allen | WR | Richard Savill – Fantasy Six Pack | 37 | 17 |
Davante Adams | WR | Matt Waldman – FootballGuys | 61 | 23 |
Andre Johnson | WR | Matt Waldman – FootballGuys | 43 | 16 |
Mike Evans | WR | Muntradamus – Beast Dome | 20 | 10 |
Randall Cobb | WR | Robert Lange – RotoWriters | 14 | 8 |
Alshon Jeffery | WR | Scott Engel – RotoExperts | 19 | 9 |
Dez Bryant | WR | Six Experts Tied | 6 | 2 |
Jimmy Graham | TE | Seth Klein – The Fantasy Fix | 7 | 2 |
Martellus Bennett | TE | Neil Parker – Fantasy Sports LR | 11 | 5 |
*Ranks & ECR are at the positional level
—
That wraps up our analysis of Draft Accuracy from 2015. Congrats again to Joseph Dolan and the rest of the top-rated experts. To view the entire standings, including breakouts by position and IDP, please check out the accuracy section of our site.
What’s next? See how you rate vs. the top experts in a 5 minute mock draft