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2018’s Most Accurate Fantasy Football Rankings

2018’s Most Accurate Fantasy Football Rankings

With the fantasy football playoffs wrapped up in most leagues, it’s time to take a look at which experts gave the best advice in 2018. Fantasy experts around the industry provide their rankings each week to FantasyPros and our competition provides you with the intel on which pundits have been the most accurate with their picks. We’ll get to the year-long final standings below, but first, let’s see which experts finished the year the strongest during the all-important Week 16. As always, you can skip to the entire standings in the accuracy section of our site.

Week 16 Accuracy Results

*View Full Accuracy Scores (132 experts) | Combine Top Experts into Consensus Rankings

The chances are extremely high that those who listened to Dalton Del Don (Yahoo) in week 16 for their start/sit questions came away satisfied. Not only did he finish in first place among the experts in accuracy for championship matches, but he frankly blew the rest of the competition away, somehow finishing almost an entire standard deviation above second place. The difference between his remarkable 944 accuracy gap score and second place, Dale DeMott (Eat.Sleep.Fantasy), was larger than the difference between Dale and ninth place in week 16’s standings. Dalton managed his success by placing first among all experts at ranking running backs and second for both quarterbacks and wide receivers.

Sometimes when an expert finishes first for one week, they do so by piling up a bunch of correct start/sit decisions without taking extreme chances. That wasn’t the case with Dalton’s week, however. He took some unpopular stances and they mostly worked out in his favor. For instance, he was the highest expert on Nick Foles (QB #10 vs ECR #19). C.J. Anderson (RB #23, ECR #44) and Courtland Sutton (WR #22 vs ECR #32). Likewise, he nailed other deep sleepers like Marquez Valdes-Scantling (+29 vs ECR), Jamison Crowder (+21 vs ECR), Chester Rogers (+34 vs ECR) and Rashard Higgins (+25 vs ECR). That’s not all, however. Dalton also predicted several players seemingly disappointing performances from Rob Gronkowski (-5 vs ECR) and Trey Burton (-6 vs ECR) to Brandin Cooks (-11 vs ECR) and Allen Robinson (-22 vs ECR). This was about as perfect of a set of weekly rankings as you’ll ever see. Congratulations to Dalton for a spectacular finish to his season!

Props are also due to Greg Smith (TwoQBs) who took fate into his own hands to close the season. Greg managed back to back to back top 12 weeks to launch himself up the season-long leaderboard.

Biggest Surprises  – Week 16

Before we hop over to the year-end standings, we want to recognize the experts that did the best job of ranking the surprise performers from Week 16. Below are several key players that came through beyond expectations for fantasy owners along with the experts who delivered their top ranking.

Nick Foles (PHI)
Consensus: QB #19
Actual Rank: QB #3
Best Rank: QB #10
Top Experts: Dalton Del Don (Yahoo! Sports)

C.J. Anderson (LAR)
Consensus: RB #44
Actual Rank: RB #3
Best Rank: RB #23
Top Expert: Dalton Del Don (Yahoo! Sports)

Elijah McGuire (NYJ)
Consensus: RB #20
Actual Rank: RB #5
Best Rank: RB #14
Top Expert: Mike Harmon (Swollen Dome)

Nelson Agholor (PHI)
Consensus: WR #63
Actual Rank: WR #5
Best Rank: WR #41
Top Expert: Dylan Chappine (White Wolf Sports)

Mohamed Sanu (ATL)
Consensus: WR #45
Actual Rank: WR #6
Best Rank: WR #27
Top Expert: numberFire (Site Projections)

Kyle Rudolph (MIN)
Consensus: TE #16
Actual Rank: TE #1
Best Rank: TE #9
Top Expert: QB List (Staff Rankings)

Biggest Disappointments – Week 16

On the flip side, there is plenty of credit due to the experts who did the reverse. The experts warned many off of players who would have otherwise wrecked their weeks. Let’s take a look at some of the most disappointing fantasy players from Week 16 and the experts whose rankings were closest to their lackluster performance.

Drew Brees (NO)
Consensus: QB #2
Actual Rank: QB #15
Best Rank: QB #12
Top Expert: Heath Cummings (CBS Sports)

Joe Mixon (CIN)
Consensus: RB #6
Actual Rank: RB #32
Best Rank: RB #16
Top Expert: Derek Brown (The Quant Edge)

Marlon Mack (IND)
Consensus: RB #11
Actual Rank: RB #29
Best Rank: RB #19
Top Expert: Raju Byfield (Win My Fantasy League)

Amari Cooper (DAL)
Consensus: WR #7
Actual Rank: WR #86
Best Rank: WR #16
Top Expert: Pierre Camus (RotoBaller)

Brandin Cooks (LAR)
Consensus: WR #15
Actual Rank: WR #48
Best Rank: WR #28
Top Experts: Raju Byfield (Win My Fantasy League)

Eric Ebron (IND)
Consensus: TE #4
Actual Rank: TE #24
Best Rank: TE #8
Top Expert: Chet Gresham (WalterFootball)

Year-to-Date Accuracy

*View Full Accuracy Scores (132 experts) | Combine Top Experts into Consensus Rankings

Congratulations to Matthew Hill (DataForceFF) for coming through in the clutch during Week 16. He placed 17th out of 144 experts during championship week to preserve the season-long top spot in the standings. By winning, Matthew earns prestige, bragging rights and a $1 million paycheck (okay, 2 out of those 3). He was extraordinarily consistent throughout the year, placing among the top half of the expert pool every single week and within the top 20 seven times. His most impressive weekly performances were in Week 10 and Week 2 when he ended up #1 and #2, respectively. He finished #2 for the season in his quarterback rankings and top 25 for running backs, wide receivers and tight ends. There are many extremely gifted fantasy football analysts across the industry so building a strong enough set of rankings to be near the top week in and week out is a truly remarkable accomplishment. Well done Matthew!

Had Dalton Del Don (Yahoo) placed in the middle of the pack for Week 16 instead of lapping the field, he would have finished outside of the top 30 for the season-long standings. As you can see above, he hopped all the way into the top 10. In fact, despite Hill and Robert Waziak (Pyromaniac) being so far ahead of the rest of the field going into the final week, if any expert within the top 10 had done as well as Dalton during Week 16, they would have jumped all the way up into the top spot for the year-end standings.

Justin Boone (theScore) had an impressive close to his season as well. When we checked in with the standings just three weeks ago, Boone was sitting outside the top 10, but climbed all the way up to the #4 spot thanks to a #1 finish in Week 15, #20 in Week 16 and #34 in Week 14. Boone also finished fourth in last year’s season-long accuracy competition and has now finished in the top 11 all seven years he has been in the contest.

Others deserve special mention as well for repeat success. This year’s runner-up, Robert Waziak, placed #7 last year. Pat Fitzmaurice (The Football Girl) ended up near the top again this season at #13 to follow up a #2 performance in 2017, #13 in 2016 and #8 in 2015. Likewise, John Paulsen (4for4.com) was #12 this year after grading #3 last year, #6 in 2016, #3 in 2015, and #1 in 2014. Jake Ciely (The Athletic) continued his now six-year streak of top-20 finishes and Nick Mariano (RotoBaller) just missed back-to-back top 10 seasons, placing #11 this year. Patrick Thorman (Pro Football Focus) accomplished the reverse of Mariano, grading #6 this season and #13 in 2017. Both Andy Holloway and Jason Moore of The Fantasy Footballers put together impressive years again, finishing #5 and #9 after ranking #11 and #14 the year prior. Congratulations to all of these analysts as well as three-time defending champion, Sean Koerner (The Action Network), who may have broken his unbelievable five-year streak of top-10 performances, but still put together an impressive season, ranking #14 out of 144 experts. Koerner also ranked first in accuracy for D/STs and kickers. Jeff Ratcliffe (Pro Football Focus) also claimed his second consecutive IDP rankings title.

We’ll be back again next season for the 2019 accuracy contest. Until then, be sure to follow us @FantasyPros on Twitter for updates and advice throughout the NFL playoffs.

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