As tough as it may be to believe, we are just one week away from the fantasy football playoffs beginning in most leagues. We’ve seen Lamar Jackson and Christian McCaffrey take the league by storm while former superstars, Odell Beckham Jr., Todd Gurley and JuJu Smith Schuster have been major fantasy disappointments. Predicting such a volatile sport is enough of a challenge, but weighing the matchups, game scripts, weather, injuries and everything else each week is virtually a sport of its own. At FantasyPros, we want to provide you the most information to help you make the best decisions for your fantasy team, and part of that is showing you which experts have been the most accurate with their rankings. Since we are now through three-quarters of the season, it is time to take a look at the expert accuracy standings so we can see who has been nailing the tough calls like Ryan Tannehill’s breakout and Ryan Griffin morphing into a weekly start at tight end. While we are here, let’s first see which experts had the best fantasy football rankings in Week 12. As always, you can check out the entire standings in our accuracy section.

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Week 12 Accuracy Results

*View Full Accuracy Scores (137 experts) | Combine Top Experts into Consensus Rankings

Chris Meaney (The Athletic) had a tremendous week, finishing #5 among 137 experts for wide receiver rankings accuracy, #16 for quarterbacks and #28 for running backs. This was enough to give him the top spot for Week 12. While he was on the correct side of a vast majority of his rankings, there were several that stood out above the rest. For instance, the expert consensus had Royce Freeman ranked RB #34 and Benny Snell RB #39. Chris had them in the exact reverse which proved to be useful to fantasy owners, as Snell finished RB #18 and Freeman RB#43. Likewise, Meaney was much higher on Randall Cobb than the expert consensus, who had him ranked WR #49. Chris had him all the way up at #32 which was closer to his actual ranking (WR #28) than all of the other 136 experts. He was also correct to rank Jakobi Meyers 26 spots higher than the expert consensus (WR #79). Part of ranking, of course, is knowing when to fade certain players. Taylor Gabriel, Demaryius Thomas and Amari Cooper were all disappointments in Week 12. Meaney managed to rank each of the three substantially lower than the expert consensus.

Congratulations to Chris, the entire top 10 and also this week’s top positional rankers:

Quarterbacks: Rudy Gamble – Razzball
Running Backs: Jason Willan – Gridiron Experts
Wide Receivers: Kyle Cunningham-Rhoads – STATS
Tight Ends: Chris Raybon – The Action Network
Kickers: Staff Rankings – Daily Roto
D/ST: Staff Rankings – QB List
IDP: Matt De Lima – FullTimeFantasy

Biggest Surprises

As always, we recognize the experts that did the best job of ranking the surprise performers from Week 12. Below are several key players that performed beyond expectations for fantasy owners along with the experts who delivered their top ranking.

Ryan Tannehill
Consensus: QB #19
Actual Rank: QB #2
Best Rank: QB #7
Top Experts: Heath Cummings (CBS Sports)

Jonathan Williams
Consensus: RB #30
Actual Rank: RB #6
Best Rank: RB #16
Top Expert: Derek Lofland (FantasyPros)

Raheem Mostert
Consensus: RB #38
Actual Rank: RB #12
Best Rank: RB #27
Top Expert: Brad Evans (Yahoo! Sports)

A.J. Brown
Consensus: WR #44
Actual Rank: WR #6
Best Rank: WR #28
Top Expert: Justin George (Take Your League)

Marquise Brown
Consensus: WR #32
Actual Rank: WR #9
Best Rank: WR #15
Top Expert: Smitty (SleeperU)

Mike Gesicki
Consensus: TE #15
Actual Rank: TE #4
Best Rank: TE #3 & TE #5
Top Expert: Justin George (Take Your League) & Rudy Gamble (Razzball)

Biggest Disappointments

On the flip side, there is plenty of credit due to the experts who did the reverse. These experts warned many off of players who would have otherwise minimized their odds of winning their fantasy contests. Let’s take a look at some of the most disappointing fantasy players from Week 12 and the experts whose rankings were closest to their lackluster performance.

Dak Prescott
Consensus: QB #11
Actual Rank: QB #23
Best Rank: QB #24 & #22
Top Expert: Scott Spratt (Football Outsiders) & Bobby Sylvester (FantasyPros)

Aaron Jones
Consensus: RB #9
Actual Rank: RB #44
Best Rank: RB #19
Top Expert: Kyle Cunningham-Rhoads (STATS)

Todd Gurley
Consensus: RB #12
Actual Rank: RB #46
Best Rank: RB #29
Top Expert: Walter Cherepinsky (WalterFootball)
*next closest was RB #19!

Tyler Lockett
Consensus: WR #10
Actual Rank: WR #10
Best Rank: WR #18
Top Expert: Matt Schauf (Draft Sharks)

Tyrell Williams
Consensus: WR #22
Actual Rank: WR #61
Best Rank: WR #48
Top Experts: Rudy Gamble (Razzball)
*next closest was WR #39!

Vance McDonald
Consensus: TE #10
Actual Rank: TE #20
Best Rank: TE #20
Top Expert: Jason Petropoulos (BRoto Fantasy)

Year-to-Date Accuracy

*View Full Accuracy Scores (137 experts) | Combine Top Experts into Consensus Rankings

We are to the point in the season where it will take an extraordinary effort to move up into and within the top 10 season-long rankings. That is exactly what we saw from the current leader, Justin Boone (theScore) who managed to leap all the way up from #7 overall in the past four weeks. He was able to accomplish this thanks to finishes of #13, #15, #24 and #15 out of 137 in the last month. Through 12 weeks, Justin ranks in the top quartile among all experts at each of the four positions including #3 for season-long wide receiver rankings accuracy, #12 for running backs and #16 for quarterbacks. Congratulations to Justin on an exceptional first 12 weeks!

Justin has commonly finished near the top of the pack, placing 4th overall in 2018, 4th overall in 2017, 7th overall in 2016, 6th overall in 2015, and 3rd overall in 2014 among several other top 15 finishes. Likewise, some of the others who are consistently in contention for the top spot aren’t too far behind Boone for the 2019 season-long lead. For instance, the current #5, John Paulsen (4for4.com) finished among the top-12 each of the last five seasons including a #1 finish in 2014. Likewise, Jake Ciely (The Athletic), who currently sits at #10, has finished among the top 20 in all six years he has participated including four top-ten finishes. Additionally, Patrick Thorman (Establish the Run), who ranks #7 through 12 weeks, has three top-ten season-long finishes and Jason Moore (The Fantasy Footballers), who currently ranks #8, was a top 10 finisher last season and has been top 25 each of the past three years. Each of them, along with everyone else in the top ten, has a realistic chance at finishing #1 if they can string together four consecutive great weeks.

Congratulations to everyone off to a great start and our current positional accuracy leaders:

Quarterbacks: Staff Rankings – Daily Roto
Running Backs: Joe Bond – Fantasy Six Pack
Wide Receivers: Dylan Chappine – White Wolf Sports
Tight Ends: John Halpin – Carolina Panthers Radio Network
Kickers: Greg Smith – TwoQBs
D/ST: Walter Cherepinsky – Walter Football
IDP: Ryan Sitzmann – The IDP Guru

BettingPros Year-to-Date Accuracy

We’ve been tracking the accuracy of betting recommendations on our new site, BettingPros this season as well. In this competition, we track units bet across game spreads, over/unders and moneylines then use those units to rank the most accurate experts. Let’s have a look at the top 10 through Week 12:

*View Full Accuracy Scores (156 experts)

After a quarter of the season, Matt MacCoy (The Next Big Thing) was a remarkable 20 games above .500. He then proceeded to somehow improve upon that pace over the next month, adding another 26 games above .500. Since then, he has continued his wrecking streak and is now 64 games above .500 for the season. Matt has been astonishingly effective in over/under bets, winning 136.54 units. To put that into perspective, the second, third, fourth and fifth most successful over/under analysts have combined to win less than 140 units. Matt has managed to go 8-3 or better on over/unders for 13 different NFL teams this season including Seattle (9-2) and Cincinnati (9-2). Well done, Matt! Last we checked, Tim McCullough (Baseball Prospectus) was the site-wide leader against the spread while Bobby Sylvester (FantasyPros) led the pack on moneyline bets. Still four weeks later, each of these leaders holds strong atop the pack.

We’ll be back again after Week 12 to provide another update on the experts making the most accurate predictions. Until then, be sure to check out the experts’ weekly rankings to help with your lineup decisions.

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