Below you’ll find our week 7 accuracy rankings. Note that no one really hit the bullseye this week.
In other news, we may not have a write up this week, as Dave had a basement flooding incident… anyone know a good heating repair guy??
Any specific questions about last week or the upcoming week, hit us up: @ffadvisorcom
Our best of breed rankings are a custom blend of the most accurate sites and experts on the internet for each fantasy football position. They are posted Saturday morning to assist in your final start and sit decision making. These rankings are for standard scoring leagues. If you have a specific question (PPR, or flex related) that these rankings don’t address please don’t hesitate to let us know on Twitter @ffadvisorcom we usually respond within 60 minutes!
QB: CNNSI Mack, FF Toolbox, and a dash of CNNSI Beller
RB: A heavy dose of CNNSI Beller, a bit of CNNSI McQuade and CNNSI Composite score
WR: A bit more than 50% of Fantasy Sharks, tempered with equal portions of CNNSI Sabino and Yahoo Behrens
TE: A balance of CNNSI Beller and CNNSI Composite, with a touch of CNNSI McQuade
Kicker (CBSSportsline’s Richard, Yahoo’s Funstn and Pianowski)
D/ST (CNNSI Composite/Sabino and NFL.com’s Rnak)uade)
Lots of changes on tops with 2 more weeks in the books and the addition of the CNNSI team of experts to the cumulative rankings.
If you only have time to go to ONE site this week, you’ll want to pull from the top of our overall accuracy list. As a reminder we require a site be evaluated at least three weeks before they can be included in our cumulative rankings.
This information is used to build our best of breed rankings that we release on Saturday mornings, which takes the most accurate experts for each position and blends their projections for that week using a formula that weights their rankings based on their overall accuracy score.
At the top of our overall ranking we see CNNSI represented twice. The highest score is actually the composite rankings of all of the CNNSI experts, right behind that composite score is Beller, with a very strong accuracy ranking mostly on the strength of #1 scores in RB and TE. We’re glad to see CNNSI’s individual experts doing so well, given how poorly CNNSI’s rankings were last season. As a reminder, please please please, do not go to http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/fantasy/football/ nfl/player_projections/2011/07/quarterback.htm to get their rankings. Those are the ones that are horribly inaccurate.
The mainstream sites continue a strong season of fantasy projections this year. Yahoo has three of the top 10 accuracy rankings with Pianowski, Funston, and Behrens. CNNSI also has three of the top 10 and NFL.com has two of the top 10. The only non mainstream media or sports company represented in the top ten in overall accuracy currently is FF Toolbox.
The past two weeks have been especially unkind to the Fantasy Sharks, who came out of week 4 in the #1 position and now find themselves at the bottom of the pack. We firmly believe their accuracy levels will pick back up, but as we mentioned before, their rankings come with a high degree of risk. They are not conservative, they make very bold calls and when they are right, the jump well above the competition, but when the are wrong, it’s just as big of a hit the other way.
Best of breed rankings will be made up of the following this week:
Remember if there is a site that we should be tracking, let us know on twitter @ffadvisorcom
Best of Breed rankings first thing Saturday Morning!
Welcome to week 6 of our site/expert accuracy rankings! Last week (posted on Tuesday) we welcomed RosterWatch.com to our rankings, this will be their second week being assessed. You’ll notice there are several sites that have not been included in our past two weeks rankings including the FFAdict and Recliner QB Fantasy Corner, the reason for that is simply it is an opt-in effort to be assessed by FFAdvisor. These folks have to key their projections into our template for us to be able to run the numbers on them, if they are unable or too busy to get them to us in a week we are obviously not able to include them in our rankings.
As always we removed any players that were injured during the game, we only assess what experts actually rank, we make no assumptions for players they don’t rank.
Best Calls
At Quarterback we see FFToolbox and our friends at Fantasy Godfathers at the top of the list, both nailing the category with a bullseye for week 6. Toolbox was very accurate on Matt Schaub (15th projected versus 16th actual), Sam Bradford (20th versus 21st actual) and Tony Romo (7th projected versus 9th actual). Both the Godfather and Toolbox were right on for Matt Ryan calling him at the 8th projected versus the 6th actual, which wsa important as many had Ryan 15+ as a marginal starter in week 6.
The FantasySharks are usually at the top of a category, it’s just not usually RB! Previously strong in the QB category the sharks logged a #1 ranking in RB this week on the back of being appropriately conservative on Darren Sproles (23rd projected versus 26 actual – against an industry average of 15 or so) and being right on top of Steven Jackson as a must start ranking him at #11 versus his #11 actual performance.
NFL.com’s Dameshek continues a strong showing in his first year in FFAdvisor’s rankings by winning the WR category in the face of a challenging week of projections where studs like Roddy White, Gregg Jennings and Desean Jackson all really disappointed. Dameshek’s best call was slotting Brandon Marshall in as a WR2 with a 16 ranking against a 10th overall performance against an industry average of the low 20s (Revis Island, and swearing to get thrown out in the first half will scare off even the hardiest of fantasy experts apparently!). AJ Green was another great call, pegging him at 8th versus a 9 actual when you had other experts ranking him as low as #20.
It’s worth highlight CNNSI’s Mack for an insanely great (nod to Steve Jobs for that turn of a phrase) D/ST score. Mack nailed the Jets as the #1 D/ST, was just off on the Bengals at a 4 versus 3 actual and the Falcons at 10th versus a #9 actual. Very strong showing in a very difficult category (historically speaking).
Worst Calls
We do our color coding so at a glance you (and us) can do a visual analysis of how accurate sites are projecting positions that week. We’ve never had two categories where neither had any sites labeled “Wildly Innacurate” It was such an aberration that we tripled checked our input rankings and math, but it was completely true. So no real “bad” calls to highlight from the RB and QB categories, and universal applause to all of the experts and sites we track for that!
It wasn’t all good news this week however. We did see some low scores in the WR category. CBS’s Richard had a rough week being amongst the lowest on our #1 WR Marques Colston (22 projection), our #2 WR Jordy Nelson (21 projection), and being among the highest on Steve Smith (CAR) with a 3 ranking versus his 35th overall actual score.
ESPN’s fantasy experts of Matthew Berry and Christopher Harris struggled mightily in the TE category . Actually most of our experts this week had difficulty here, which is especially interesting in comparison to a very high week 5 TE rankings. Bye weeks play havoc both with fantasy line ups and expert fantasy rankings we believe. Berry and Harris were overly optimistic on Owen Daniels abilities to penetrate the tough Baltimore D slotting him at #5 versus a 29 actual ranking, they were also among the lowest on Fred Davis with 15/13 projections against his 7 actual. Obviously Vernon Davis and Jermichael Finley both being no shows really skews these numbers.
Next up is Cumulative rankings published on Thursday which will include the updates from both week 5 and week 6 and then remember to check back Saturday for our all important, one of a kind, best of breed fantasy rankings, the last word for making your start and sit decisions on Sunday!
Got questions, is there another site we should be tracking? Let us know on Twitter @ffadvisorcom
At FFAdvisor we’re constantly searching for new and innovative ways of bringing insights and clarity to the fantasy football landscape. Recently the folks at Who2Start.com asked us if we could measure the accuracy of their service offering: Personalized expert fantasy football advice either purchased by the individual question or by subscription. It as a very different challenge for us to think about rather than our normal exploration of the accuracy of positional rankings.
We’re pleased to announce that with the help of a few of our friends from MIT we’ve built a process and an algorithm to measure the efficacy of their work and in future weeks/years believe we can apply it to assess the use/value of start/sit and other more complex fantasy football offerings!
Methodology: Each question was evaluated on a scale from 0-10. The reason for this is because many questions had multiple components: i.e. “start two out of four players” or “pick the best two waiver wire candidates out of the following six.” When an answer was 100% correct it received a 10. When it was 100% wrong it received a 0. Anything in between was assigned a score based on the combination of answers provided versus the best possible outcome that could have been recommended.
The score doesn’t represent “accuracy” per se as our other weekly scorecard, but instead measures efficacy. Efficacy is simply “the ability to produce intended results.” We’ve evaluated Who2Start.com’s rankings for each of the past 5 weeks and the results are below:
Through the first five weeks of the season their personalized fantasy football service is delivering very good advice with an average efficacy rating of 69.6%. To put it simply, anything over 50% means essentially they’ve been more correct than they’ve been incorrect. We will continue to report on their efficacy throughout the season, but we have no problem recommending them for folks who are looking for more personalized fantasy football advice.
In addition we are creating a baseline of randomly selected twitter interactions to put a “crowd sourced” view of advice efficacy against this personalized expert driven approach. We hope to be able to report the initial results of that exploration next week!
Welcome to our best of breed rankings! The last word in start and sit decisions for you each week! Below you’ll find our rankings based on the top 3 sites in each position. Questions? Hit us up on twitter @ffadvisorcom!
Quarterbacks:
Based on rankings of Fantasy Sharks + FFToolbox + KFFL
1. Aaron Rodgers
2. Cam Newton
3. Michael Vick
4. Drew Brees
5. Matthew Stafford
6. Tom Brady
7. Matt Ryan
8. Philip Rivers
9. Ryan Fitzpatrick
10. Mark Sanchez
11. Josh Freeman
12. Eli Manning
13. Kevin Kolb
14. Matt Schaub
15. Ben Roethlisberger
16. Donovan McNabb
17. Tarvaris Jackson
18. Alex Smith
19. Matt Hasselbeck
20. Jay Cutler
21. Kyle Orton
22. Jason Campbell
23. Curtis Painter
24. Andy Dalton
25. Matt Cassel
26. Blaine Gabbert
Running Backs:
Based on rankings of Yahoo/Evans + Yahoo/Funston + FFAddict
1. Arian Foster
2. Darren McFadden
3. Adrian Peterson
4. LeSean McCoy
5. Fred Jackson
6. Matt Forte
7. Maurice Jones-Drew
8. Ryan Mathews
9. Chris Johnson
10. Frank Gore
11. Ahmad Bradshaw
12. Darren Sproles
13. Chris “Beanie” Wells
14. Jahvid Best
15. Cedric Benson
16. Mike Tolbert
17. Michael Turner
18. Joseph Addai
19. LeGarrette Blount
20. Shonn Greene
21. Willis McGahee
22. Jonathan Stewart
23. Ryan Grant
24. Isaac Redman
25. LaDainian Tomlinson
26. BenJarvus Green-Ellis
27. James Starks
28. Stevan Ridley
29. Mark Ingram
30. DeAngelo Williams
31. Thomas Jones
32. Marshawn Lynch
33. Michael Bush
34. Brandon Jacobs
35. Pierre Thomas
36. Dexter McCluster
37. C.J. Spiller
38. Kendall Hunter
39. Delone Carter
40. Rashard Mendenhall
41. Knowshon Moreno
42. John Kuhn
43. Earnest Graham
44. Jacquizz Rodgers
45. Shane Vereen
46. Ben Tate
Wide Receivers:
Based on rankings of Fantasy Sharks + FFAddict + ESPN Harris
1. Calvin Johnson
2. Larry Fitzgerald
3. Steve Smith
4. Hakeem Nicks
5. Greg Jennings
6. Mike Wallace
7. Roddy White
8. Wes Welker
9. DeSean Jackson
10. Vincent Jackson
11. Julio Jones
12. Dwayne Bowe
13. Brandon Lloyd
14. Steve Johnson
15. A.J. Green
16. Sidney Rice
17. Jordy Nelson
18. Jeremy Maclin
19. Santonio Holmes
20. Percy Harvin
21. Marques Colston
22. Eric Decker
23. Jacoby Jones
24. Mike Williams
25. Reggie Wayne
26. Antonio Brown
27. Nate Washington
28. Plaxico Burress
29. Lance Moore
30. Michael Crabtree
31. Denarius Moore
32. Victor Cruz
33. Mike Thomas
34. Pierre Garcon
35. Deion Branch
36. David Nelson
37. Mario Manningham
38. Robert Meachem
39. Kevin Walter
40. Johnny Knox
41. Darrius Heyward-Bey
42. Jacoby Ford
43. Malcom Floyd
44. Nate Burleson
45. James Jones
46. Titus Young
47. Steve Breaston
48. Austin Collie
49. Josh Morgan
Tight Ends:
Based on rankings of NFL.com/Dameshek + Yahoo/Pianowski + Sports Outlaws
1. Jermichael Finley
2. Rob Gronkowski
3. Jimmy Graham
4. Vernon Davis
5. Owen Daniels
6. Tony Gonzalez
7. Dustin Keller
8. Brandon Pettigrew
9. Greg Olsen
10. Jermaine Gresham
11. Kellen Winslow
12. Jared Cook
13. Marcedes Lewis
14. Aaron Hernandez
15. Dallas Clark
16. Scott Chandler
17. Visanthe Shiancoe
18. Randy McMichael
19. Kevin Boss
20. Jeremy Shockey
21. Todd Heap
22. Heath Miller
23. James Casey
24. Tony Scheffler
Kickers:
Based on rankings of KFFL + CBS/Richard + Yahoo/Funston
1. Neil Rackers
2. Jason Hanson
3. Nick Novak
4. Mason Crosby
5. Sebastian Janikowski
6. John Kasay
7. Ryan Succop
8. Stephen Gostkowski
9. Rian Lindell
10. Mike Nugent
11. David Akers
12. Robbie Gould
13. Matt Bryant
14. Lawrence Tynes
15. Jay Feely
16. Connor Barth
17. Adam Vinatieri
18. Alex Henery
19. Steve Hauschka
20. Rob Bironas
21. Nick Folk
22. Ryan Longwell
Defense/Special Teams:
Based on rankings of Yahoo/Funston + Yahoo/Pianowski + Bruno Boys
1. New York Giants
2. Detroit Lions
3. San Diego Chargers
4. Houston Texans
5. Minnesota Vikings
6. Tennessee Titans
7. Cincinnati Bengals
8. New Orleans Saints
9. Green Bay Packers
10. Pittsburgh Steelers
11. San Francisco 49ers
12. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
13. Philadelphia Eagles
14. Kansas City Chiefs
15. Chicago Bears
16. Jacksonville Jaguars
17. Indianapolis Colts
18. New England Patriots
19. New York Jets
20. Arizona Cardinals
21. Oakland Raiders
22. Buffalo Bills
23. Atlanta Falcons
24. Seattle Seahawks
25. Carolina Panthers
26. Denver Broncos
Welcome to our first cumulative rankings of the year. In this post you’ll be able to see who’s been the best over the first four weeks of the season in each position (so if you have time, you can go to the guys giving THE most accurate advice for your decisions) and overall (if you only have time to go to one site, go to one of the top ones).
We require a site be evaluated at least three weeks before they can be included in our cumulative rankings, which means CNNSI’s individual experts and Recliner QB Fantasy Corner won’t be included in this initial release.
We’ll use this information to begin to build our best of breed rankings, where we take the top few experts rankings from each category and create our own weekly cheat sheet released each Saturday morning.
It’s early, but the first thing that should jump out for you as you look across the master list of positional accuracy is that there are no bullseye ratings. No expert has been consistently on top of their game enough to earn a bullseye in any one category. We suppose a lot of that has to do with the shortened pre-season not adding a lot of clarity to how good or bad teams were going to be and the rash of injuries. We don’t include players that are injured in our projections, but their affect on the other offensive players around them, and their back ups performances are big variables in accurate projections.
Some consistency between last years overall winners and this years early success stories: Fantasy Sharks are #2. Last year they finished #2. Let me give you a hint, if you are looking for good, bold, and accurate projections, FantasySharks.com needs to be on your list. Mainstream-wise Yahoo’s Pianowski was a top 5 contender last year and this year is right back up there again. We love to see consistency like that because it just makes your lives easier as a fantasy football player, those are sites to check EVERY week when you have a tough call.
Near the bottom we see two of ESPN’s so called experts Eric Karabell and the Talented Mr. Roto Matthew Berry. Both of those guys are quality fantasy football writers, especially from an entertainment standpoint, but for now, stay away from their weekly rankings for your decision making.
CNNSI’s general rankings (not their expert rankings) were a joke last year and remain a joke this year. We’ll be removing them from our rankings in the upcoming weeks, because frankly they are so bad, no one should be using them. We’ll add them to our “Not an Option” list from an accuracy standpoint as a cautionary tale for anyone that hasn’t been following us the past two years.
It’s very early in the season and I’m sure these rankings will change a great deal, so keep checking back with us each week to make sure you have the best and most up to date data.
Remember if there is a site that we should be tracking, let us know on twitter @ffadvisorcom
Best of Breed rankings tomorrow!
Week 4! The last week before the bye week, the last week before we release cumulative rankings and give you a real good picture of what sites are consistently the best in their fantasy football rankings!
As always we removed any players that were injured during the game, we only assess what experts actually rank, we make no assumptions for players they don’t rank.
We welcome ReclinerQB Fantasy Corner (http://reclinerqbfantasycorner.blogspot.com/) to the rankings this week. Recliner QB got their rankings in for week 3, but we didn’t get them inputted in, glad to have them this here now!
Best Calls
This week is a fantastic one to demonstrate why our site exists. Most of your competitors are looking at ESPN, they are looking at Yahoo, they are looking at the mainstream sites and making their decisions based on that info, because it’s most available and it’s most recognized. Week 4 it’s also not the best advice. Looking at QB, The Sports Outlaw dominates the category this week. Pulling a double #1 they also win the TE category. No head shots over at Sports Outlaw. No fancy highlighting. Not even a table with all their rankings. They just come out in a blog post weekly. They also have been pretty darn accurate. Best calls this week. Being closest on Michael Vick (#4 versus #3 actual), Recognizing that Flacco would struggle (#20 versus #31 overall), and being one of the sites to slot Kevin Kolb as a non starter (#23 versus #28 actuals).
I’ve typically hammered CNNSI because their default rankings have been statistically bad. They’ve stepped up their support of fantasy football this year by adding in 4 new experts individual rankings and setting up a composite. After this week we’ll not track their “general” rankings any longer, because frankly no one should be using them. The new approach is working for them as we see one of their first top finishes, with McQaude hitting the #1 in the all important RB category. He just about nailed Steven Jackson at #17 versus a #16 actual. He also was appropriate low on struggling DeAngelo Williams and straight nailed Ryan Mathews performance outside of top ten (#11).
Another couple small sites worth mentioning TheFFAddict breaks into a #1 spot in WR and our newest addition Recliner QB Fantasy Corner being a top 3 QB accuracy and #2 overall in WR ranking. Great job and we look forward to seeing more!
Worst Calls
So yes CNNSI improved in general, but still a scatter shot approach even with the experts they’ve enlisted. CNNSI Sabino struggled in the RB category ranking #1 RB Beanie Wells at 27th and being one of the few to have #2 RB Matt Forte in double digits at #10.
NFL.com’s Damesheck had some significant misses in the WR space. He didn’t rank Julio Jones ho ended up being the #15 WR this week. He had Brandon Marshall in his top 10 (ok Chad Henne’s injury obviously hurt him, but still probably a bit high on the guy in standard scoring) and he was one of the highest on Santonio Holmes this week ranking him at 11th versus his starting 61st ranked performance….that’s gotta sting like Mark Sanchez’s pride after last week’s beat down by the Ravens.
The Fantasy Sharks took some significant beatings this week in the rankings as well, being in the bottom five in three categories. A lot of this has to do with their ranking philosophy. These folks are not for the faint of heart. They rank aggressively and in a lot of weeks that pays off with real positive differenation over sites that are more conservative and go with an always start your studs mentality. This week however we see the flip side, when that risk can, and will hurt your lineup.
Next up is Cumulative rankings and then remember to check back Saturday for our all important, one of a kind, best of breed fantasy rankings, the last word for making your start and sit decisions on Sunday!
Got questions, is there another site we should be tracking? Let us know on Twitter @ffadvisorcom
Hey folks, welcome to our (delayed) week three rankings. Lots of exciting stuff happening over here at FFAdvisor and we’re trying to stay on top of it all.
We’ve added a few more experts to the site. CNNSI (long a site who’s fantasy rankings we’ve made fun of) has assembled a panel of four experts and also released a composite score. We’ve added them to our rankings this week.
Coming up in future weeks we’ll be adding more smaller sites and blogs to our list of rankings, with a goal of ranking the accuracy of 50 sites a week by the end of the season, far more than any other service out there!
Also, we’ve started soliciting volunteer writers to craft site and blog reviews as part of our team. We’ve got 5-6 folks out there checking out sites right now and are always looking for more. If you are interested best way to let us know is at twitter @ffadvisorcom or via email FantasyFootballAdvisors@gmail.com
Week 4 rankings should be on schedule for Wednesday, Cumulative Rankings for the year to date will be released Thursday/Friday and remember this Saturday we release our one of a kind Best of Breed Rankings. Your one stop place for making fantasy football start/sit decisions!
