Thus Far

Last week ended on a fairly depressing note as, even with some significant byes and injuries, no expert truly emerged as the best. Neither did anyone really come all that close to the optimal lineup. On the bright side, no one completely sucked either. But it was only one week, so my hopes are still high. So far, the standings are as follows:

ESPN: 62.5%
Yahoo! 62.5%
RotoWorld: 62.5%
FFToday: 57.1%
FoxSports: 50.0%
Starters 50.0%

The Team

I didn’t make any changes to the team in preparation for Week Six as I still like the names I have on it, if not the performance I am getting from them. Our league is pretty low key and trades are unfortunately rare. So I stand depressingly pat, ready to witness another display of mediocrity.

A starting lineup consists of 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, and 1 Def, or eight starters and ten bench players.

These were all taken directly from the experts’ published fantasy football player rankings for Week Six. The names in blue were the most advantageous picks for the team. A couple of these were gimmies with Jon Kitna and Jeff Reed on byes, leaving Derek Anderson and Jay Feely as the only possible choices. Everyone liked Clinton Portis but only Yahoo! was farsighted enough to go with LaMont Jordan at running back. Larry Fitzgerald was the consensus #1 wide receiver pick while the vote was split on the second choice with two votes for Dwayne Bowe and three for Torry Holt. Everyone jumped all over Heap at tight end and the experts thought the Seattle defense was the way to go, excluding RotoWorld. Unlike the previous week, each participant seemed to be thinking for themselves for a change, with at least some minor differences in lineups excluding the identical ESPN and FoxSports projections.

The Results

The best lineup I could have put on the field in Week Five would have been:

Derek Anderson
Clinton Portis
LaMont Jordan
Larry Litzgerald
Patrick Crayton
Jeff King
Jay Feely
Houston Defense

The biggest surprise continues to be how inaccurate the projections have been thus far. Because of injuries and byes, this 18 player team is very restricted in its starter selections. Two positions had only a single player available while the running back spot had three options to fill two roster slots. When as expert gets spotted two selections (because of byes) and can only pull out two of six in their other choices, it reflects a pretty horrible performance. LaMont Jordan’s unexpected play definitely cost most experts a pick with only Yahoo! getting his availability right. The experts split on who should be joining Larry Fitzgerald in the starting lineup and were all proven wrong when the unloved Patrick Crayton proved to be the best receiver on the team this week. Another injury hurt everyone when Todd Heap couldn’t go, leaving Jeff King the winner by default. RotoWorld chose a different defense than everyone else and it worked.

So, our humble standings for the week are:

Yahoo! 62.5%
RotoWorld: 62.5%
Starters 62.5%
FFToday: 57.1%
ESPN: 50.0%
FoxSports: 50.0%

ESPN goes from best record in Week One to worst in Week Two; not very consistent. FoxSports continues to suck hard, bringing up the rear in consecutive weeks.

Compiling the results from both Week One and Two gives us our season standing.

Yahoo! 62.5%
RotoWorld 62.5%
FFToday 57.1%
ESPN 56.3%
Starters 56.3%
FoxSports 50.0%

Conclusions

After two weeks, some trends are developing. Yahoo! and RotoWorld are leading the way while FFToday and ESPN lag slightly. FoxSports has done nothing during the competition to improve my previous poor opinion of their expertise. FFToday gets a small asterisk as well since they do not project defenses. It has actually hurt them so far in this competition as choosing the best defense currently has a success rate of 62.5%

A positional break down of success doesn’t help much since Heap’s injury problems have really screwed our experts. I expect by the end of this competition, wide receiver will be the toughest to call due to the variability of their numbers. Thus far though, receiver has been one of the better calls for the experts. We’ll see what the third week of our contest brings….