A change has been made to the methodology and it came from a reader’s e-mail. FFToday is the one representative in our contest that does not project team defense numbers, which has hurt their percentages so far, as defense has been one of the easier categories to select correctly. To even things up, FFToday will be given the average score for selecting defenses each week, neither helping nor hurting them or their competition. I have already adjusted prior weeks to reflect the change. This should put everyone on equal footing, leaving no excuses at the end of our ten-week competition.

Our rankings through four weeks:

RotoWorld: 78.1%
ESPN: 71.9%
Yahoo! 71.9%
Starters 68.8%
FoxSports: 68.8%
FFToday: 68.1%

The Team

Dropped: Bernard Berrrian Signed: Roddy White
Dropped: Kenton Keith Signed: Josh Brown
Dropped: Texans Defense Signed: Seahawks Defense

I continued to fiddle with the fringes of the team, trying everything I can think of to make it something more than slightly below average. Roddy White has surprisingly shown a pulse in the dismal Atlanta offense, although he will likely never start for us. Kenton Keith isn’t cutting into Addai’s workload in the slightest and I needed to grab a second kicker just to give our experts some choice in their selections. This does leave us with only five running backs. The league roster limit is six, so I will be keeping my eye out for a back with upside that I can stash, maybe even taking Keith back after the byes are over and I have the room. The Texans defense was just sitting on the roster waiting for something more interesting to pop up and the Seahawks defense was the best I could do.

This leaves us with the following guys from which we must piece together a competitive team in NFL Week 9:

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 start recommendations were all taken from the experts’ published fantasy football player rankings for Week Nine. The names bolded and in blue were the most advantageous picks for the team.

The bye issues are nearly over for this team, with only our underperforming St. Louis Rams players, Torry Holt and Steven Jackson, taking the week off. A wider array of selections certainly provided fertile ground for our experts to diverge. There was consensus on Derek Anderson, Clinton Portis, Larry Fitzgerald, and the Packers defense. Travis Henry was the heavy favorite for #2 running back while the second receiver slot was split between Dwayne Bowe and Roddy White. Inexplicably, some of our contestants recommended Todd Heap after getting burned by the lame tight end previously and multiple times. Some people never learn….

The Results

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

• Jon Kitna
  
• Clinton Portis
  
• Travis Henry
  
• Larry Fitzgerald
  
• Roddy White
  
• Eric Johnson
  
• Josh Brown
  
• Packers Defense

Everyone incorrectly liked Anderson, who wasn’t a bad play, but not as good as Kitna. Portis exploded and Henry limped to a second place finish among backs. Bowe tossed up a goose egg after getting injured and, not surprisingly, Heap didn’t play once again. Brown was marginally better than Reed and the Packers defense was solid.

Roger Rotter at FoxSports continues to amaze with a second week of great selections after hiding out at the bottom of the rankings the first few weeks. And, like clockwork, RotoWorld continues its domination. Yahoo! and FFToday had middling performances and ESPN was way back with an absolutely horrible week. Getting three out of eight selections correct is painful. Everyone has bad weeks, but an expert shouldn’t have one this bad very often.

I had a feeling the end of bye weeks limiting selections would help to differentiate the experts and, sure enough, picks were all over the board. No one was perfect and I will be pleasantly surprised if we see another 100% selection over the remaining five weeks. It is one thing to select four or five spots correctly with byes and injuries taking care of the rest. It is obviously a lot more challenging to get all eight right. So, the week five results look something like this:

RotoWorld 87.5%
FoxSports 87.5%
Starters 62.5%
FFToday 62.5%
Yahoo! 62.5%
ESPN 37.5%

The biggest move this week was downward as ESPN’s last place in the standings is due to their horrible picks this week. They had not been terribly consistent anyway so one abysmal week moved them way down. FoxSports continues its climb with two excellent weeks in a row while RotoWorld is building a significant lead. Interestingly, the statistical adjustment to FFToday had little effect (as it should). Getting the average score for a position will tend to pull a contender into the middle of the pack over time. However, one spot out of eight is relatively minor.

Halfway through the competition, the standings are:

First Annual Analyzing the Experts Competition Official Standings

1. RotoWorld 80.0%
   
2. FoxSports 72.5%
   
3. Yahoo! 70.0%
   
4. Starters 67.5%
   
5. FFToday 67.0%
   
6. ESPN 65.0%

Conclusions

RotoWorld and FoxSports improved their overall percentages this week while the rest of the pack went down, way down in ESPN’s case. From first place to last is still only six picks difference, not as insurmountable number. It is almost a full week’s worth of selections though, so RotoWorld either needs to stumble or one of our other contenders must consistently excel over the next three or four weeks to catch up.

Positional success continues to be influenced largely by the team personnel. Pick Kitna or Anderson? When a team has two quality options it can come down to a gut feeling and a single pass. Heap continues to give our experts fits as he spends time on the injury report but is too good to bench when playing.

QB: 60%
RB: 73%
WR: 75%
TE: 57%
K: 73%
Def: 75%

Other than those oddities, all the other positions are equivalent in difficulty so far. I don’t think we will get any conclusive information about the experts’ positional success this year other than the overriding factor of the actual players. I have always assumed receiver would be the toughest to get right due to their inconsistency. That hasn’t been the case.

Halfway through our contest, RotoWorld has jumped out to a sizeable lead. Will anyone put up the picks to catch them? It is very doable, but someone has to step up and make the right calls. Five weeks left, forty picks remaining. Here’s hoping for both an interesting finish to the contest and more importantly, some insight into how good or bad our experts can be. Average Joe (Starters) is still in the running, meaning our experts aren’t providing any huge advantage. Surprising? Not for a pessimist like myself, but time will tell if my general distrust of all things labeled expert is justified.