After last week, we had completed seven of our allotted ten weeks in the First Annual Analyzing the Experts Competition, and here were the standings:

RotoWorld: 73.2%
FFToday: 68.9%
FoxSports: 67.9%
ESPN: 66.1%
Yahoo! 64.3%
Starters 62.5%

RotoWorld was leading the way by a slim margin with FFToday and FoxSports right on its heels. The pack is starting to spread out with bye weeks no longer limiting our selections, separating the experts from the hacks. A couple of the bottom feeders, including the Average Joe Starters selected by me without expert help, will need a monster week to get back into the hunt with only three weeks remaining. So let’s see what everyone did in Week Eight, which corresponds to NFL Week 12.

The Team

Dropped: Roddy White Signed: Fred Taylor

I couldn’t help myself – I love running backs. Our league’s roster restrictions limit us to six and I had been running with five for a number of weeks and it was driving me nuts. I don’t know if Taylor will ever get the nod from any of our experts, but he is a solid running back who continues to put up nice numbers. While Roddy White has some upside, he can’t compete with the outstanding receivers we already have on our roster. This change will likely have no effect whatsoever, but I hope it will protect against a possible rash of running back injuries.

I kept everyone else, including LaMont Jordan. Sentimental reasons aside, I still believe he can break free from whatever voodoo the Raiders are performing and finish the season strong. At the start of the season he showed the league he can be an elite back if given the opportunity. Whether that chance ever comes around, no one knows, although the odds are getting slimmer with each Raiders loss.

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 Twelve. The highlighted names were the most advantageous picks for the team.

It looks like we have another week of everyone agreeing, although it is a bit more understandable this time. With the Denver running backs all injured, Patrick Crayton out, and Todd Heap’s ongoing injury issues, our team was surprisingly low on warm bodies. Unless someone wanted to take a chance on LaMont Jordan or Fred Taylor, the running back selections were already made for them. Similarly at receiver, the only viable alternative was Dwayne Bowe. That left us with quarterback, kicker, and defense as real choices. FoxSports stepped outside the box with his Bowie selection as did FFToday with the slightly saner Jon Kitna pick.

The Thanksgiving holiday messed with ESPN’s rankings a bit as they updated after the holiday, removing players from the games already played and completely obliterating their original rankings from cyberspace. I hunted for over an hour looking for their Wednesday rankings with no success. Since they basically did not pick a defense, I will treat them similar to FFToday in this regard.

The Results

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

• Derek Anderson
  
• Fred Taylor
  
• Steven Jackson
  
• Larry Fitzgerald
  
• Dwayne Bowe
  
• Eric Johnson
  
• Josh Brown
  
• Packers Defense

Derek Anderson easily beat out Jon Kitna this week in what has become one of the more interesting sub-contests among our players. Fred Taylor had a huge game to end up alongside Steven Jackson for best choice at running back while Clinton Portis ended up behind both of them and even LaMont Jordan! I knew there was a reason to keep Jordan. Dwayne Bowe once again barely inched out Torry Holt and Larry Fitzgerald was a monster. Eric Johnson won by default while Josh Brown prevailed due to the horrible field conditions in Pittsburgh. And the Packers defense was better than the Lions in their head-to-head match up.

The numbers were certainly better this week, but I refuse to give our experts any credit for that. Injuries significantly limited the available choices, making their job a little easier. While FFToday’s choice of Kitna did not pay off, FoxSports’ Bowe selection, which looked crazy before the games started, was amazingly correct. I have repeatedly slammed FoxSports’s Roger Rotter and his predictions over the Analyzing the Experts series and it looks like I may have to take some of those rather sharp comments back. If his performance warrants, I have no problem giving Rotter the praise and credit he is due, but I’ll wait a couple more weeks before I eat crow.

Here are the contestant success rates for Week Eight of our contest:

• FoxSports 87.5%
  
• Starters 75.0%
  
• RotoWorld 75.0%
  
• Yahoo! 75.0%
  
• FFToday 62.5%
  
• ESPN 62.5%

I wish we could get these kinds of numbers with a full roster, but it doesn’t look like that will ever happen. At least it was a solid week across the board, helping our contestants pull their numbers up after the drubbing they took last week.

After eight weeks, the official King of the Experts standings are:

First Annual Analyzing the Experts Competition Official Standings

1. RotoWorld 73.4%
   
2. FoxSports 70.3%
   
3. FFToday 68.1%
   
4. Yahoo! 65.6%
   
5. ESPN 65.6%
   
6. Starters 64.1%
   

Conclusions

FoxSports made a move on RotoWorld, closing the gap to only two picks with two weeks to go, very doable with continued good selections. FFToday is still in the running even though this week’s outside the box selection didn’t pay off as well as last week’s. It is pretty much a three horse race at this point as Yahoo!, ESPN, and the Starters are still a turn back from the leaders and fading fast. Interestingly, even the top expert so far, RotoWorld, is less than a full pick better than the Starters on a weekly basis. Our contestants have yet to make a convincing case for their usefulness.

Positional Success Rates

I don’t know if anyone other than myself finds this section interesting. Our small pool of potential players make these numbers highly dependent on our personnel. This is something that will be addressed in the off-season. I doubt we will be able to completely eliminate any effect from our specific players, but hopefully we can make it only one of a number of factors affecting our numbers and, in doing so, provide some statistically relevant data.

QB: 54%
RB: 66%
WR: 72%
TE: 65%
K: 67%
Def: 83%

Final Thoughts

As we enter crunch time, the experts are separating into two groups: the contenders and everyone else. RotoWorld, FoxSports, and FFToday all have good chances at winning the coveted King of the Experts trophy while the rest are just playing to stay out of the cellar. Ironically, this approximates the status of many fantasy leagues right now where teams are either playing to win it all or just trying to escape with a little pride. We only have a couple weeks left in the contest, will someone step up and close the gap with RotoWorld? Will an expert implode and fall below the 60% mark so I can unleash tirades of insults with abandon? That is why we play the games…