Fantasy Football Accuracy Rankings - 2011 Edition (1 Viewer)

[smackdaddies]

from the NYT 5th down Blog

This year, 46 sites participated in the rankings accuracy challenge that I run in conjunction with the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (F.S.T.A.), and the results of the contest were revealed on Tuesday at the F.S.T.A. Winter Conference.

Top 10 overall

Most Accurate Rankings Across All Positions:

1. TheFantasyShrink

2. 4for4.com

3. FFToolbox

4. FootballGuys.com

5. DraftSharks

6. Pyromaniac.com

7. FantasyFootballGuidebook

8. BrunoBoys

9. FantasyFootballManiaxs

10. FantasyFootballCalculator (ADP)

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Thanks boys.

 

[DiStefano]

If you don't win the Superbowl, it's a lost season.

Just kidding. Pretty good top 10% finish.

 

[beaux]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

 

[butcher boy]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

I'd rather see rankings over the last 5 years or so. I know FBG has been near the top every year recently which sells me on them, but the others I'm not so sure. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

 

[beaux]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

I'd rather see rankings over the last 5 years or so. I know FBG has been near the top every year recently which sells me on them, but the others I'm not so sure. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

FFLibrarian probably has an archive that you could dig through or you could email Sara and ask her nicely if she has the data and could crunch the numbers.

 

[Sabertooth]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

I'd rather see rankings over the last 5 years or so. I know FBG has been near the top every year recently which sells me on them, but the others I'm not so sure. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

FFLibrarian probably has an archive that you could dig through or you could email Sara and ask her nicely if she has the data and could crunch the numbers.

 

[smackdaddies]

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?

Feel free to think that. Because if you think the only thing fbg puts out is a beginning of the year ranking (which is the only thing this result measures), I like the competition clueless. Let's play for money.

 

[beaux]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

I'd rather see rankings over the last 5 years or so. I know FBG has been near the top every year recently which sells me on them, but the others I'm not so sure. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

FFLibrarian probably has an archive that you could dig through or you could email Sara and ask her nicely if she has the data and could crunch the numbers.

http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/383177981/sara_reasonably_small.jpg

 

[Sabertooth]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

I'd rather see rankings over the last 5 years or so. I know FBG has been near the top every year recently which sells me on them, but the others I'm not so sure. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

FFLibrarian probably has an archive that you could dig through or you could email Sara and ask her nicely if she has the data and could crunch the numbers.

http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/383177981/sara_reasonably_small.jpg

Got any with glasses?

 

[massraider]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

If they are paying the fee, then going to the site, looking at the rankings, then leaving the site, yes. I pay FBG for the DD, subscriber contest, IDP coverage, and several of the subscriber-only features.

 

[Faust]

Another review of accuracy results for 2011:

2011 Accuracy (Weeks 1-16)

 

[Ministry of Pain]

Another review of accuracy results for 2011:

2011 Accuracy (Weeks 1-16)

The difference between 1 and 10 is less than 1%...the difference between 1 and 33 is less than 2%It resembles the projections where the difference between 20 and 40 is about 1-2 points.

 

[butcher boy]

I just went back and looked at my VBD Spreadsheet for one of my leagues this year. Standard scoring. It was last updated right before my draft in late august. Some highlights:

QB

- Josh Freeman ranked as 8th QB

- Matthew Stafford ranked as 10th QB

- Eli Manning ranked as 13th QB

- Philip Rivers ranked at the bottom of his tier.

- Kyle Orton, Matt Cassel, and Matt Ryan ranked lower than their ADP would suggest

RB

- Mark Ingram ranked 27th. for not buying into the hype.

- Mendenhall 6th.

- Darren Sproles ranked 53rd.

- Marshawn Lynch ranked 29th

- Peyton Hillis ranked 8th

WR

Not much to niptpick here. Maybe Jordy Nelson ranked 40th but who saw that coming? Overall, a big

TE

Big for having Gronk ranked way above his ADP. I got a lot of "Who?" questions when I drafted him, which tells DS was fairly unique in projecting him that high.

Overall, it's much easier to nitpick some missed projections and overlook all the guys they did get right, as evidenced above. Still kind of fun though.

 

[CapnJB]

Fourth overall sounds pretty good but they didn't make the top 10 in QBs or Rbs. With 6th in WRs and 3rd in TE did they just really nail the P/K and DST position?

 

[solorca]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

I'd rather see rankings over the last 5 years or so. I know FBG has been near the top every year recently which sells me on them, but the others I'm not so sure. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

If I'm not mistaken, he has been in the top 2-3 every season for the past few years. When it comes to just straight up rankings, he's pretty damn good.I don't really use rankings that much, other than to see if they happen to have anything that I completely missed, like a player ranked in a top 10 that I planned on benching. Bloom, and to a lesser extent, Dodds, like to go out on a limb occasionally...and I enjoy that aspect.

 

[solorca]

Big for having Gronk ranked way above his ADP. I got a lot of "Who?" questions when I drafted him, which tells DS was fairly unique in projecting him that high.

Not trying to be a jerk, but it would have to be a really weak league for me to imagine people not knowing who Gronkowski is.

 

[butcher boy]

Big for having Gronk ranked way above his ADP. I got a lot of "Who?" questions when I drafted him, which tells DS was fairly unique in projecting him that high.

Not trying to be a jerk, but it would have to be a really weak league for me to imagine people not knowing who Gronkowski is.

It's a good league with a few members who are perpetually clueless. It's not like everyone had that reaction.

 

[super sleeper]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

I'd rather see rankings over the last 5 years or so. I know FBG has been near the top every year recently which sells me on them, but the others I'm not so sure. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

According to the website, they were #1 last year, also. Is that enough to make you consider them?

 

[eric rymer]

FBG is not number one, but number 4 out of 46 is pretty good stuff. When you consider all the extras, a dam fine website.

Maybe, but being that "The Fantasy Shrink" is number 1 AND free, kind of silly to pay for the rankings, no?And BTW, it is damn.

If they are paying the fee, then going to the site, looking at the rankings, then leaving the site, yes. I pay FBG for the DD, subscriber contest, IDP coverage, and several of the subscriber-only features.

exactly. Rankings are just part of it. If all that matter is the rankings, then it's no better than the guy that shows up at the draft with all the draft magazines he could find at Barnes and Noble on the way in. It's all the extras that set FBG apart. Not trying to beat up the OP because it is still kinda neat to see how it all shakes out sometimes.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Actually just took a look at this yesterday... here are the guys who had at least two top-10 finishes in the last three years according to FantasyPros:

John Paulsen - The Fantasy Shrink 1 (this is really impressive)

John Paulsen - The Fantasy Shrink 2

Josh Moore - 4for4 4

Josh Moore - 4for4 4

Scott Pianowski – Yahoo 1

Scott Pianowski – Yahoo 6

Scott Pianowski – Yahoo 12

Gregg Rosenthal – Rotoworld 4

Gregg Rosenthal – Rotoworld 8

Gregg Rosenthal – Rotoworld 10

Pat Fitzmaurice – ProFootballWeekly 2

Pat Fitzmaurice – ProFootballWeekly 11

Pat Fitzmaurice – ProFootballWeekly 11

Andy Behrens – Yahoo 1

Andy Behrens – Yahoo 3

Andy Behrens – Yahoo 26

David Dodds - FootballGuys 2

David Dodds - FootballGuys 5

David Dodds - FootballGuys 30

There are a lot more sites being ranked now than there were two years ago, so a top-10 finish in 2009 was a bit easier than today, but it's still noteworthy.

And the small % differences are still meaningful IMO since, based on their methodology, there are many 1000s of ratings involved for each rater and the ratings that everyone agrees on (i.e. start Arian Foster instead of Joe McKnight) aren't included in the analysis.

Guessing that 64% is just about the best that can be done since there's a ton of randomness in week to week player performance.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Ok... just messed with this again to try and improve it.

I started with everyone who provided rankings in 2011 and had at least a two year track record.

Then I scaled each year so that the #1 ranker was 100%, and everyone else was measured against that year by year. (It's interesting that the best scores have gotten better in each of the last two years).

Then I averaged the scaled scores for each ranker across the two or three years of data for that person. Here are the results:

John Paulsen - The Fantasy Shrink 100.00%(!)

Josh Moore - 4for4.com 98.70%

Andy Behrens - Yahoo 98.67%

Scott Pianowski - Yahoo 98.37%

David Dodds - FootballGuys 98.34%

Pat Fitzmaurice - ProFootballWeekly 98.33%

Gregg Rosenthal - Rotoworld 98.27%

Site Rankings - FantasyFootballNerd 98.15%

Chet Gresham - Razzball 97.83%

Sigmund Bloom - FootballGuys 97.36%

Brandon Funston - Yahoo 96.84%

Erik Kuselias - ESPN 96.64%

Eric Karabell - ESPN 96.55%

Staff Rankings - FFToolbox 96.42%

Christopher Harris - ESPN 96.37%

Brad Evans - Yahoo 96.06%

Staff Rankings - FantasyFootballCafe 96.05%

Matthew Berry - ESPN 95.74%

Jamey Eisenberg - CBS Sports 95.67%

Ryan Lester - Lester's Legends 95.61%

Kevin Roberts - NFL Soup 95.44%

Walter Cherepinsky - Walter Football 95.31%

Staff Rankings - Fantazzle 94.98%

Dave Richard - CBS Sports 94.61%

Site Projections - CBS Sports 93.97%

Roger Rotter - Roger Rotter Sports 93.73%

Mike Krueger - FFToday 92.90%

Paul Greco - FantasyPros911 91.31%

Staff Rankings - KFFL 90.04%

Site Projections - SI.com 87.03%

Staff Projections - WhatIfSports 86.89%

Staff Projections - FantasySharks 86.61%

Paulsen's 2nd place finish this year was effectively a tie for first, so he emerges with a perfect score over two years. That's crazy good.

And I'd subjectively say that the guys above 98% represent the best of the best.

Also, what a shame that MFL, by far the best league software IMO, has teamed up with Fantasy Sharks, the worst ranker, for its weekly projections.

 

[cvnpoka]

i dunno, seems to show what a crapshoot all of this is. hardly a difference between the top 20 or so.

 

[butcher boy]

i dunno, seems to show what a crapshoot all of this is. hardly a difference between the top 20 or so.

I'm thinking the same. If you think about it, when you look at most NFL players, a lot of the rankers are going to be similar on most of them. For example, they're all going to have Ray Rice a top 3 RB, and Calvin Johnson a top 3 WR, etc. I think this is the reason there's not much variety in the top 20. These "automatic" guys are drowning out the areas where there are real differences between the various rankers.I'd like to see rankings that weigh the "riskier" calls much heavier. So for example, FBG would have gotten very high marks for having Gronk ranked higher than most other rankers. One way to do this would be to pick the surprise fantasy performers this season, good and bad, and see where the various rankers had them. Who had Cam Newton ranked the highest? Or Victor Cruz? Who had Rashard Mendenhall ranked lowest? Did anyone call his bust year? Who bit the hardest on the Felix Jones and Lance Kendricks hype? Things like that are what set the various rankers apart.

 

[cvnpoka]

i think that is how fantasypros attempts to rank