PlayThisGuy! Blog

If you win your fantasy league every year or generally go undefeated through the course of the season then there is no need for you to read on (and a BIG congratulations is coming your way!). However, if you’re like the majority of us that do lose from time to time (some more often than others) then this is a must read as it can have a profound impact on your performance for the coming week and remainder of the season.

Perception is Not Always Reality

In fantasy football, as in life, perception is not always reality. Our research shows that more than 80% of fantasy football players rely on the “Big Guys” (highest trafficked sites like ESPN, Yahoo, CBSSports and Rotoworld) for weekly fantasy rankings or cheat sheets. Fantasy picks are made, in large part, based on the “wisdom” of the writers these sites employ and readers trust that because they have brand recognition their advice must be the best. (Now before we go any further please keep in mind that I myself have used these sites both for league management and advice and they provide some valuable insight and functionality that can be quite helpful).

But, what if I told you there were dozens of free sources that have actually provided quantifiable better weekly Player Ranking advice in 2009 than some of the Big Guys like ESPN, SI, Rotoworld and other commonly used sites? And in many cases their advice was more than 40% better? Would you be surprised…maybe shocked?

Well, that’s exactly what our data suggests.

Caution – The Following May Force You to Rethink Your Approach to Research

Each week FantasyXPERT.com analyzes more than 100 sources for Player Rankings, Waiver Wire Pickups & Start & Sit recommendations. For this particular blog post we are only focused only on Player Rankings for 2009. We will do the same type of analysis for Waiver Wire and Start & Sit in the coming weeks. For Player Ranking accuracy, we analyze 35 sources (some well known and others not) to determine exactly how accurate each has been against their respective weekly fantasy rankings. Important to note is that we are not in the business of providing our own advice so we maintain a position of neutrality. Simply put, we don’t care who comes out on top…we just want to know who they are.

Before we look at the data here are a few things to keep in mind:

• The accuracy data changes frequently so check back on our blog for additional insight like below. This study was done using data through week 6 of the 2009 season only.
• We regularly analyze 35 sources for Player Rankings but 6 do not provide reliable weekly rankings to be considered in our study.
• We determine accuracy by analyzing the actual fantasy player rankings AFTER the weeks games vs. each sources rankings PRIOR to the games.
• We group sites together in 4 “Tiers” based on Web traffic rankings from Compete.com. Tier 1s are most popular, Tier 2s next, Tiers 3s next and the lowest ranked sites are Tier 4s. For a detailed description of which sources belong to each Tier please see bottom of post.
• We analyze QBs, RBs, WRs, TEs and Ks. Some sources do not rank TEs or Ks so we only include the positions they do rank in our analysis.

Key Findings:

• The top 5 sources in 2009 have outperformed the worst 5 by more than 40%.
• The #1 ranked overall source through Week 6 of 2009 is a Tier 4 site that is most likely an unknown to most of us – Fantasycafe.com.
• Of the top 5 sources, only 1 belongs to the Tier 1 group. 4 of the top 5 sources for 2009 ARE NOT Tier 1s:
  • #1 is a Tier 4
  • #2 is a Tier 1
  • #3 is a Tier 3
  • #4 is a Tier 2
  • #5 is a Tier 3