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January 16, 2015

Fantasy Index Experts Poll

Bryan Hough rides Maclin to titantic victory at WR

The Fantasy Index Experts Poll is moving into the money positions, and Bryan Hough of Fantasy Titan 101 is the winner at Wide Receiver. He edged a pair of former champions in this competition, David Dorey (The Huddle) and Scott Pianowski (Yahoo! Sports).

Most of Hough’s top 20 was pretty typical. Like 14 other experts, he had Calvin Johnson as the top receivers, and he had Victor Cruz 14th. Two mistakes he’d like to have back. But Hough was one of only two experts to include Jeremy Maclin in his top 20. Hough had Maclin (coming off reconstructive knee surgery) up at 15th, and that helped him haul in a whole bunch of points relative to the rest of the field.

In this competition, recall, every pick is graded. The higher you rank a player, the more he counts towards you’re score. Maclin accounted for 191.8 fantasy points, so had somebody ranked him first, that would have been worth 4,795 points (25 x 191.8). Hough ranked him 15th, so he received 2,109.8 points for that pick (11 x 191.8).

It’s complicated, but it’s the way we score it, on a 25-6 descending scale. (If you grade them on a 20-1 scale, the picks down around 18, 19 and 20 don’t count enough. With the 30-11 scale, it seems like they don’t count enough.

In this kind of scoring system, there’s considerable value in avoiding blown picks. Hough wisely stayed away from Cordarrelle Patterson, Percy Harvin and Wes Welker, who poisoned some board.

Anyway, Hough wins the wide receiver position and deserves kudos.

EXPERTS POLL, WIDE RECEIVERS (standard)
RkTeamPoints
1.Bryan Hough51,086
2.David Dorey50,043
3.Scott Pianowski49,841
4.L'Roy Anthony Hale49,845
5.Paul Charchian50,011
6.Tom Deskovitz49,437
7.Mike Clay49,488
8.Bob Henry50,675
9.Michael Nazarek49,774
10.Lenny Pappano50,107
11.Alan Satterlee49,723
12.Bill Enright49,400
13.Sam Hendricks49,098
14.Michael Livengood49,423
15.Cory Bonini48,878
16.Michael Fabiano46,998
17.Micah James48,516
18.Scott Sachs47,893
19.Chris Liss48,772
20.Tony Holm46,588

On the overall board, Bob Henry of Footballguys.com is the overall leader, just over a thousand points ahead of Michael Nazarek of Fantasy Football Mastermind. That’s with four of the six precincts reporting.

The top 11 finishers qualify to participate in the Mock Draft that will appear in the 2015 edition of Fantasy Football Index magazine.

EXPERTS POLL, OVERALL (standard scoring)
RkTeamPoints
1.Bob Henry149,396
2.Michael Nazarek148,148
3.Micah James147,617
4.Bryan Hough147,557
5.Mike Clay146,865
6.Tom Deskovitz145,657
7.Michael Livengood145,487
8.David Dorey145,130
9.Scott Pianowski144,999
10.L'Roy Anthony Hale144,642
11.Scott Sachs144,577
12.Chris Liss144,337
13.Cory Bonini144,235
14.Alan Satterlee144,188
15.Lenny Pappano143,980
16.Sam Hendricks143,189
17.Michael Fabiano142,762
18.Paul Charchian142,721
19.Bill Enright142,117
20.Tony Holm141,631

The scoring system we’re using to grade these things, of course, might be more complicated than scientific. It’s hard to craft a meaningful grading system to argue that one top 20 is better than another. It might be better left to be more art than science. But we want to try to grade them. It ensures that the guys will be serious when putting together their top 20 lists, and it’s fun to add the competition and recognition element in there.

New this year (at the suggestion of Chris Liss of Rotowire) we’ve added a “floor” scoring system, where if you select a player who gets hurt after a few games or just bombs (like Patterson, Harvin or Cruz) you don’t get totally killed. At TE, PK and Def, we didn’t allow any pick to score less than the No. 20 player at that position. With wide receivers, fantasy teams start twice as many, so we lower the bar to the top 40 receiver. The 40th-best receiver this year was Greg Jennings (110.2 points). So in the floor system for wide receivers, the only points experts received were for guys who outscored Jennings. For anybody who scored fewer points than Jennings, where they finished with 70, 80 or 105 points, we just counted those guys as zero.

Using Floor scoring, four experts moved up at least 3 spots – Tom Deskovitz, Pianowski, Mike Clay and Michael Fabiano. Fabiano was the only contestant who had included Josh Gordon in his top 20, and Gordon was suspended for most of the season. Three experts fell at least three spots under the revised scoring: Liss, Henry and Lenny Pappano.

EXPERTS POLL, WIDE RECEIVERS (Floor Scoring)
RkAnalystPointsPrev
1.Bryan Hough18,4131
2.David Dorey17,9384
3.Scott Pianowski17,7597
4.L'Roy Anthony Hale17,6966
5.Paul Charchian17,6905
6.Tom Deskovitz17,47111
7.Mike Clay17,44210
8.Bob Henry17,4352
9.Michael Nazarek17,4038
10.Lenny Pappano17,3033
11.Alan Satterlee17,2929
12.Bill Enright17,26913
13.Sam Hendricks17,24814
14.Michael Livengood17,20312
15.Cory Bonini16,63815
16.Michael Fabiano16,56219
17.Micah James16,55517
18.Scott Sachs16,42318
19.Chris Liss16,32716
20.Tony Holm15,40720

Finally, here are the current overall standings using Floor Scoring, with Bob Henry still the overall leader. Deskovitz (who won the Fantasy Index Open last year) moves up into the No. 2 spot. Cory Bonini of USA Today Fantasy Sports benefits the most from this scoring system, moving up from 13th to 5th.

EXPERTS POLL, OVERALL (Floor scoring)
RkTeamPointsPrev
1.Bob Henry37,1751.
2.Tom Deskovitz37,0356.
3.Michael Nazarek36,6062.
4.Bryan Hough36,1364.
5.Cory Bonini35,99213.
6.David Dorey35,9828.
7.Micah James35,9573.
8.Mike Clay35,7525.
9.Scott Pianowski35,7259.
10.Scott Sachs35,61611.
11.L'Roy Anthony Hale35,38210.
12.Michael Livengood35,3627.
13.Chris Liss35,25212.
14.Lenny Pappano35,01215.
15.Sam Hendricks34,85716.
16.Bill Enright34,62419.
17.Michael Fabiano34,46817.
18.Paul Charchian34,02318.
19.Alan Satterlee33,68814.
20.Tony Holm32,48620.
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