Congratulations to David Dodds of Footballguys.com. He's the winner of the 2015 Fantasy Index Experts Auction League. It was a stellar year for Dodds, who also participated in the Experts Draft League. He finished 2nd in that competition, just one game out of 1st.
We held the Auction back in May, to get the results into our annual preseason magazine. This is a Draftmasters type of league where participants -- 11 fantasy expert qualifiers and a reader representative -- assembled their entire team, and then were allowed to make no moves from that point on. If players got hurt, they couldn't be replaced, and backups couldn't be added.
Each week during the season, teams got their best starting lineup of 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs ,1 TE, 1 PK and 1 Team D/ST. They also played every other team every week, to avoid luck of scheduling. Highest score each week went 11-0, lowest score 0-11, etc.
Dodds went cheap at quarterback, but Andy Dalton and Derek Carr gave him a strong option each week. He overcame Arian Foster's injury with Chris Ivory and (occasionally) C.J. Anderson proving to be quality starters. And Brandon Marshall, Jeremy Maclin and Rob Gronkowski gave him top numbers at wide receiver and tight end.
Scott Pianowski of Yahoo! Sports finished 2nd. He got by with Sam Bradford at quarterback, and his budget purchase of Doug Martin paid big dividends. Mostly he was carried by his wide receivers: Antonio Brown, A.J. Green and Eric Decker. Tim Heaney of USA TODAY came in 3rd, led by Devonta Freeman, Calvin Johnson and a quarterback combo of Eli Manning and Matthew Stafford.
Final standings are below.
FANTASY INDEX AUCTION LEAGUE RESULTS | |||
---|---|---|---|
Team | W | L | T |
FootballGuys | 122 | 52 | 2 |
Yahoo! Sports | 109 | 66 | 1 |
USA TODAY Fantasy | 101 | 72 | 3 |
Fantasy First | 99 | 75 | 2 |
Fantasy Football Firm | 88 | 88 | 0 |
Fantasy Titan 101 | 82 | 90 | 4 |
Extra Point Press | 80 | 92 | 4 |
FF Excellence | 78 | 95 | 3 |
Draft Sharks | 78 | 95 | 3 |
Fantasy Index | 78 | 96 | 2 |
Super League Qualifier | 64 | 108 | 4 |
Perfect Season Fantasy | 63 | 113 | 0 |
--Andy Richardson