Congratulations to Micah James of FFMagicMan.com. He’s the winner in the Wide Receivers category of the Experts Poll, outperforming the 19 other analysts. This position was corrupted by a rash of significant injuries, but somebody had to win it, and James came out on top.
Jordy Nelson, Dez Bryant and Kelvin Benjamin were key players at this position. With the way we score it (with every pick potentially worth hundreds of points) injuries play a huge role. If a player misses all or most of the season, that can really gut your score. So James picked up value by ranking Nelson 10th, the 2nd-lowest of everyone in the field. He was average on Bryant (3rd) and lower than most on Benjamin (16th).
That injury picks proved to be more important than being in the minority who didn’t put Antonio Brown 1st (a mistake) and tying for lowest on Julio Jones (8th), also a mistake.
James benefitted by being one of the few to include Brandon Marshall in his top 20. Marshall was the 3rd-highest scoring receiver. He also helped his cause by including Jeremy Maclin and being higher than most on Brandin Cooks and Sammy Watkins. Also helped to be the lowest on Randall Cobb, who struggled.
Alan Satterlee of dynastyfootballwarehouse.com and L.A. Hale of fantasygives.org finished 2nd and 3rd in this category. Satterlee benefitted more than anyone from the Nelson injury, having ranked him 12th (2 spots lower than anyone else).
As a reminder, we score this picks using a complex scoring matrix. Basically, the higher you rank a player, the more his overall production applies to your score. Jarvis Landry, for example, scored 157 points. Mike Nease ranked Landry 19th, so he received 1,099 points for that selection (7 x 157). Had he ranked him 20th, he would have received 942 points (6 x 157). He had ranked him 1st, he would have gotten 3,925 (25 x 157).
Basically, it’s the player’s production multiplied by between 6 and 25 points (or zero points, if you don’t rank him at all). In the past, we’ve used a 20-1 scoring system, but that kind of system doesn’t give enough credit for coming up with gems late in the teens (like Micah James, for example, ranking Brandon Marshall 20th – that in the past would have given James only 234.2 points). We’ve also tried a 30-11 scoring system, but that seems to de-value the top picks too much.
There is no perfect scoring system, but whatever. We score the picks to add a dimension, and to help make sure that the analysts are taking the choices very seriously when they submit them in mid-May.
| EXPERTS POLL | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rk | Analyst | Points |
| 1. | Micah James | 47,733 |
| 2. | Alan Satterlee | 47,407 |
| 3. | L.A. Hale | 47,115 |
| 4. | Bryan Hough | 46,257 |
| 5. | Tony Holm | 46,176 |
| 6. | Chris Liss | 46,092 |
| 7. | Sam Hendricks | 45,878 |
| 8. | Bob Henry | 45,638 |
| 9. | Paul Charchian | 45,558 |
| 10. | Lenny Pappano | 45,496 |
| 11. | Michael Nazarek | 45,461 |
| 12. | Mike Nease | 45,457 |
| 13. | Mike Clay | 45,179 |
| 14. | Scott Pianowski | 45,015 |
| 15. | Jay Harding | 44,960 |
| 16. | Pete Owers | 44,845 |
| 17. | David Dorey | 44,284 |
| 18. | Cory Bonini | 44,207 |
| 19. | Todd Voorhees | 43,020 |
| 20. | Scott Sachs | 41,998 |
In the race for the overall title, L.A. Hale is the overall leader with two positions remaining. (But they’re two big ones – quarterbacks and running backs.) Hale runs a variety of websites, including fantasygives.org, fantasy4females.com and fantasy-first.com
Chris Liss of Rotowire.com has been hovering around the top all along. He’s just 44 points back. And Paul Charchian of LeagueSafe.com and Sam Hendricks of xppress.com are right there.
Parity has been the word this year. Nobody has been in the top 5 in more than two categories. Only one expert – Hendricks – has finished above average at all four positions.
| EXPERTS POLL, overall | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rk | Analyst | WR | TE | PK | Def | Points |
| 1. | L.A. Hale | 3 | 3 | 13 | 16 | 141,788 |
| 2. | Chris Liss | 6 | 11 | 1 | 10 | 141,744 |
| 3. | Paul Charchian | 9 | 2 | 11 | 4 | 141,302 |
| 4. | Sam Hendricks | 7 | 6 | 9 | 6 | 140,746 |
| 5. | Jay Harding | 15 | 1 | 12 | 12 | 140,376 |
| 6. | Michael Nazarek | 11 | 4 | 8 | 13 | 140,304 |
| 7. | Scott Pianowski | 14 | 7 | 5 | 9 | 139,875 |
| 8. | Bob Henry | 8 | 12 | 10 | 3 | 139,718 |
| 9. | Alan Satterlee | 2 | 15 | 15 | 11 | 139,572 |
| 10. | Lenny Pappano | 10 | 5 | 17 | 7 | 139,535 |
| 11. | Bryan Hough | 4 | 16 | 4 | 14 | 139,474 |
| 12. | Pete Owers | 16 | 10 | 7 | 18 | 138,694 |
| 13. | Mike Clay | 13 | 8 | 14 | 15 | 138,646 |
| 14. | David Dorey | 17 | 9 | 3 | 19 | 138,427 |
| 15. | Micah James | 1 | 20 | 18 | 8 | 137,802 |
| 16. | Cory Bonini | 18 | 18 | 16 | 1 | 137,511 |
| 17. | Mike Nease | 12 | 13 | 19 | 5 | 137,289 |
| 18. | Tony Holm | 5 | 17 | 20 | 2 | 137,287 |
| 19. | Todd Voorhees | 19 | 14 | 2 | 17 | 136,817 |
| 20. | Scott Sachs | 20 | 19 | 6 | 20 | 133,719 |
As we move into the field player categories, keep in mind that most of these totals include decimal points. That is, Hale right now actually has 141,787.7 points. Those are the official scores, but they’ve been rounded for presentation purposes.
—Ian Allan
