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January 20, 2017

Fantasy Index Experts Poll

Rotowire captures first Experts Poll championship

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Cubs have ended long runs of futility in the last year, so fitting that Chris Liss of RotoWire has finally won his first Fantasy Index Experts Poll. He’s been knocking on the door and pounding on the door, as Bum Phillips once said, and finally kicked the thing in.

Liss, who’s been entering each year since 2004, has been close many times before. He’s finished 2nd, 5th, 12th and 5th the last four years in the 20-man field. But this year he finally moved up into the No. 1 spot.

I scored the ballots in two different ways, and in both Liss was the clear winner. In our standard traditional scoring, he finished about 2,000 points ahead of Bob Henry of Footballguys.com, and about 7,000 points ahead of everyone else. There are six different positions, and Liss won half of those stand-along categories (QB, WR and PK), while finishing 2nd at running back and 4th at defenses. That’s remarkably hard to do in a 20-man field.

In this type of format, player durability is huge. It can really kill you if you’re high on a player like Tony Romo, Jamaal Charles or Keenan Allen, who all missed the bulk of the season. Those kind of players can play a larger role in determining the outcome than whether an expert correctly forecasted that Aaron Rodgers would outperform Cam Newton.

So I also scored the ballots using what I call Baseline Scoring. In that system, I try to account for typical fantasy leagues being 12 teams, and owners have the ability to adjust and manage rosters as they go. That is, if they drafted Keenan Allen or Tony Romo, they would have grabbed a replacement player off the waiver wire along the way (and experience shows us that a lot of these waiver grabs end up being better than the guys who were originally drafed).

So with Baseline Scoring, I don’t look so much at a player’s total production but instead how much better he is the best non-starter at his position. (And if he’s worse than that player, that pick just goes down as a zero). For the 2016 season, the 13th-best players are QB, TE, PK and Def were Andy Dalton, Coby Fleener, Matt Prater (and Sebastian Janikowski) and Buffalo. Typically twice as many players start at running back and wide receiver, so I pulled 24 players off the board at those positions, leaving use with Dez Bryant and Rashad Jennings.

Those were the baseline players. In this format, you get positive points for anything above and beyond those players. Every other pick goes down as a zero.

But using Baseline Scoring, Liss is still up in the No. 1 spot, with only four others within 2,000 points. His picks this time were just the best, apparently. Henry’s choices were also very solid – above-average in everything, and in the top 3 at four different positions.

Cory Bonini of USA Today Fantasy Sports finished in 3rd place this year (a strong follow-up after winning the contest last year. Jody Smith (Gridiron Experts) and Alan Satterlee (Dynasty Football Warehouse) also finished in the top 5. Smith finished in the top 5 at all three of the marquee positions – QB, RB, WR.

There were some shifts caused by the Baseline Scoring method. Most notably, Frank Rotella of Sewell, N.J., would move up from 8th to 2nd. Rotella seems to have a good feel for this kind of competition. He won the Fantasy Index Open a year ago and finished 31st this year (out of 222 entries), won of only two in that competition to finish in the top 100 at all six positions.

David Dorey of The Huddle also would benefit from Baseline Scoring, rising from 16th to 9th. Satterlee’s picks were the most adversely affected by Baseline Scoring – he would have fallen from 5th to 14th.

The top 12 finishers in this competition (using Standard Scoring) earn spots in the Mock Draft league that will be published in the magazine. Liss is the overall winner, so he gets to decide which of the draft slots he’d like in that sine-wave format.

Scoring for this contest is complex, but I’ll offer a brief explanation for those who aren’t familiar. Each of the 120 picks submitted by each expert (not including the “overall”) earns points – the higher a player the more he counts towards your score. Had you ranked Matt Bryant as your No. 1 pick, for example, you would have received 3,950 points (25 x 158). If you ranked him 2nd, you would receive 3,792 (24 x 158). If you ranked him 3rd, you would receive 3,634 (23 x 158). If you ranked him 20th, that would be 948 (6 x 158). I used to use a 20-1 scale, but that undervalued the choices in the teens, so I switched to a 25-6 format.

With the Baseline Scoring, some smoothing is provided for the wild misses.

But however you score it this year, Chris Liss is your winner. Good day for the guys at Rotowire.

2016 FANTASY INDEX EXPERTS POLL -- STANDARD SCORING
AnalystQBRBWRTEPKDefPoints
Liss1211414301,490
Henry3106133299,172
Bonini141813121294,670
Smith5449612294,622
Satterlee4815151717294,317
Ratcliffe113164514294,199
Pianowski671412216293,176
Rotella71226182293,139
Nazarek813107117292,582
Hendricks18932711292,330
Clay13111211419291,790
Pappano914716815291,417
McDowell2191917209290,740
Hough12181151418289,984
Holm105520195289,851
Dorey176203158288,747
Eleff16151881020287,605
Howe1517919913287,371
Hale20161318166286,842
Charchian192017101310283,561
2016 FANTASY INDEX EXPERTS POLL -- BASELINE SCORING
AnalystQBRBWRTEPKDefPoints
Liss131137154,072
Rotella18528131552,755
Henry4113341052,449
Hendricks1315475952,268
Ratcliffe20851219352,107
Smith159614181351,784
Bonini612722651,599
Nazarek101686171151,183
Dorey779410550,851
Clay19210515250,615
Holm114111811950,595
Pianowski16131211141450,576
Eleff918131912750,509
Satterlee1217141781250,474
Hough3101516161850,247
Pappano82016109850,056
Hale5191715112049,821
Howe21418120449,029
McDowell17619931648,913
Charchian141202061747,950

If you want to expand the scope and look at recent years, Henry has been slightly better than Liss – his average finish has been a little higher. Since 2012, Henry has finished ahead of 73 other experts and behind 22. If we call those wins and losses, that puts him 2 games ahead of Liss. Four other experts have a winning percentage over 60 percent: Micah James (FFMagicMan), Alan Satterlee (Dynasty Football Warehouse), Michael Nazarek (Fantasy Football Mastermind) and Pro Football Focus (with Mike Clay handling the picks 3 years and Jeff Ratcliffe taking over in 2016).

EXPERTS POLL COMPOSITE STANDINGS (last 5 years)
name companyWLPct
Bob HenryFootballguys.com7322.768
Chris LissRotoWire7124.747
Micah JamesFFMagicMan3918.684
Alan SatterleeDynasty Football Warehouse5026.658
Clay (3)/Ratcliffe (1)Pro Football Focus4927.645
Michael NazarekFantasy Football Mastermind6035.632
Scott PianowskiYahoo! Sports5540.579
Cory BoniniUSA Today Fantasy Sports9675.561
Bryan HoughFantasy Titan 1013225.561
Sam HendricksFantasy Football Guidebook5243.547
Scott SachsPerfectSeasonFFB.com3838.500
David DoreyThe Huddle4451.463
variousFantasy Index Open5993.388
Bill EnrightFantasy Football Champs2136.368
Lenny PappanoDraft Sharks3263.337
Paul CharchianLeagueSafe1858.237
Mike ClayESPN / Pro Football Focus2292.193
Harris (2)/Clay (1)ESPN1146.193
Tony HolmFantasySharks.com1778.179
L.A. HaleBeyond Ballers632.158

—Ian Allan

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