It's Week 8, which means we're about to the midway point of our annual Experts leagues. Each May, we gather a dozen fantasy experts to participate in our Auction and Draft leagues that run in the preseason magazine. We play them out during the season in a no-transaction league. Here's how the Auction is going so far.
Scott Pianowski of Yahoo! Sports leads the way. He's got a nice quarterback tandem of Drew Brees and Matthew Stafford, and a top-performing running back duo of Saquon Barkley and James White. One more B, Antonio Brown, joins Brees and Barkley in leading his team to the best record thus far.
In this league, to minimize scheduling luck, each team plays every other team each week. Top score goes 11-0, worst score goes 0-11, etc.
In 2nd is Sam Hendricks of Extra Point Press. He also has a nice quarterback tandem, Matt Ryan and Cam Newton. Adam Thielen, Eric Ebron and Sterling Shepard have led his receiving corps. And Melvin Gordon and Tarik Cohen have been a solid pair of running back starters.
You probably knew Todd Gurley would show up on one of the top teams, and that's the case: he's on 3rd-place Ian Allan's Fantasy Index team. Allan also has Ezekiel Elliott, and his $8 buy of Andrew Luck looks good. JuJu Smith-Schuster leads an otherwise disappointing wide receiver group.
Full rosters can be seen in our preseason annual and by searching for the Fantasy Index Mock Auction League at this link. Current standings are below. We'll check in on the Experts Draft league in the next day or two.
Since this is a no-transactions league, there's nothing you can do if you're hit hard by injuries. Teams near the bottom of the standings lost starters like Jerick McKinnon, Jimmy Garoppolo, Derrius Guice and Jay Ajayi. All you can do is grit your teeth and wait until next year.
EXPERTS AUCTION LEAGUE STANDINGS | |||
---|---|---|---|
Team | W | L | T |
Yahoo! Sports | 57 | 20 | 0 |
Extra Point Press | 53 | 24 | 0 |
Fantasy Football Index | 47 | 29 | 1 |
Fantasy Index Blackout | 46 | 31 | 0 |
FootballGuys | 43 | 33 | 1 |
Big Guy Fantasy Sports | 41 | 34 | 2 |
FantasyPros | 38 | 38 | 1 |
The Huddle | 33 | 43 | 1 |
Perfect Season Fantasy Football | 31 | 44 | 2 |
Draft Sharks | 27 | 47 | 3 |
YouRulz.com | 23 | 53 | 1 |
RotoWire | 17 | 60 | 0 |
--Andy Richardson