A hearty congratulations to Philadelphia-based reader Bill Copestick. Not because his local team is in the Super Bowl again, but because he won the Fantasy Index Experts Draft League for the 2024 season.
Two years ago, Copestick won our Fantasy Index Open competition. That earned him admission to the 2023 Experts Poll, and his top-12 finish in that competition earned him a spot in our Experts Draft league. (This is the league we draft in May, to get the results published in our preseason magazine.) Not content to just be a part of that league, Copestick wound up winning it by four games over Sam Hendricks.
To minimize scheduling luck, this play-all league has every team playing every other team each week during the season (through Week 17). Top score each week goes 11-0, bottom score goes 0-11, etc. Bill had a final record of 131-53-3, to Sam's 127-57-3. It's one of the closest finishes in league history. Tony Holm of Fantasy Sharks came in 3rd.
Full results can be seen at this link. Draft board can be seen there, or in our 2024 magazine.
No one will be surprised by the key performers on the top finishers. Drafting from the sixth spot, Bill started his draft with Ja'Marr Chase, Derrick Henry and DeVon Achane, then built his Bengals stack with Tee Higgins in the fifth and Joe Burrow in the eighth. And Chase Brown in the 11th, just to make sure he got all the Bengals points for most of the season.
Sam finished 2nd, with CeeDee Lamb and Josh Jacobs as his top 2 picks and Jared Goff a mid-round quarterback value.
Tony Holm's best pick might have been sixth-rounder James Conner...but 13th-rounder Chuba Hubbard was even better. Josh Allen in the second round also helped him win a lot of weeks down the stretch.
Congrats again to Bill!
FANTASY INDEX EXPERTS DRAFT LEAGUE | |||
---|---|---|---|
Franchise | W-L-T | PF | Avg PF |
Copestick/Index Open | 131-53-3 | 2544 | 149.6 |
Hendricks/Extra Point Press | 127-57-3 | 2455 | 144.4 |
Holm/Fantasy Sharks | 109-77-1 | 2325 | 136.8 |
Smith/FullTime Fantasy | 96-86-5 | 2303 | 135.5 |
Henry/Footballguys | 99-84-4 | 2285 | 134.4 |
Blinn/Index Blackout | 93-90-4 | 2280 | 134.1 |
Dorey/The Huddle | 94-89-4 | 2206 | 129.8 |
Bonini/The Huddle | 79-101-7 | 2178 | 128.1 |
Pianowski/Yahoo Sports | 90-96-1 | 2167 | 127.5 |
Funston/The Athletic | 64-122-1 | 2025 | 119.1 |
Wood/Footballguys | 64-121-2 | 2013 | 118.4 |
Nazarek/Fantasy Football Mastermind | 56-126-5 | 1991 | 117.1 |
--Andy Richardson