Fantasy News

Roland Wood and the guys at Dynasty Rogues are the winners of the 18th annual Experts Poll hosted by Fantasy Football Index magazine. Wood outscored the other 19 experts in the quarterbacks competition, and that allowed him to sneak past a handful of other contenders and win this year’s competition.

Wood compiled a solid overall card to win the competition. He fared poorly in kickers (17th) and below-average in wide receivers (14th), but he was very good in all of the other categories – 1st in defenses, 2nd in running backs and 3rd in tight ends.

And his win at quarterback allowed him to win the whole deal. Former champion Scott Pianowski (Yahoo!) finished 2nd, and perennial contender Michael Nazarek (Fantasy Football Mastermind) took 3rd.

Dan Bakley was the leader entering the final day of the competition but slipped to 4th. Bakley, however, has completed an unusually successful three-year run in the competition – 2nd, 1st and 4th in his three years of competiting. That translates to a 63-4 mark against other experts (24-1, 25-0 and 16-3 in his three years), making Bakley our new career leader in winning percentage.

On our overall (lifetime board), three other experts are clumped just behind Bakley, all with winning percentages of about 77 percent. David Dorey (The Huddle) is 133-39, Pianowski is one game back at 134-40, and Bob Henry (Football Guys) is 114-34. The updated career numbers will be posted later today. For this year, Dorey finished 6th overall, while Henry ranked 8th.

In this competition, which dates back 1991, every pick is scored in varying degrees. The higher you rank a player, the more points he scores for you in the poll – so the experts are graded on essentially all of the significant players. Drew Brees, for example, was the highest scoring running back in this scoring format, scoring 389 points. If you ranked Brees No. 1 on your board, that would be worth 7787 points – 20 multiplied by 389. If you ranked Brees 5th, you would get 5840 points (15 x 389). If you had Brees 19th, you would have gotten 779 points (2 x 389).

Follow that process for every pick by every expert, and Wood is the winner in the quarterbacks category. He went with a fairly conservative board in this category – I don’t see any knockout picks – but he had a number of above-average selections and avoided big mistakes (outside of putting Derek Anderson 6th). Wood had Ben Roethlisberger 5th, and his best selections might have been Matt Schaub and Philip Rivers as 12th and 13th. Regardless, when you add up all the picks, Wood won this category – and the whole thing.

The top 11 finishers in this poll earn spots in the magazine's 2009 Experts League, which will be published in the upcoming edition of the magazine. And draft order in that league is determined by the order of finish in this competition. So Wood gets first choice of where he wants to draft. Then Pianowski gets to pick from the remaining 11 spots, followed by Michael Nazarek and so on. The 11th and final draft spot went to James Serra, who edged Scott Endsley by only 2 points – 187,802 to 187,800. There’s also a 12th spot in that league that goes to a Fantasy Football Index subscriber.

Fantasy Football Index isn’t an participant in this poll. Rather than competiting, we administrate the deal. That’s out of fairness to the other competitors, since we’re handling the scoring, tabulating the picks and resolving any disputes – and the others in the poll would have no way of stopping us from changing our picks after the mid-May deadline. We do, however, run the numbers to see how the picks we published in the magazine would fare. We got off to a sluggish start this year – average in defense and bottom 4 in both kickers and tight ends, but rallied at the money positions, ranking 2nd in receivers, 11th at running back and 3rd at quarterbacks. Overall, we ranked 9th in comparison to the 20 experts.



FANTASY INDEX EXPERTS POLL, QUARTERBACKS

Points
48,406  Roland Wood  (dynastyrogues.com)
48,149  Tommy Stephens  (fantasyfootballedge.net)
47,133  Louis Tranquilli  (bfdfantasyfootball.com)
47,025  Lenny Pappano  (draftsharks.com)
46,968  Scott Pianowski  (Yahoo Sports)
46,932  Bob Henry  (footballguys.com)
46,928  David Dorey  (thehuddle.com)
46,356  Michael Nazarek  (ffmastermind.com)
46,230  Dan Bakley  (thefantasypoint.com)
46,138  James Serra  (footballsoftward.com)
45,956  Greg Rosenthal  (rotoworld.com)
45,586  Scott Endsley  (fantasydraftedge.com)
45,415  Craig Davis  (fantasyfootball.com)
45,397  Ryan Houston  (fanball.com)
45,309  Jeffrey Kamys  (docstats.com)
45,146  Nathan Zegura  (thefantasyconsultant.com)
45,046  Kevin Marshall  (draftwizard.com)
44,427  Christopher Liss  (rotowire.com)
42,867  Sam Hendricks  (ffguidebook.com)
42,530  Greg Alan  (4for4.com)

47,596  * Fantasy Football Index magazine picks

* -- magazine score is for exhibition purposes only; Fantasy Football Index is not eligible to win the poll.


FANTASY INDEX EXPERTS POLL, OVERALL (FINAL)

Points
191,712  Roland Wood  (dynastyrogues.com)
190,254  Scott Pianowski  (Yahoo Sports)
189,705  Michael Nazarek  (ffmastermind.com)
189,630  Dan Bakley  (thefantasypoint.com)
189,566  Lenny Pappano  (draftsharks.com)
189,441  David Dorey  (thehuddle.com)
189,347  Tommy Stephens  (fantasyfootballedge.net)
189,024  Bob Henry  (footballguys.com)
188,122  Greg Rosenthal  (rotoworld.com)
187,995  Louis Tranquilli  (bfdfantasyfootball.com)
187,802  James Serra  (footballsoftward.com)
187,800  Scott Endsley  (fantasydraftedge.com)
186,173  Christopher Liss  (rotowire.com)
184,990  Ryan Houston  (fanball.com)
184,511  Craig Davis  (fantasyfootball.com)
184,485  Jeffrey Kamys  (docstats.com)
184,309  Sam Hendricks  (ffguidebook.com)
184,242  Nathan Zegura  (thefantasyconsultant.com)
183,239  Greg Alan  (4for4.com)
179,432  Kevin Marshall  (draftwizard.com)

188,420  * Fantasy Football Index magazine picks

* -- magazine score is for exhibition purposes only; Fantasy Football Index is not eligible to win the poll.


Quarterbacks were scored on the following fantasy system: 1 point for every 20 passing yard, 1 point for every 10 rushing yards, 6 points for every touchdown, 4 points for every touchdown pass and 2 points for every 2-point conversion.

  
Points
389.4  Drew Brees
362.6  Aaron Rodgers
362.3  Jay Cutler
349.0  Kurt Warner
348.9  Philip Rivers
318.2  Peyton Manning
314.5  Donovan McNabb
311.7  Matt Cassel
285.2  David Garrard
280.5  Tony Romo
273.9  Brett Favre
270.9  Chad Pennington
267.0  Tyler Thigpen
255.2  Ben Roethlisberger
254.9  Eli Manning
254.4  Matt Ryan
246.1  Jason Campbell
245.5  Kyle Orton
238.5  Jake Delhomme
236.6  Joe Flacco
233.0  Matt Schaub
210.7  Trent Edwards
206.4  Jeff Garcia
191.9  JaMarcus Russell
188.7  Kerry Collins
184.1  Marc Bulger
126.3  Derek Anderson
102.7  Tarvaris Jackson
 87.7  Matt Hasselbeck
 61.3  Jon Kitna
 52.4  Carson Palmer
 17.7  Matt Leinart
 17.7  Vince Young
  3.8  Tom Brady
  0.0  Alex Smith



Previously in Experts Poll scoring ...

Jeffrey Kamys of Doctor Stats won the Kickers section.

Roland Woods of Dynasty Rogues won the defense and special teams category.

Tommy Stephens of Fantasy Football Edge won the Tight ends secton.

Dan Bakey of The Fantasy Points won the Wide Receivers competition.

Craig Davis of FantasyFootball.com won the Running Backs competition.

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