In an extremely close battle, Paul Charchian of LeagueSafe is the winner of our Experts Draft League. Charchian's overall balance -- and a couple of savvy and daring selections in the middle rounds -- made the difference.

Charchian edged out Footballguys' David Dodds, who nearly pulled off an unprecedented double in winning both the Experts Draft and Experts Auction leagues. Dodds won the Auction League, discussed in a post earlier this week, but finished 4 games behind Charchian in the Draft League. Jared Smola of Draft Sharks came in 3rd.

Participants in this annual competition are determined by how they finished in the previous year's Experts Poll. Top 11 performers qualify, plus the winner of our annual Fantasy Index Blackout competition. Teams get best-ball lineups during the season, and play every other team each week, with the top score going 11-0, 2nd-best score going 10-1, etc.

Tendency is to expect an early draft slot to be best, but that wasn't the case this year. Charchian selected 12th, and his first pick was a disappointment (Odell Beckham). But his second was Michael Thomas, and he also wound up with just enough at running back (his next three picks, Devonta Freeman, David Montgomery and James White, put together enough good weeks that his team got 2 good starters most weeks).

After Thomas, though his key picks were Ravens: Lamar Jackson in Round 9, and Mark Andrews in Round 13. And one more mild gamble, selecting Tyreek Hill in the 14th round. At the time of the draft, Hill was expected to be suspended or even possibly released. Instead, he played most of the season, helping Charchian to clean up.

Dodds started his draft off with Christian McCaffrey and Nick Chubb, a huge part of why he finished in 2nd. But his No. 3 (Austin Ekeler) wasn't bad either, and he hit (to varying degrees) on his wide receiver picks, starting out with Keenan Allen, Kenny Golladay and Golden Tate.

This is a no-transaction league, so there's no way to recover if your team is unusually hit hard by injuries or retirements. Andrew Luck, Cam Newton, Ben Roethlisberger (and the key receivers on those teams) -- if you drafted those players as your starters, good chance your team wound up near the bottom of the league.

Final standings are below. Full rosters and draft results can be found in our preseason annual.

EXPERTS DRAFT LEAGUE RESULTS
TeamWL
LeagueSafe12848
Footballguys12452
Draft Sharks12254
Charlotte Observer12056
Extra Point Press9185
Fantasy Index Podcast75101
Fantasy Index Blackout75101
Big Guy Fantasy Sports73103
Fantasy Index Open69107
FFMastermind.com68108
Yahoo Sports64112
Rotoworld47129

--Andy Richardson