We’re now more than 1/3 of the way through the football season and the fantasy experts are still jockeying for position in the race to determine who provides the most accurate weekly player rankings. This past week saw more movement in our year-to-date standings as there are several new entrants into the top 5 leaderboard.

Let’s take a look at which experts did the best job with their week 6 rankings and also examine how these picks have impacted the standings. If you’re curious to see how the full list of nearly 40 experts stack up with their accuracy rankings, please register (FREE) to create a FantasyPros account.

Week 6 Leaderboard

*Overall standings evaluate experts’ weekly rankings at the QB, RB, WR, & TE positions

Notes:

• If the top 2 experts from week 6 look familiar, well, they should. Both Pat Fitzmaurice (ProFootballWeekly) and Andy Behrens (Yahoo! Sports) finished in the top 2 of our accuracy contest in 2009 and it looks like they’re back up to their old tricks. As we’ll see in the YTD leaderboard, the two experts are building a strong case that they’re going to be contenders once again to take home the award for the Most Accurate Expert in 2010.

• Pat Fitzmaurice earned the top honor this week based off of the consistency of his accuracy across the key positions: QB (#4 rank), RB (#3 rank) and WR (#1 rank). For WRs, he pegged breakout performer, Dwayne Bowe (KC), by ranking him higher (WR #13) than any other expert. He also didn’t buy into the week 6 Malcom Floyd (SD) hype as he ranked Floyd lower than all but one expert. This turned out to be an important factor in determining his WR success as Floyd’s subpar game (2 catches, 15 yards) helped to distance Fitzmaurice’s accuracy score from the other experts. And as for the RB position, Fitzmaurice was a strong believer in several of week 6’s top performers including Ryan Torain (WAS), Steven Jackson (STL), and Thomas Jones (KC).

• Andy Behrens’ picks contributed not only to his own cause (#2 overall rank) but also to the success of the Yahoo! Sports Staff Composite (#3 overall rank). Make no mistake, however; it required a team effort from the entire Yahoo! Sports Staff to earn top 5 accuracy honors. In addition to Behrens, the other experts that contributed to Yahoo’s composite rankings all did well individually for the week: Brad Evans (#6 overall rank), Brandon Funston (#14 overall rank) and Scott Pianowski (#16 overall rank). With all of their picks combined together, the Yahoo! Sports Staff Composite delivered an impressive showing by finishing in the top 15 for all four positions that factor into our overall standings: QB (#3 rank), RB (#4 rank), WR (#14 rank), and TE (# 12 rank).

• Rounding out the top 5 for week 6 were Ryan Lester (Lester’s Legends) and Chet Gresham (Razzball). Lester was the top TE prognosticator for the week which is an honor he also achieved in week 2. This past week, he was notably better than the expert consensus at ranking ageless wonder, Tony Gonzalez (ATL), while he stayed clear of delivering a meaningful ranking to week 6’s version of fantasy kryptonite, Visanthe Shiancoe (MIN). As for Gresham, his placement in the top 5 can be traced to his solid predictions at RB (#6 rank), WR (#8 rank) and TE (#2 rank). Similar to the other experts that did well with their RB rankings, Gresham was high on breakout performer, Ryan Torain (WAS), while he also ranked top 10 RBs Thomas Jones (KC) and Brandon Jacobs (NYG) better than the expert consensus.

Year-to-Date Leaderboard

*YTD standings are compiled from experts that participated in Weeks 1 – 6

Notes:

• Holding onto the #1 overall spot this week was John Paulsen (The Scores Report). While Paulsen wasn’t able to duplicate last week’s unprecedented accuracy (#1 ranks for QB, RB & WR), his entire body of work remains impressive as he currently holds the following YTD rankings at the key positions: (QB #12), (RB #1), (WR #3), and (TE #12). And even though week 6 wasn’t his best personal week (no top 10 finishes by position), Paulsen has now become the first expert this season to maintain the YTD #1 rank for consecutive weeks.

• If there’s one thing that fantasy football advice seekers want (besides Jenn Sterger’s phone #), it’s a proven track record of success from the experts they follow. We’re six weeks into the NFL season and Andy Behrens (#1 overall last year) and Pat Fitzmaurice (#2 overall last year) are proving that their past success was no fluke. Behrens is currently #2 in the overall standings and owes much of his success to his picks at the QB (#4 rank), RB (#4 rank) and TE (#6 rank) positions. Meanwhile, Fitzmaurice has done well with his predictions at the same positions: QB (#5 rank), RB (#6 rank) and TE (#2 rank). If past history is any indication, it would hardly serve as a surprise if both experts stay in the thick of the race for the #1 spot as the season progresses.

• Congratulations are in order for Chet Gresham (Razzball) as he has made his way back into the top 5 of the YTD standings. He used a strong week 6 performance to narrowly edge out Josh Moore (4for4.com) for the #5 spot. As it stands right now, Gresham is doing his best work at predicting TEs (#5 rank) and WRs (#7 rank).

If you’re interested in seeing the entire standings for our field of nearly 40 experts, you can visit our accuracy scores page for the results. The standings are offered at no cost to our registered members. Simply sign up for FREE and you’ll be able to view all of the accuracy scores!

We’ll be back again next week with a wrap-up of Week 7. In the meantime, feel free to let us know if you have any feedback or questions regarding our accuracy process. Thanks!