The fantasy season is in the books and there’s only 1 question left to answer: Which expert gave the most accurate advice?

We’ve been monitoring the experts’ predictions all season long. We’ve seen the good (early recommendations for Odell Beckham Jr. & Le’Veon Bell), the bad (hype for Montee Ball) and the ugly (the words “Cordarrelle Patterson” and “WR1” in the same sentence).

Through it all, we evaluated over 5 million predictions from 125 experts. The 10 pundits below conquered the gauntlet to hand out the best fantasy advice (view full standings here).

Overall Accuracy Standings

*See how all 125 experts ranked for the season | View Accuracy Methodology

Notes:

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  Paulsen becomes the first 2-time winner of the in-season accuracy competition.

  If you’ve been following along throughout the season, it should come as no surprise to see John Paulsen (4for4) take home the crown as 2014’s Most Accurate Expert. Paulsen has now competed in 5 in-season accuracy competitions and earned the following placements: 1st, 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 16th. Yup, it’s a solid little resume. This year’s first place finish makes Paulsen the only expert to win our in-season competition more than once. And, perhaps most impressively, it also gives him the #1 accuracy rating in all multi-year views over the last 5 seasons. In other words, whether you look back at the last 2, 3, 4, or 5 years, the end result is the same: John Paulsen is the most accurate fantasy football expert.

• We mention this every year and it bears repeating. This is our 6th season tracking weekly accuracy and the evidence is mounting that it takes more than luck to provide quality fantasy advice. Consider the following:
  • 5 experts from last year’s top 10 cracked the top 10 again in 2014. The number was 4 the year before that…and 4 the year prior. Clearly, experts are finding repeat success.
  • Justin Boone (The Score) has entered the competition for 3 seasons and each time he has finished inside the top 11 (#11, #8 and #3 this past season).
  • The Sablich Brothers (The New York Times) finished in the 96th percentile (a fancy term for 5th place) and, amazingly, it ties for the “lowest” ranking they’ve achieved in their 4 seasons in the competition: #3, #3, #5, #5. That’s a good model of consistency right there. Jake Ciely (RotoExperts) is another expert who doesn’t know what life is like outside of the top 5. He’s cracked the upper end of the leaderboard in each of his two seasons (2014 & 2013) in the contest.
  • Jeff Ratcliffe (Pro Football Focus) just pulled off the three-peat as the most accurate IDP expert in 2014, 2013 and 2012. This is also the 4th year in a row that a Pro Football Focus analyst has taken home the IDP title. PFF pumps out a good amount of quality IDP content on a weekly basis so it’s fitting that the top IDP honor goes to a site that caters to this growing (and often overlooked) segment of fantasy owners.

• In case you missed it, we’ve also been running a season-long competition (hosted by DraftKings) to locate the most accurate daily fantasy expert. Over 70 experts have competed by submitting optimal lineups (within a salary cap) each week. Currently, David Kitchen (Fantasy Insiders) is leading the competition. If it holds up, this would mark the 2nd year in a row that someone from Fantasy Insiders finished in 1st place (no pressure, David). Daily fantasy games are still in full swing so be sure to give David a follow on Twitter (@Socrdave) if you have any daily lineup questions throughout the rest of the season.

Top Experts by Position

We also want to briefly highlight 2014’s top rated experts by position. Kudos to the following pundits for nailing down the best accuracy scores:

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This wraps up 2014’s accuracy contest. Congratulations again to John Paulsen for topping the field of pundits. Thanks also to all of the experts that competed this season. There was plenty of great advice handed out that helped fantasy owners and we were happy to evaluate the predictions.

We’ll be back again next season to run the accuracy competition. In the meantime, you can view the full standings both overall & by position to see how the entire field rated. Thanks!