2019 Fantasy Football Rankings: Most Accurate Experts

The 2019 fantasy season gave us Lamar Jackson’s historic campaign, a spectacular performance by Christian McCaffrey, some remarkable breakouts from DeVante Parker, Aaron Jones and Austin Ekeler to Chris Godwin, D.J. Chark and Darren Waller along with some still unbelievable busts in Odell Beckham Jr., JuJu Smith-Schuster and Baker Mayfield. It was a wild ride but the fantasy football season is now done.

Predicting such a volatile sport is enough of a challenge, but weighing the matchups, game scripts, weather, injuries and everything else each week is virtually a sport of its own. At FantasyPros, we want to provide you the most information to help you make the best decisions for your fantasy team, and part of that is showing you which experts have been the most accurate with their rankings. Since the season is now complete, it is time to take a look at the expert accuracy standings so we can see who has been nailing the tough calls like Kenyan Drake’s blazing pace to close the season and Jarvis Landry fading off when fantasy owners most needed him. While we are here, let’s first see which experts had the best fantasy football rankings in Week 16. As always, you can check out the entire standings in our accuracy section.

Skip ahead to view the full 2019 accuracy standings

Week 16 Accuracy Results

*View Full Accuracy Scores (126 experts) | Combine Top Experts into Consensus Rankings

Jared Smola (Draft Sharks) had another strong season in accuracy and closed it with a tremendous final week. He topped second place by a whopping 18 accuracy gap points which is typically a 30-spot difference in rankings from week to week. Jared managed this by ridiculously finishing #1 among running back rankings, #4 at wide receiver, #8 at tight end and #12 at quarterback. Mind, you each of these positions has over 120 analysts around the industry competing and Jared finished among the top 10% in every one of them. While he, of course, had many impressive rankings, we’ll tell you about some of his most amazing ones from this week.

Jared had Devonta Freeman ranked as his #8 running back on the week while the expert consensus (ECR) had Freeman all the way down at #15. Freeman ended up among the top three RBs on the week. Likewise, Jared was one of only a handful of experts that ranked Tyler Boyd (the week’s #1 WR) in his top 10. As if that wasn’t enough, Jared correctly had Hunter Renfrow 25 spots above ECR and Golden Tate 14 spots above. There were dozens of other smaller successes, but overall, Jared was absolutely dominant.

Congratulations to Jared, the entire top 10 and also this week’s top positional rankers:

Quarterbacks: Kyle Richardson – The Fantasy Headliners
Running Backs: Jared Smola – Draft Sharks
Wide Receivers: Sean Koerner – The Action Network
Tight Ends: Derek Lofland – FantasyPros
Kickers: Jeff Paur – RTSports
D/ST: Mike Tagliere – FantasyPros
IDP: Andy Singleton – Expand The Boxscore

Biggest Surprises

As always, we recognize the experts that did the best job of ranking the surprise performers from Week 16. Below are several key players that performed beyond expectations for fantasy owners along with the experts who delivered their top ranking.

Daniel Jones
Consensus: QB #21
Actual Rank: QB #1
Best Rank: QB #11
Top Experts: Matt Schauf (Draft Sharks)

Kenyan Drake
Consensus: RB #18
Actual Rank: RB #2
Best Rank: RB #9
Top Expert: Andy Vanda (Take Your League) & Justin George (Take Your League)

Ronald Jones
Consensus: RB #31
Actual Rank: RB #10
Best Rank: RB #21
Top Expert: Kyle Cunningham-Rhoads (STATS)

Tyler Boyd
Consensus: WR #17
Actual Rank: WR #1
Best Rank: WR #7
Top Expert: Scott Whitfield (Roto Rankings)

Steven Sims
Consensus: WR #62
Actual Rank: WR #3
Best Rank: WR #31
Top Expert: Dan McLellan (WBLZ Media)

Mike Gesicki
Consensus: TE #15
Actual Rank: TE #2
Best Rank: TE #10
Top Expert: Scott Engel (RotoBaller)

Biggest Disappointments

On the flip side, there is plenty of credit due to the experts who did the reverse. These experts warned many off of players who would have otherwise minimized their odds of winning their fantasy contests. Let’s take a look at some of the most disappointing fantasy players from Week 16 and the experts whose rankings were closest to their lackluster performance.

Russell Wilson
Consensus: QB #3
Actual Rank: QB #25
Best Rank: QB #8
Top Expert: Seth McKinley (FF Fellas) & Kyle Yates (The Fantasy Footballers)

James Conner
Consensus: RB #22
Actual Rank: RB #56
Best Rank: RB #29
Top Expert: Brad Evans (Yahoo! Sports)

Mike Boone
Consensus: RB #16
Actual Rank: RB #52
Best Rank: RB #48
Top Expert: Raju Byfield (Win My Fantasy League)
*next lowest was #29!

D.K. Metcalf
Consensus: WR #20
Actual Rank: WR #113
Best Rank: WR #40
Top Expert: Rudy Gamble (Razzball)

Adam Thielen
Consensus: WR #21
Actual Rank: WR #112
Best Rank: WR #41
Top Experts: Seth McKinley (FF Fellas)

Darren Waller
Consensus: TE #4
Actual Rank: TE #20
Best Rank: TE #10
Top Expert: Anthony Cervino (Gridiron Experts) & Brad Ziegler (The Athletic)

Season-Long Accuracy

*View Full Accuracy Scores (129 experts) | Combine Top Experts into Consensus Rankings

There wasn’t a ton of movement in the final four weeks since we last checked in. Only Jeff Ratcliffe (Pro Football Focus) managed to jump into the top ten. Everyone else was there a month ago, but John Paulsen (4for4.com) climbed from #5 to #2 and Chris Raybon (The Action Network) moved from #9 to #4. And while it was close at the top, Justin Boone (theScore) held strong at #1 by finishing off the year with four more weekly finishes in the top quartile. Overall, Justin was consistently excellent among all four positions in the competition. He finished #2 among over 120 experts at wide receiver ranking accuracy, #6 for running backs, #8 for tight ends and #20 for quarterbacks. Congratulations to Justin on another terrific season.

Justin has commonly finished near the top of the pack, placing 4th overall in 2018, 4th overall in 2017, 7th overall in 2016, 6th overall in 2015, and 3rd overall in 2014 among several other top 15 finishes. Likewise, some of the others who are consistently in contention for the top spot didn’t finish too far behind. For instance, the runner-up, John Paulsen (4for4.com) finished among the top-12 each of the last five seasons including a #1 finish in 2014. Likewise, Jake Ciely (The Athletic) has finished among the top 20 in all six years he has participated including four top-ten finishes. Additionally, Patrick Thorman (Establish the Run) has three top-ten season-long finishes and Jason Moore (The Fantasy Footballers) was a top 10 finisher last season and has been top 25 each of the past three years.

Congratulations to everyone in the top 10 and the year-long positional accuracy champions

Quarterbacks: Mike Tagliere – FantasyPros
Running Backs: Nathan Jahnke – Pro Football Focus
Wide Receivers: Robert Waziak – The Fantasy Footballers
Tight Ends: John Halpin – Carolina Panthers Radio Network
Kickers: Greg Smith – TwoQBs
D/ST: Jake Ciely – The Athletic
IDP: Ryan Sitzmann – The IDP Guru

BettingPros Year-to-Date Accuracy

We’ve been tracking the accuracy of betting recommendations on our new site, BettingPros this season as well. In this competition, we track units bet across game spreads, over/unders and moneylines then use those units to rank the most accurate experts. Let’s have a look at the top 10 through Week 16:

*View Full Accuracy Scores (159 analysts)

Although this competition won’t be complete until the Super Bowl finishes, it seems pretty clear that Matt MacCoy (The Next Big Thing) will have no trouble holding on to his absurdly large lead over the field. At the quarter-season mark, MacCoy was 20 games above .500. He then proceeded to somehow improve upon that pace over the next month, adding another 26 games above .500. In the third quarter, he has continued his wrecking streak by adding another 18 games above .500 for the season. The last month has been more of the same, as he is unbelievably 99 games above .500. On BettingPros, the pros bet with units, and so far, MacCoy has racked up 237.72 of them. To put that into perspective, second place is down at 132.46. Well done, so far Matt, and good luck during the NFL playoffs.

Beyond Matt, there is fierce competition for second place with six experts within striking distance. Among them, Mike Spector (BettingPros) and Bobby Sylvester (FantasyPros) have a clear advantage with a 20 unit lead on the rest of the field. As of this week, Mike is #2 in units won against the spread, #7 in over/under and #6 at betting the moneyline. Like Mike, Bobby is #2 at moneyline, #8 in over/unders and #13 against the spread. All of these rankings are against 180 analysts. You can follow the conclusion of that competition at BettingPros.

We’ll be back again next season with a new competition to track the most accurate predictions. Until then, be sure to check out BettingPros to help with your post-fantasy football decisions.

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