Every fantasy football player in the country looks for the competitive edge to beat their opponent. Each game means bragging rights and sometimes winning or losing a friendly bet. (Well, friendly might not always describe it, but you get the point.)
When we look for these tips for our team, we often turn to the few people that get paid to research and dedicate their work to fantasy football. This year, I am on the quest to find the most accurate and reliable fantasy football “guru”.
I will spotlight on the four websites that own the fantasy football world and in the end, crown the best guru in the last edition of “Fantasy Guru Rankings”.
The four gurus: Michael Fabiano of NFL.com, Jamey Eisenberg of CBS Sports, Matthew Berry of ESPN, and Brad Evans of Yahoo! Sports.
Last week, Brad Evans of Yahoo! continued to struggle, while CBS’ Jamey Eisenberg inched closer to our leader Michael Fabiano. I’ve learned a lot about how much you should really take in when it comes to fantasy football predictions. We’ll go over everything in our last edition.
For now—you need some advice! It’s becoming crunch time and you need every advantage you can get. Take a look at our rankings after Week Eight and check out who’s hot, and who’s not!
If you need a refresher on how the scoring system works, click HERE.
*All points will be based off of ESPN’s non-PPR standard scoring for players*
Michael Fabiano, NFL.com—@Michael_Fabiano
He’s pulling away yet again, folks. Fabiano has been fantastic this year and this week was no exception. He showed great precision as during a TOUGH statistical week, as he was over 13% better than Jamey Eisenberg, the guru closest to him in the standings.
Fabiano absolutely nailed the RB position in this edition, hitting correctly on seven of his eight picks. He accurately predicted Knowshon Moreno’s big week and saw Willis McGahee’s rough week coming.
Fabiano went 5-for-6 with his D/ST selections, including the Bengals, Packers, and Steelers.
He’s close to having a 10-percent lead on Eisenberg again, something that could easily occur after next week.
Jamey Eisenberg, CBS Sports—@JameyEisenberg
Can we give Eisenberg the Most Average Fantasy Guru Award now? It’s not like his picks are bad, they just always seem to be around the 50.0 % mark when it all averages out. After this week, he holds a 51.2 % number and is quickly falling at risk to giving up the second spot to Matthew Berry.
This week could have been totally different if he could have done a bit better with his running back selections. He had Darren Sproles and Peyton Hillis on his “start” list—two picks that didn’t pan out. A recurring trend seems to be buying into a player that had a big week previously. Eisenberg needs to stick with the stats and not fall in love with players with occasional flashy performances.
He’s only a 0.6 in front of our next guru…
Matthew Berry, ESPN—@MatthewBerryTMR
What a week! After having one of his best weeks in his last edition, Berry scaled down the number of picks to fewer than 30, and the move paid off. He needed to mix something up, and it appears that lowering the number of solid total was a brilliant idea.
He recorded the highest percentage of the year, going 20-for-27 and tallying a total of almost 75-percent.
Berry got all of his running back “starts” correct, all of his wide receiver “sit” picks correct, and was right on 5-of-6 D/ST selections.
“The Talented Mr. Roto” did the job this week. He has the chance to close the gap and possibly jump ahead of Eisenberg next week. Can he seize the opportunity?
Brad Evans, Yahoo! Sports
Note: As always, Evans only makes 10 picks in his “flames/lames” feature—so the object of tracking Evans is to see how correct he really is with these risky picks.
Well… There’s not too much to say, so I’ll just let you take a glance at Evans’…er…awful week:
“Starts”
Michael Vick—X
Joseph Randle—X
Mike James—X
Kris Durham—X
Jordan Reed—X
“Sits”
Cam Newton—X
Alfred Morris—X
Lamar Miller—X
Josh Gordon—X
Jason Witten—CORRECT
NOTE: Russell Street Report is participating in the Crown Royal Fantasy Football League. The team is being led by Kurt Backert and myself as we are on the quest to win the league and win certain prizes. Kurt drafted a great team that includes Jimmy Graham, Tony Romo and the Ravens D/ST. We are currently standing at 7-1. This coming week, we will look to take sole possession of not only our division, but the entire league.
We’ll let you know how we fare in the upcoming week! Go Team RSR!
