Oct 7, 2009
How accurate is the collective wisdom of fantasy football experts? This seems to be my personal eternal quest. I look at this from a few different angles every year but today let’s probe into the annual preseason rankings from a bunch of different experts that I pulled back in August. Just as a recap for those who haven’t seen my consensus rankings, I gathered positional rankings from 11 different fantasy football experts, did a little averaging magic on the rankings, and came up with one consensus preseason ranking for each player. I published the results of the consensus preseason rankings on my blog – you can find more details about them here.
Last year on the NY Times’ Fifth Down blog I did a comparison of WRs that were in the top 30 after a few weeks of the 2008 season as compared to the consensus preseason WR rankings. I thought now would be a great time to resurrect that comparison since we’ve got four weeks in the books. This year I thought I’d scope out how accurate the consensus rankings were for both wide receivers and running backs.
Let’s take a look at WRs first. Here are the Top 30 Receivers based on my consensus preseason rankings (players in bold are not in the current top 30 WR rankings):
| Rank | Player |
| 1 | Larry Fitzgerald |
| 2 | Andre Johnson |
| 3 | Randy Moss |
| 4 | Calvin Johnson |
| 5 | Reggie Wayne |
| 6 | Greg Jennings |
| 7 | Steve Smith |
| 8 | Roddy White |
| 9 | Anquan Boldin |
| 10 | Marques Colston |
| 11 | Dwayne Bowe |
| 12 | Terrell Owens |
| 13 | Wes Welker |
| 14 | T.J. Houshmandzadeh |
| 15 | Brandon Marshall |
| 16 | Chad Ochocinco |
| 17 | Vincent Jackson |
| 18 | Roy Williams |
| 19 | Braylon Edwards |
| 20 | Eddie Royal |
| 21 | DeSean Jackson |
| 22 | Anthony Gonzalez |
| 23 | Hines Ward |
| 24 | Antonio Bryant |
| 25 | Santonio Holmes |
| 26 | Lee Evans |
| 27 | Santana Moss |
| 28 | Bernard Berrian |
| 29 | Jerricho Cotchery |
| 30 | Laveranues Coles |
There are of course a few players listed here that haven’t performed well this season and are clearly top WR duds of the season thus far. Roddy White, Terrell Owens, Braylon Edwards, and Eddie Royal are all receivers without injuries to blame for their lame numbers.
Now using data pulled from FFToday.com based on the scoring system noted on my blog post above, here are the current Top 30 Receivers after Week 4 (players in bold were not part of the consensus preseason top 30 WR rankings):
| Rank | Player |
| 1 | Steve Smith (NYG) |
| 2 | Reggie Wayne |
| 3 | Vincent Jackson |
| 4 | Andre Johnson |
| 5 | Chad Ochocinco |
| 6 | Mike Sims-Walker |
| 7 | DeSean Jackson |
| 8 | Mario Manningham |
| 9 | Donald Driver |
| 10 | Calvin Johnson |
| 11 | Jerricho Cotchery |
| 12 | Marques Colston |
| 13 | Derrick Mason |
| 14 | Santana Moss |
| 15 | Randy Moss |
| 16 | Brandon Marshall |
| 17 | Santonio Holmes |
| 18 | Pierre Garcon |
| 19 | Hines Ward |
| 20 | Nate Washington |
| 21 | Percy Harvin |
| 22 | Johnny Knox |
| 23 | Devin Hester |
| 24 | Nate Burleson |
| 25 | Larry Fitzgerald |
| 26 | Greg Jennings |
| 27 | Patrick Crayton |
| 28 | Devery Henderson |
| 29 | Sidney Rice |
| 30 | Roy Williams |
The real surprises here are of course the New York Giants tandem of Steve Smith and Mario Manningham as well as Mike Sims-Walker, Derrick Mason, and Donald Driver among others. And while Chad OchoCinco and Vincent Jackson were ranked in the top 30, their performances so far are impressive far beyond their average draft positions. Leading rookie wide receivers so far this year? Percy Harvin followed by Johnny Knox, both of which are performing at a top 30 WR level so far.
Moving on to RBs, here are the Top 30 Running Backs based on the consensus preseason rankings from the experts (again, players listed in bold are not in the current top 30 RB rankings):
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RossK
Posted at 1:59 Oct 7, 2009
Let’s not forget that some of the players mentioned here have already had their bye weeks, and some haven’t. Makes a pretty big difference with only 4 weeks in the books. That being said, great job, I love these articles!
RossK
Posted at 2:00 Oct 7, 2009
Let’s not forget that some of the players on your lists have already had their bye weeks and some of them haven’t yet. It makes a big difference after week 4. That being said, great job, I love these articles!
CharleyS19
Posted at 3:31 Oct 7, 2009
I agree with Ross on both pts. Through the first 3 weeks, Turner was definitely top-30 and was out scored by AP only once and that was when AP played Cleveland in Wk 1
CharleyS19
Posted at 3:33 Oct 7, 2009
In fantasy pts/game on FFToday, Turner ranks 17th
Bruno Boys Cavigs
Posted at 2:34 Oct 8, 2009
Great work Sara. I always enjoy reading your in depth analysis and taking a look at stats from a different angle.
Sara
Posted at 2:42 Oct 8, 2009
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I thought about bye weeks but to be honest, I figured including data through Week 4 was more interesting than stopping at Week 3 just to account for byes. I still find it a bit disappointing that Turner was #2 overall from the consensus and still only comes in at 17th in terms of fantasy points per game as Charley noted.
I love this kind of stuff so I’m sure to be back with it again in a few more weeks…