Bruno Boys Fantasy Football

Back in late August, I wrote a column here for the Bruno Boys about the riskiest picks in this year’s fantasy drafts. Every year, I gather an average top 100 preseason rankings from 10 or so different fantasy expert websites, and I create one average ranking for each player. Using these rankings, I was able to determine which players had the least amount of consensus from experts based on their standard deviation. These guys were then in theory the riskiest picks in the draft. In my article, I looked at a handful of the riskiest guys like Lance Moore, Felix Jones, Ahmad Bradshaw, and Matt Cassel. Now that half of the NFL season has passed, what’s happened with those risky guys?

I took a look at the top 30 riskiest players and included their overall ranking, their within position ranking, and their current within position ranking (current rankings come from FFToday based on their default scoring). It’s hard to say which sites were really the most accurate with these risky picks since I gathered top 100 rankings, which can’t really be extrapolated for this purpose (note: every year I do perform an accuracy analysis at the end of the season to find the most accurate sites; click here for last year’s results). But, we can look at whether or not the consensus was accurate. The results are as follows:

So, of these risky players, which ones defied the consensus? Or, more specifically, which have turned out to be a poor move, an unfortunate risk so far? Lance Moore tops the list of disappointments among the risky players – and he has multiple injuries to thank for it. Moore only showed a glimpse of his past self in Week 6 when he turned in 78 yards and 1 TD. Other than that, Moore has barely been worth a spot on your bench. Here’s my prognosis: Moore really won’t be worth playing in 2009, but when 2010 rolls around, he’ll be a smart value grab.

Also high on the list of disappointments are Ted Ginn Jr (return TDs not counted in this standard scoring format), LenDale White, and Darren McFadden. This of course rings true for all McFadden owners and makes Roger Rotter from FOX Sports look like a genius for ranking him outside the top 100. Personally, I did not see White’s disappearance coming, but thanks to Chris Johnson’s mammoth 6.7 ypc, White is no longer needed even to barrel through with goal-line carries.

What about guys that have been surprisingly good risks? That list is full of running backs like Ray Rice, Rashard Mendenhall, and Tim Hightower. Interestingly, all three of those guys are in their 2nd year in the NFL and clearly showing they don’t know the meaning of sophomore slump. Tim Hightower’s performance is that much more impressive with the threat of Beanie Wells on his heels, though that’s likely the very motivation that has kept him churning out pretty solid stats. Rice meanwhile has made the Mcs (Le’Ron McClain and Willis McGahee) a distant memory and Mendenhall has been able to capitalize on Willie Parker’s turf toe.

There is of course a whole second half of the season to go…time will tell which of these risky picks will give us the greatest reward.

To see other articles written by the Fantasy Football Librarian click here…. A Librarian’s Touch Archives

The Bruno Boys are pleased to once again welcome guest columnist, Sara Holladay, back for her feature,A Librarian’s Touch, for the 2009 season. The woman behind the web-site, Fantasy Football Librarian, Holladay is someone all fantasy owners should be well familiar with if they want to win their league’s title as she provides some of the best fantasy football insight and resources found around the web!