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To many "Expert opinions" out there in fantasy football land...


FatalFact
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First let me say this is not at all directed towards the huddle but at fantasy football in general. I've been doing Fantasy football for about 15 years now. I am left perplexed by the number of "Fantasy experts" these days.. MY main issue I suppose is the lack of overall accountability these experts face. I understand nobody is going to perfectly predict everything related to fantasy football. In most cases even the most knowledgeable individuals are probably in the 60 % range in terms of accuracy.

 

However, my issue is with the number of talking heads I see on tv (espn) on the nfl network and just about every fantasy website out there. I've seen a lot of guys giving BAD advice for a while now and nobody really ever gets called on anything.

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Fantasy football "experts" are like meteorologists, sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong but either way we keep listening. When they're right, we're thankful that we listened and were prepared. When they're wrong, we bitch.

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The irony - the more popular FF becomes the more crowded the bandwagon is with experts that really know little, or care, much about the game within the game wrapped inside the fun.

 

The reality - FF is now big $$$ and the suits want as many talking heads as possible to feed our insatiable appetites for information. The quality of advice is secondary. They want listeners, viewers and page views.

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Michael Fabiano is the guy I normally use in this example. His start 'em, sit 'em column for example is abysmal in terms of actual results. This year his sit 'em WRs have out performed his start 'em WRs so basically you'd be better off to start the players he recommends to bench. But naturally NFL.com aren't going to analyse how he does and reveal that he's rubbish.

 

With the huge amount of analysts dishing out fantasy advice, they end up trying to predict strange things to happen to get click views to drive up their popularity of their articles. Then hope you've forgotten the next week that they recommended you start Chris Johnson who then failed to gain over 10 yards.

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The irony - the more popular FF becomes the more crowded the bandwagon is with experts that really know little, or care, much about the game within the game wrapped inside the fun.

 

The reality - FF is now big $$$ and the suits want as many talking heads as possible to feed our insatiable appetites for information. The quality of advice is secondary. They want listeners, viewers and page views.

 

 

Exactly. I listen to a lot Fantasy radio because I have a long drive to work, and I read a lot about it too. But mainly I have the sunday ticket and watch a lot of football. I may listen to these guys for deep sleeper ideas etc. But mostly I use my own knowledge

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Exactly. I listen to a lot Fantasy radio because I have a long drive to work, and I read a lot about it too. But mainly I have the sunday ticket and watch a lot of football. I may listen to these guys for deep sleeper ideas etc. But mostly I use my own knowledge

 

 

I like Matthew Berry on ESPN but mainly cos' I like listening to him talk fantasy football in articles and on podcasts. Not because I take any of his actual advice because he's as reactionary as everyone else.

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. I've seen a lot of guys giving BAD advice for a while now and nobody really ever gets called on anything.

 

 

And some, like M. Berry are even in the Fantasy Writers Hall of Fame. meanwhile DMD is waiting....

 

 

seriously, not just sucking up. LOL

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I listen to XM Fantasy Sports for the entertainment value. Some of the "hosts" offer insights but most simply state the obvious. Way too many conflicting POVs. But it beats Terry Gross/Fresh Air and A Prairie Home Companion.

 

Really, the "experts cloud" is just ambient noise to fill long road trips. I am more than capable of screwing up my own drafts/line-ups.

 

The only source that I rely on for straight scoop on injury updates is Rotoworld . They are the most timely and accurate.

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I've always been amazed at how bad the fantasy writers are on the big sites. CBS is a huge corporation that brings in big dollars from their fantasy leagues, yet has had horrible fantasy analysts. They have gotten way better than they were 10 years ago, but are still bad.

 

 

In contrast, a site like Yahoo! has actually done rather well in terms of their "experts". I never even think of going to CBS.

 

To paraphrase what DMD said above, anyone can pretend to be an expert... the ones you want to follow are the ones that track their misses and can pinpoint what went wrong and account for that in future projections/rankings/etc.

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I came to the conclusion many years ago that most of these "experts" are no better than I am at predicting outcomes. I listen to CBS and ESPN podcast every day at work. Mainly because if you ignore their predictions and focus on what they are saying, you can find much useful information such as coaches or insider comments, injury updates, and trends. Basically I use all the same information they have easier access to, then form my own analasys.

 

Fabiano is the worst. He uses so much mumbo jumbo hocus pocus crap that he might as well be choosing is favorite color.

 

I miss the old days when being good at this hobby meant you were going to win. Now there is so much easily accessible information out there that any monkey can put in a competative line up. It isn't that hard to put in the guys that are projected to score the most points. But ahh well. At least nowadays when you start talking about fantasy football, you aren't looked at like a transvestite.

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Until week 5 or so, the experts really don't have anything to go on, except last year. The NFL changes so much from year to year, you need the first month to see how teams are going to play. That first month or so will also give you a decent amount of statistics for the experts to make educated guesses. Let's be honest, we are only really looking for a little insight on fringe players. If you have Peyton Manning, your playing him. Even with McCoy having the year he's had, I bet your playing him. But what about Stevie Johnson? What's his match up look like? Give me some predictions based on statistics with that.

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In contrast, a site like Yahoo! has actually done rather well in terms of their "experts". I never even think of going to CBS.

 

To paraphrase what DMD said above, anyone can pretend to be an expert... the ones you want to follow are the ones that track their misses and can pinpoint what went wrong and account for that in future projections/rankings/etc.

 

Curious has the huddle ever done stats and revealed them to members on how accurate their projections are? Not trying to single them out, just curious. I've never seen stuff on the site or on the formers saying "We missed badly on this project, ranking, etc. Here is why it happened."

 

I don't use a lot of fantasy info at CBS but their weekly Start Em Sit Em has a "full disclosure" section where they cover last week, going through the starts and sits and judging if they worked or not. Usually it is about 50-50.

 

http://fantasynews.cbssports.com/fantasyfootball/story/24774136/week-9-start-em-and-sit-em

 

As far as all the talking head analysts (pod casts, TV shows, etc.) I don't have time for them. The few times I've seen some expert on TV their great advice is "start Peyton Manning and sit your scrub QB". Or to add a player that hasn't been on waivers for 3-4 weeks.

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Not a CBS fan at all (been stuck there for years in a family league), but they do a "full disclosure" saying where they went right and wrong on their Start 'em/Sit 'em picks from the previous week.

 

Hey, at least it's something.......

 

You don't say ;)

I don't use a lot of fantasy info at CBS but their weekly Start Em Sit Em has a "full disclosure" section where they cover last week, going through the starts and sits and judging if they worked or not. Usually it is about 50-50.

 

http://fantasynews.c...t-em-and-sit-em

 

 

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Pro Football Focus

The Huddle

Rotoworld

 

 

Even Rotoworld is starting to get a bit cheesy. Everyone wants to be the 1st one to report "breaking news". So lately we have been seeing alot of so called "reports" based on some blog or beat writer with no cred. That being said, Rotoworld is still one of the best.

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Even Rotoworld is starting to get a bit cheesy. Everyone wants to be the 1st one to report "breaking news". So lately we have been seeing alot of so called "reports" based on some blog or beat writer with no cred. That being said, Rotoworld is still one of the best.

 

 

To me, Rotoworld is just a news feed and Evan Silva.

 

I read fantasy writers who have sound process and go into the 'why' and the individual matchups. The guys here at the huddle and Silva are pretty good at that. PFF is just a stat orgy that lets you arrive at your own conclusions (but they have some good writers too on the fantasy side of the site).

 

I don't know how to explain it, but some writers you can just tell that they know football - the purposes of different personnel groupings, how an offense can exploit a particular aspect of the defense, whether it's the RB or his OL that sucks. The ESPN and NFL Network schmucks just talk about a defense's ranking 'against the pass' or 'against the rush', which means very little in terms of figuring out how on-field matchups will ultimately affect game flow.

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I listen to XM Fantasy Sports for the entertainment value. Some of the "hosts" offer insights but most simply state the obvious. Way too many conflicting POVs. But it beats Terry Gross/Fresh Air and A Prairie Home Companion.

 

Really, the "experts cloud" is just ambient noise to fill long road trips. I am more than capable of screwing up my own drafts/line-ups.

 

The only source that I rely on for straight scoop on injury updates is Rotoworld . They are the most timely and accurate.

 

Exactly. I listen to a lot Fantasy radio because I have a long drive to work, and I read a lot about it too. But mainly I have the sunday ticket and watch a lot of football. I may listen to these guys for deep sleeper ideas etc. But mostly I use my own knowledge

 

Hopefully you guys have or will give our Blitzed Podcast a listen.

 

The irony - the more popular FF becomes the more crowded the bandwagon is with experts that really know little, or care, much about the game within the game wrapped inside the fun.

 

The reality - FF is now big $$$ and the suits want as many talking heads as possible to feed our insatiable appetites for information. The quality of advice is secondary. They want listeners, viewers and page views.

 

That is how most are but I can tell you that we do want listeners for the podcast but the one thing we won't do is sacrifice quality. One piece of feedback I got from someone that I was very happy to hear was when they said they loved that we don't dumb things down.
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To me, Rotoworld is just a news feed and Evan Silva.

 

I read fantasy writers who have sound process and go into the 'why' and the individual matchups. The guys here at the huddle and Silva are pretty good at that. PFF is just a stat orgy that lets you arrive at your own conclusions (but they have some good writers too on the fantasy side of the site).

 

I don't know how to explain it, but some writers you can just tell that they know football - the purposes of different personnel groupings, how an offense can exploit a particular aspect of the defense, whether it's the RB or his OL that sucks. The ESPN and NFL Network schmucks just talk about a defense's ranking 'against the pass' or 'against the rush', which means very little in terms of figuring out how on-field matchups will ultimately affect game flow.

 

Game flow is such an important factor...

 

Also, with regard to Silva, one thing he said earlier this year and I agree with him was that there are a bunch of VERY good fantasy analysts and many know the game as well or better than pure NFL analysts. The problem is the stigma with "fantasy" which is a shame because there really are some very astute guys out there that are great at what they do.

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