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The Most Accurate Fantasy Football Experts of 2012 (So Far)

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If you play fantasy football and you don't check FantasyPros.com weekly... you should. If you consult ESPN's Matthew Berry's weekly rankings and base your lineup decisions on that... you shouldn't. There are dozens of fantasy football experts out there, not just the ones you see on the Worldwide Leader, and some of them (actually a pretty good chunk of them) provide better fantasy football advice.

So if not ESPN, then who should you listen to? Fantasy Pros is tracking over 100 different fantasy football experts this year (the list grows annually). It measures their weekly rankings against each other, crunches some numbers, and yada yada yada, they can tell us who's giving us the most useful rankings. So without further ado, here are the most accurate experts according to Fantasy Pros ...

Top 10 of 2012 (Thru Week 8)

  1. Jody Smith - Gridiron Experts
  2. John Paulsen - 4for4.com
  3. Sablich Brothers - New York Times
  4. Mike Tagliere - Tags Fantasy Football
  5. John Halpin - Fox Sports 
  6. Site Rankings - Fantasy Football Nerd
  7. Brad Evans - Yahoo! Sports
  8. Justin Boone - TSN
  9. Muntradamus - Beast Dome
  10. David Dodds - Football Guys
OTHER NOTABLES - Scott Pianowski (#1 in 2011), Yahoo! Sports, ranks #29... Pat Fitzmaurice (#1 in 2010), Pro Football Weekly, ranks #37... Andy Behrens, Yahoo! Sports, ranks #32... The Yahoo staff composite (#7 in 2011) ranks #28... Dave Richard and Jamey Eisenberg of CBS Sports, rank #61 and #58, respectively... Kevin Hansen (#3 in 2011), EDSFootball, ranks #18... Kevin Zalas, Fans Fantasy Football, ranks #16. 

ANALYSIS - With eight weeks in the books, things have sorted themselves out a bit, and the top experts are making themselves known. Jody Smith is currently #1 on the list, with John Paulsen and the Sablich Brothers close behind. If you use any of those three to help set your weekly lineup, you're putting yourself in a position to succeed. 

Smith is new to the Fantasy Pros rankings this year, so it's hard to say if this is a one-year wonder, but Paulsen (#2 in 2011), the Sablich Brothers (#5 in 2011), and the Fantasy Football Nerd (#10 in 2011) are the real deal and can be safely relied upon for consistently accurate advice. A good strategy might be to use the Rankings-Weekly Rankings tab on the site, and filter the experts list down so you are only viewing those 3 experts (Paulsen, Sablich Bros, FF Nerd). That composite should give you a pretty good idea of who to start/sit that week.

SO WHO'S THE BEST? - When you're talking about fantasy football prognosticators, there is no one better than John Paulsen of 4for4.com. His track record speaks for itself. He's #2 this year, he was #2 last year, and he was #1 the year before that. So yeah, this guy knows his stuff. If I'm facing a tough lineup decision, I just consult Paulsen's rankings for the week and take his advice, no questions asked.

HOW DID ESPN'S GUYS RANK? - Just like they ranked last year... not very good. ESPN's fantasy football experts (Matthew Berry, Eric Karabell, and Chris Harris) are seemingly everywhere: Pregame start/sit shows, weekly video clips, podcasts, SportsCenter segments... but are they actually giving good advice? Hardly.

Matthew Berry is only ranked #42 at the season's mid-point, while Karabell (#44) and Harris (#46) follow closely behind. For as emphatically and definitively as these guys make their points on the air or in print, you might think they're never wrong. The truth is, they're no better at predicting this stuff than any other site, and in a lot of cases, they're worse. 

It's not just this year, either. Berry ranked just #38 last year. Karabell was #34 in 2011 and Harris was #23. If you're bounded by loyalty and absolutely must listen to ESPN, then use their composite staff rankings, they're ranked #30 this year so far (#12 last year). But the bottom line is, even if you use the composite rankings, there are still 29 other experts out there giving you better advice. 

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FOR MORE INFO - Please visit the FantasyPros website for links to each of these experts, their Twitter feeds, and their websites. Plus, there's so much other good stuff on the site I can't even begin to list everything. That site is the best, I recommend it to anyone that seriously wants to win their league. 
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