PlayThisGuy! Blog

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What is Getting Smart?

Want to have more fun playing fantasy football?  Want to avoid that feeling that you’re at a disadvantage to the stat-geek in your league who spends 20 hours a week researching players?  Or, do you just want an extra edge to win more often?

Regardless of your motivation it’s time to Get Smart about playing fantasy football.  Getting Smart is an easier, quicker and more intelligent way to make fantasy football decisions.

Getting Smart is about avoiding all the information and “noise” that doesn’t make a difference and focusing on what does.  Getting Smart is about less… less information, less clicks and less statistics that cause confusion and indecision. Getting Smart is about separating yourself from people in your league – going beyond the obvious to get to the good stuff that actually makes a difference.

Getting Smart is about creating a serious competitive advantage.

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The Benefits of Getting Smart

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• Better Decision Making: By listening to those experts who have been statistically proven to provide the best advice
• More Confidence: Walk into your draft or weekly matchups feeling more confident and in control
• Saves Time:  It shouldn’t take hours to make an educated decision on who is the best play
• Collective Wisdom: Listen to the aggregate of fantasy football insiders – not just a single one
• Minimizes Mistakes: Know what you did well and poorly in the past so you make better decisions today

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Getting Smart Rids You Of…

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• The Don’t Have Time Excuse: you shouldn’t need to spend hours and hours on the Web to make intelligent decisions
• Indecision: Did I play the right guy this week?
• Worry: That you’re not listening to the best advice the Web has to offer
• Confusion: Many statistics and tidbits of news are worthless to fantasy football players – know which are helpful and which are just noise
• Feeling Disadvantaged: New tools and information can even the playing field – use them and use the often to be more competitive

If you agree that it’s time for you to Get Smart then please, read on.

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What We Do and Why

Like you, we love fantasy football. But, often we find it too darn hard to get through the piles of information to find the stuff that really matters. So, we set out to change things…

Simply put, we help fantasy football players make better decisions in less time. We help people find the smartest advice the Web has to offer – and quickly. We combine first-of-its-kind information with easy to use tools that make playing more fun and help you be more competitive.

We’re not just about making a buck (but we do enjoy that), we’re about making fantasy football more fun for the masses. We’re about making people feel more confident in themselves and their decisions. We’re about moving the whole industry forward, challenging the status quo.

Our hope is that our unique approach will spur others to think differently about what information and services matter to fantasy football players and leave behind the “me to” approach that seems so prevalent. We want to push the fantasy sports marketplace forward – for the benefit of the 25+ million players.

Admittedly, we’re far from perfect (after all we’re doing something totally unique here) but this is the start of something good…real good. So please, join us as we give the fantasy football industry a kick in the pants and help us work towards creating something special.

We have an open door policy so feel free to reach out to us anytime with thoughts/ questions/ comments you might have – we’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, check out our short and fun video here – kind of captures the essence of what we’re about and you might get a good chuckle from it.

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Preparing for your fantasy draft doesn't have to be this complicated

You’re draft is tonight and you’re scratching your head about whom to listen to for advice.  With more than 100 Web sites telling you “I’m the best…listen to me” it can be a real challenge to find the right information that will actually make a difference.

Well, we’ve got something that just might do the trick.

Rather than provide what we like to call “listen to me” advice, we’ve take a different approach.  We have combined draft ranking, rookie and sleeper advice from more than 40 Web sites and print draft publications (some you know well and others you may not) and created a Consensus Draft Ranking cheatsheet.

It’s all here – Top 150 and positional rankings in addition to consensus rookie and sleeper rankings which you can’t find anywhere.  No longer do you need to print the rankings from a single site and hope that they know what their talking about.  More opinions = smarter advice.

To view and download the print-ready rankings just click here.

With the 2010 fantasy football season fast approaching, now is a great time to share a few big things we’ve been working on since the end of 2009.

First, if you haven’t noticed already we have a new name for 2010…PlayThisGuy.com.  We didn’t set out to change the FantasyXPERT.com name but as the 2009 season wound down and we had a chance to look at what we need to improve upon we saw an opportunity to incorporate a new, simpler name that hopefully you’ll find is more memorable and descriptive of what we do.  Also, we just got sick of telling people to spell FantasyXPERT.com without the “e” – kind of became a pain in the butt.

In addition to a name change, we also made significant changes to the look and feel of our site.  As fantasy football becomes more and more popular (now more than 20 million people play), the complexity of fantasy football sites also continues to skyrocket – just try to find a start and sit column from one of the more popular sites in less than 10 seconds…I dare you!  In many ways we kind of view ourselves as the “anti status quo” so in customary form designed our site to be the single easiest site in the industry to use (see for yourself).  For 2010 we went with a more “Web 2.0″ feel (boy that sounds a little cheesy, doesn’t it?) that just plain works.  The benefit is you get more intelligent information in much less time.

We encourage you to poke around the site.  If you would like to share feedback on the layout/ design (good or bad) please do so by emailing us at contact@playthisguy.com – we welcome your comments.

If you came to our blog through the www.PlayThisGuy.com site then you no doubt noticed a strikingly simple home page focused around helping you get advice on a specific player.  Admittedly we “borrowed” the search box concept from the Internet’s biggest players because it works exceedingly well for fantasy football too (amazing no one has done it before).  One of our pet-peeves with analyzing players was how much “noise” or “data” we had to weed through to find the important nuggets that would make a difference in our decision.  Our Player Analysis page tries to focus on providing you the 20% of information that makes a difference – not the 80% that won’t.  Don’t worry though, for those of you that like to dig into the details we didn’t forget about you.  We’ve made things easier for you too by providing deep-links that eliminate your need to hunt for important Web pages on various sites.  Have you ever had 5 or 10 different tabs or windows open because you were trying to decide between 2 players?  If so then you should like our compare players feature – in less than 10 seconds you can compare 2 players side-by-side in one window.  To our knowledge it’s the only thing like it on the Web.

Some of the data that made us famous like which “experts” provide the most accurate advice are still there.  You’ll also find new features such as the ability to take notes through the season.  Imagine that, a simple-to-use tool that keeps track of your thoughts – who to pick up, interesting stats, the original team you drafted, etc. – that ultimately can help you make better decisions. Novel concept, right?

We’ve got a lot more up our sleeves for 2010 so stay tuned for more regular posts as we get closer to draft time.

Ahhh…nothing beats the sweet smell of success!

World notoriety, celebrity parties, your own reality show on MTV…all this can be yours if you manage to win your fantasy league this season. Alright, I may be overduing it here a bit…after all, it’s just fantasy football. But, for many of us in the midst of playoff runs nothing is more gratifying than winning the league. Pride, bragging rights, money…regardless of your motivation, winning is what it’s all about.

• The top performing source for year to date waiver wire advice has been 41% more accurate than the least accurate source (which happens to be a very well known Web site).




• Lesterslegends.com and FFtoday.com were also the top ranked source for waiver wire advice through Week 9 – they both have consistently outperformed their peers during the season.




• For a more detailed breakdown of waiver wire source accuracy and when information is made available see this post: “Waiver Wire Greed – 3 Little Known Skills to Mastering the Waiver Wire“.

• We first identify each sources pre-game waiver wire predictions.




• Secondly, we analyze each sources picks vs. the actual performance of the players for that week and the subsequent 2 weeks.




• Important to note is we only include those players not widely held in leagues like ESPN and Yahoo (i.e. we don’t include when a source says to pick up Ray Rice – which believe it or not actually happens).

Week 11 is behind us and for most of us it’s time to focus on winning the last 2 weeks of the season to either get in or improve our seeding for the playoffs. Now more than ever it’s imperative that you are listening to the best advice the Web has to offer.

Over the past few weeks the Scorecard has focused on individual Player Rankings and Waiver Wire advice. For Week 11 we will turn our attention to helping you understand which sources are providing the best Start & Sit advice.

Top 5 Sources for “Start” Advice in Week 11

1. Profootballweekly.com
2. Fantasysharks.com
3. Rotoexperts.com
4. Profantasy-Football.com
5. FFtoday.com

Top 5 Sources for “Sit” Advice in Week 11

1. Footballdocs.com
2. Foxsports.com
3. Profootballweekly.com
4. Fantasytailgate.com
5. Fantasysharks.com

* When analyzing Start & Sit advice we only include legitimate player recommendations (i.e. where consideration is required and a source is not merely stating the obvious). For example, if a source recommends starting Peyton Manning or Adrian Peterson, we will not include those recommendations because those players should be started every week. Most sources are pretty good with not stating the obvious, but in rare situations where they do try to “sand-bag” it, we exclude them from our analysis.

Interesting Tidbits from Week 11

• The top 3 sources (Profootballweekly.com, Fantasysharks.com and Rotoexperts.com) were less than 3% apart – they were all very good.




• The difference between the most and least accurate sources was 55%.




• Profootballweekly.com and Fantasysharks.com ranked in the top 5 in both Start and Sit advice in Week 11.




• The top pick of the week (and maybe of the season!) was Pigskinaddictions‘ Start/Sleeper pick of Matthew Stafford who we all know had a phenomenal game against the Browns.

Key Takeaways to Help You in Week 12

• Like we have found with weekly Player Rankings and Waiver Wire advice, the quality of Start & Sit advice can vary greatly.




• Sources seem to get on “hot” streaks and outperform for a few weeks in a row. As you enter the final weeks of the season and playoffs knowing which sources are in the hot streak might give you the extra edge you need to win the week. For an even greater edge, we can tell you who has been the most accurate at predicting the various positions.




• 4 of the 6 least accurate sources were the most popular fantasy football Web sites. The least accurate source for Start advice year-to-date is the most well-known sports site on the Web.




• With games now starting on Thursday nights, we have seen an increase in the number of sources not publishing their rankings or advice prior to Thursdays games. Be sure to check our Weekly Snapshot page to know which sources have made their advice available.

I bet you’re glad you played that TE from Detroit this weekend, right? No, I’m not talking about Brandon Pettigrew (the expert waiver wire pick for Week 10) but none other than Will Heller. Who would have thunk he would be the 3rd highest fantasy point producing TE? If you got this one right then please call me…I’m taking you to Vegas.

Will Heller is a good example at how difficult it is to properly peg TE production from week to week. But, help is one the way…we have done the number crunching for you and determined that there are sources that tend to be better at projecting TE success than others. In fact, the best source for Week 10 was 51% better than the worst. Here’s the top 5 for Week 10:

Top 5 Sources for Ranking TEs in Week 10

1. Fantasyfootballbreakdown.com
2. Yahoosports.com
3. Foxsports.com
4. Pigskinaddiction.com
5. Rotoworld.com

* To see more details on our methodology behind computing source accuracy, please see the bottom of the post.

Interesting Tidbits from Week 10

• Fantasyfootballbreakdown.com was 51% more accurate than the least accurate sources for Week 10.




• The least accurate sources missed big by ranking lesser known TEs like Brandon Pettigrew and Fred Davis higher for Week 10. Interesting note is that Brandon Pettigrew was one of the top consensus Waiver Wire pickups after Week 9.




• The top 10 TEs in Week 10 averaged 8.2 fantasy points (using our XPERT standard scoring model) while the second 10 averaged just 4.6 points. This supports data we’ve seen through the year that having an elite TE makes a big difference in production at this position. Chances are low that you’ll pick up a 2nd tier TE and have better than marginal success over a multi-week period of time.




• 3 of the top 10 sources were “most popular” sites such as include Yahoosports.com, Foxsports.com and NFL.com. 7 of the top 10 were lesser known but high-quality sites.

Key Takeaway To Help You in Week 11

• TEs are one of the most difficult positions to evaluate. But, FantasyXPERT.com’s year to date most accurate sources for TEs are generally about 40 to 50% better than the least accurate. Knowing who these sources are could give you that extra few points you need to win each week.




• Our data shows that elite TEs significantly outperform 2nd and 3rd tier TEs. But, if you don’t have one, don’t trade the store for them…even elite TEs tend to be more difficult to predict than elite QBs, RBs, or WRs. When setting your weekly roster it’s important to plug in as many consistent performers as possible – a majority of TEs are very tough to count on from week to week.

If you would like to learn more about source accuracy for TEs (or QBs, RBs, WRs or Ks for that matter) then open a FREE or PREMIUM account at www.FantasyXPERT.com. Users have access to a well organized summary of the 100+ sources we analyze, direct links to these source’s weekly projections as soon as they become available and our XPERT Smart Rankings for Player Projections, Waiver Wire and Start & Sit advice. XPERT Smart rankings are a consensus ranking of the projections of only the most historically accurate sources that exist on the Web today.

Good luck in Week 11 and don’t forget to get your line-up on Thursday again this week!

*FantasyXPERT.com’s Player Ranking Methodology – each week, FantasyXPERT analyzes more than 100 popular fantasy football Web sites to determine which have provided the best advice for a variety of categories (Player Rankings, Waiver Wire and Start & Sit) as well as the various positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, K). Accuracy is determined by comparing each sources pre-game rankings/advice vs. the players actual performance for the week (there’s a bit more to it but that’s the general formula we use). We translate player statistics into fantasy points using a standard scoring model most sites use as a default. To find out more information on our scoring model as well as how we compute source accuracy, please check out our FAQ section.

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” – Winston Churchill

The winds of change are constant and the worlds of sports and travel are not immune. I know, you’re probably saying what the heck do sports and travel have in common? Good question…and believe it or not the answer below WILL help you make better fantasy sports decisons in signifcantly less time - guaranteed.

Turning a Firehose Into a Drinking Fountain

Well, it may have taken a few years, but FantasyXPERT has finally brought many of the best practices from the travel industry to the world of fantasy football and we can now start benefiting from an easier to navigate and more competitive market.

Power to the People – Come Join the Revolution!

If you want to join the revolution, you can create a FREE account at www.FantasyXPERT.com that will give you access to a well organized summary of the 100+ sources we analyze, direct links to these source’s weekly projections as soon as they become available, and our XPERT Smart Rankings for Player Projections, Waiver Wire and Start & Sit advice. XPERT Smart rankings are a consensus ranking of the projections of only the most historically accurate sources that exist on the Web today. For examples of what you will receive see the screenshots below:

Check out the most accurate sources for various timeframes (i.e. who’s hot right now vs who’s been the best over time), positions (i.e. I need someone who knows what he/she is talking about when it comes to RB predictions), and categories (i.e. who truly knows the Waiver Wire?). Be prepared though – this data may force you to re-think your current strategy!

Want to know who successfully picked Josh Freeman as the #3 overall QB for Week 9? Well, if you find them please let us know…I think it’s fair to say that no one saw that coming.

While we may not be able to tell you which source has Nostradamus-like powers, we can tell you which sources faired the best at ranking QBs in Week 9. If you need help deciding which QBs to play for Week 10 these sources could be your best option. To see more details on our methodology behind computing source accuracy, please see the bottom of the post.

Top 5 Sources for Ranking QBs in Week 9

1. Sportsbuff.com
2. Fantasycafe.com
3. Fantasyfootballjournal.com
4. Barracudafantasysports.com
5. ProFootballWeekly.com

Interesting tidbits from Week 9

• Sportsbuff.com was 41% more accurate than the least accurate sources for the week which happen to include two of the Tier 1, most popular sites.




• Sportsbuff.com was dead-on with 5 QBs (Matt Schaub, Carson Palmer, Chad Henne, Matthew Stafford and Jake Delhomme) ranking them within 1 position of their actual finishes. Impressive.




• The top rated Tier 1 source was CBSSports.com which came in at #7 overall. Ahead of them were three Tier 4, two Tier 2, and one Tier 3 site.




• Two sources, a Tier 2 and a Tier 4, have amazingly predicted the EXACT same player rankings for many weeks now. Most weeks these 2 sources just happen to have the exact same rankings for a few positions, but this week, these two sources had the exact same rankings for all positions except for WRs. If by some stretch of the imagination one source is copying the other, all we’d suggest is when you’re going take a “short cut”, stack the deck in your favor by checking out our Website and picking a source that tends to be more accurate (these 2 sources tend to be in the bottom half of the pack most weeks)!

*Tiers are based on Alexa Web rankings which take into account overall Web traffic to a site. For our purposes, Tier 1s are the most trafficked and Tier 4s are the lesser trafficked Web sites. By no means should a source’s tier be correlated with accuracy or legitimacy. For a list of all sites that we track for the various categories as well as each site’s Tier, please visit our Weekly Snapshot Page.

Key Takeaway To Help You in Week 10

• Again, the most accurate sources for QBs in Week 8 WERE NOT the most commonly used fantasy football Web sites (no we’re not trying to make this happen either – the numbers don’t lie). To get the extra edge (in some case more than 40% edge) you should dig deeper and use some of the lesser well-known, yet potentially more accurate sources for advice.




• For Premium members, check out the most accurate sources for 2009 and/or historically (includes 2008 source predictions) for the most comprehensive analysis on who best to listen to going forward.

By opening a FREE account at www.FantasyXPERT.com you will have access to a well organized summary of the 100+ sources we analyze, direct links to these source’s weekly projections as soon as they become available, and our XPERT Smart Rankings for Player Projections, Waiver Wire and Start & Sit advice. XPERT Smart rankings are a consensus ranking of the projections of only the most historically accurate sources that exist on the Web today.

*FantasyXPERT.com’s Player Ranking Methodology – each week, FantasyXPERT analyzes more than 100 popular fantasy football Web sites to determine which have provided the best advice for a variety of categories (Player Rankings, Waiver Wire and Start & Sit) as well as the various positions (QB, RB, WR, TE, K). Accuracy is determined by comparing each sources pre-game rankings/advice vs. the players actual performance for the week (there’s a bit more to it but that’s the general formula we use). We translate player statistics into fantasy points using a standard scoring model most sites use as a default. To find out more information on our scoring model as well as how we compute source accuracy, please check out our FAQ section.

Good luck in Week 10 and don’t forget to get your line-up in on Thursday!

Come on, admit it, we’re all greedy when it comes to the waiver wire. After all, who doesn’t want to monopolize their leagues waiver wire…picking up all the best players, dropping them too close to games for anyone else to pick them up, squatting on certain player hoping they are good trade bait down the road and most of all picking up that player that puts you over the top. Ask any experienced fantasy football player and he/she will tell you that intelligently managing the waiver wire is one of the single most important aspects to winning in fantasy football.

Who Provides the Best Information?

Here are the Top 3 EARLIEST average release times of the Most Accurate waiver wire sources:

And here’s a daily breakdown of when all sources tend to release their waiver wire advice: