There was a lot of parity for most of this year’s Experts Poll, with everyone finishing high and low in various categories. And then Cory Bonini took over. Bonini, who writes for USA Today Fantasy Sports, won both the running backs and quarterbacks positions, pulling away from the pack for the overall title.
It’s Bonini’s first experts poll championship. His seven previous attempts all came for the KFFL website. Now he calls the fantasy section of USA Today home. (In his article today, he calls Keshawn Martin his Sleeper Player for the Weekend).
Sam Hendricks of Extra Point Press finished in 2nd, 803 points back. Bryan Hough of Fantasy Titan 101 took 3rd.
Bonini beat everyone by over 1,500 points in the quarterback position, and it looks like Matthew Stafford and Carson Palmer were his two most important picks. Stafford (whom he ranked 4th) didn’t have a great year, but he finished 8th in scoring, which was higher than a lot of the others guys who were getting picked in that range. Coming off a knee surgery, Palmer finished 4th in scoring, so there was a good chunk of value there. About half of the other experts didn’t rank Palmer at all, and he wasn’t higher than 16th on anyone else’s board.
| EXPERTS POLL (quarterbacks) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rk | Analyst | Points |
| 1. | Cory Bonini | 96,600 |
| 2. | Micah James | 95,120 |
| 3. | Sam Hendricks | 95,097 |
| 4. | Bryan Hough | 94,799 |
| 5. | David Dorey | 94,023 |
| 6. | Pete Owers | 93,617 |
| 7. | Paul Charchian | 93,425 |
| 8. | Jay Harding | 93,415 |
| 9. | Chris Liss | 93,109 |
| 10. | Alan Satterlee | 92,957 |
| 11. | Scott Sachs | 92,605 |
| 12. | Mike Nease | 92,526 |
| 13. | Michael Nazarek | 92,297 |
| 14. | L.A. Hale | 92,076 |
| 15. | Lenny Pappano | 91,958 |
| 16. | Tony Holm | 91,766 |
| 17. | Scott Pianowski | 91,720 |
| 18. | Bob Henry | 91,584 |
| 19. | Mike Clay | 91,155 |
| 20. | Todd Voorhees | 91,099 |
The top 11 finishers win spots in the Mock Draft competition in the 2016 edition of Fantasy Football Index magazine. As the winner of this poll, Bonini gets his choice of draft position in that league.
There were reader qualifiers in this poll (the top two finishers in last year’s Fantasy Index Open) but they didn’t finish in the top 11. Pete Owers finished in 15th place, and Todd Voorhees finished in 19th.
| EXPERTS POLL, overall | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rk | analyst | QB | RB | WR | TE | PK | Def | Points |
| 1. | Cory Bonini | 1 | 1 | 18 | 18 | 16 | 1 | 275,914 |
| 2. | Sam Hendricks | 3 | 12 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 6 | 275,111 |
| 3. | Bryan Hough | 4 | 9 | 4 | 16 | 4 | 14 | 274,189 |
| 4. | L.A. Hale | 14 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 13 | 16 | 273,805 |
| 5. | Chris Liss | 9 | 15 | 6 | 11 | 1 | 10 | 273,741 |
| 6. | Jay Harding | 8 | 7 | 15 | 1 | 12 | 12 | 273,725 |
| 7. | Alan Satterlee | 10 | 4 | 2 | 15 | 15 | 11 | 273,122 |
| 8. | David Dorey | 5 | 6 | 17 | 8 | 3 | 19 | 272,702 |
| 9. | Paul Charchian | 7 | 20 | 9 | 2 | 11 | 4 | 272,331 |
| 10. | Lenny Pappano | 15 | 5 | 12 | 5 | 17 | 7 | 271,680 |
| 11. | Scott Pianowski | 17 | 10 | 14 | 7 | 5 | 9 | 271,483 |
| 12. | Micah James | 2 | 18 | 1 | 20 | 18 | 8 | 271,307 |
| 13. | Michael Nazarek | 13 | 17 | 11 | 4 | 8 | 13 | 271,155 |
| 14. | Bob Henry | 18 | 11 | 8 | 12 | 10 | 3 | 271,090 |
| 15. | Pete Owers | 6 | 16 | 16 | 10 | 7 | 18 | 270,838 |
| 16. | Mike Nease | 12 | 3 | 10 | 13 | 19 | 5 | 270,608 |
| 17. | Tony Holm | 16 | 2 | 5 | 17 | 20 | 2 | 269,921 |
| 18. | Mike Clay | 19 | 14 | 13 | 9 | 14 | 15 | 268,936 |
| 19. | Todd Voorhees | 20 | 13 | 19 | 14 | 2 | 17 | 267,174 |
| 20. | Scott Sachs | 11 | 19 | 20 | 19 | 6 | 20 | 264,301 |
—Ian Allan