Congratulations to Robert Heater of Gaithersburg, Md. He’s the winner of the 2020 Fantasy Index Open.

This is the free contest where all comers are invited to submit a top 20 at each position prior to the start of the season. We scored all the picks on all the entries using a complex scoring matrix (in short: the higher you ran a player, the more his production counts towards your score). Heater, a 37-year-old who knows his way around computers (he works in internet security), came out at the top of a 560-person field.

Heater, who’s married with one child and another on the way, wins a large trophy from the team at Affordable Trophies. They’ve been partnering with us on this venture for years.

Joe Kapp of Mount Carroll, Ill., finished in 2nd place. Dave Cohen of Brooklyn (who competes under the catchy franchise name, “Physically Unable to Perform”) finished in third.

Sam Hendricks (who authors the “Fantasy Football Guidebook”) finished in fourth. On Saturday, Hendricks was announced as the winner of our Fantasy Index Experts Poll (the sister competition featuring 20 industry analysts in the on-paper version of the magazine). Hendricks also won the 2018 version of this competition (see fine print on the photo).

Heater won this one, and by a decisive margin, finishing 1,899 points ahead of everyone else. While the scores in this competition tend to run high (everyone in the top 20 went over 354,000) there’s a lot more spread between Heater than with any of the other spots in the top 20.

Heater didn’t win with any one pick. He did not, that is, jump to a huge lead by leaving Saquon Barkley off his board. He ranked him 2nd, suffering along with a lot of other competitors when Barkley torn his ACL in Week 2. But he put together a solid all-around collection of picks, ranking in the top 40 at three different positions – wide receiver (11th), kicker (16th), quarterback (37th). And he ranked at least above-average at all of the other positions – running back (149th), tight end (108th) and defenses (208th).

To see how your own entry fared, log on to the site and use the “Your Stuff” pull-down box. There’s a “Fantasy Index Open 2020” link. Once in there, you can click on any of the franchise names to see the players they selected and how they were scored.

WISDOM OF THE CROWD

One of our tech guys ran the numbers on the consensus picks. That is, he generated a top 20 at each position, using the picks themselves (Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson got most of the high votes at quarterback, so those were the top 2 at that position). And that entry did very well, ranking 13th overall – outperforming 97 percent of the other entries.

The consensus picks, however, aren’t as impressive when you look at them as separate positions – 25th at wide receiver, 60th at running back, 69th at tight end, 166th at quarterback, 187 at kicker and 227 in the category including defenses and special teams. When looking at complete, full entries, the consensus ranked outside the top third at those final three positions (and even below-average at defenses).

A look at each at each of the six categories.

QUARTERBACK:

Playing under the entry name Bruce Almighty, Bruce Sadler of Lakeland, Fla., won this category. His key pick here was choosing to leave Dak Prescott out of his top 20. Prescott got hurt, missing a bunch into the season, so while almost everyone was taking high-priced zeros for Prescott, the winning entry was generating points with other players. He was higher than most on Aaron Rodgers (6th) and lower than most on Lamar Jackson (7th), who wasn’t as good as most were expecting.

RUNNING BACK:

The first-place prize at running back stayed in-house, with Justin Eleff, host of the Fantasy Index Podcast, outscoring everyone else. He got off to a nice start here by ranking Ezekiel Elliott ahead of Christian McCaffrey and Saquon Barkley. Elliott didn’t’ have a great year, but both Barkley and McCaffrey were hurt for most of the year, so Elliott was a lot better than those guys. Eleff also helped his cause by ranking Jonathan Taylor (13th) a lot higher than most.

The MadDawgs from Foster City, Calif., finished in 2nd in this category. He also didn’t buy in on those two coveted backs who were at the top of most board. He dropped them all the way down to 5th and 12th, giving him a nice head start on the vast majority of entries.

WIDE RECEIVER:

JoeTown WhiteTrash from St. Joseph, Mo., impressively destroyed everyone at wide receiver. Only one entry (Oldtimelogger from Mineral, Wash.) was within 2,000 points of him, and only three others were within 3,000. The winning entry created that separation by being one of the few who zigged from the norm, dropping Michael Thomas (149 catches in 2019) all the way down to fourth. The entry instead opened with Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill and Adam Thielen as his top 3. He also hit on the two others in his top 6: Calvin Ridley, DeAndre Hopkins. Further down, he included Keenan Allen and the two Seattle receivers in his top 20.

This entry also ranked 8th at Defense and 21st at Kicker but was below-average at the other three positions, causing him to finish 39th overall. There were 430 entries where there were 20 selections made at each position, so 39th gets the entry in the top 10 percent overall.

TIGHT END:

Scott L. of Mountain Home, Ark., won the tight end position. Darren Waller was the key pick here. Other than Travis Kelce, Waller was way better than all of the other tight ends. Waller finished 8th in the consensus voting, but Scott L was among the few who put Waller up at 4th. The vast majority started with Kelce-Kittle-Ertz; Kittle and Ertz were hurt for much of the they, but they didn’t factor much in the scoring, since pretty much everyone had them in their top 3.

Many had guys like Mark Andrews, Hayden Hurts, Jared Cook and Evan Engram ranked ahead of Waller. Scott L. was able to avoid falling into that trap, and also helped himself by not listing Blake Jarwin (who missed most of the year) and by being higher than most on T.J. Hockenson, Hunter Henry and Mike Gesicki.

KICKER:

Scott B Lucky of Angels Camp, Calif., won this category, edging contestants such as the Devil Dogs, Steve B and Regarding Derrick Henry. Scott B Lucky went aggressive with his selections, hitting big on a pair of rookies: Rodrigo Blankenship (2nd) and Tyler Bass (9th). They weren’t even on most entries. He also was higher than most on Younghoe Koo (8th) and Daniel Carlson (14th).

Scott B Lucky wasn’t successful at the other positions. He finished 339th overall (below average in comparison with the others who submitted complete entries).

DEFENSES AND SPECIAL TEAMS:

Things are always closer in this category because injuries are less of a factor – everyone is at least on the field for 16 games.

Barney’s Rubble from Silver Spring, Md., won this one, coming in just 16 points ahead of Auen Winner from Edwards, Calif.

Four defenses in this category scored at least 114 points, and Barney’s Rubble was able to play for them in his top 5 – Bills, Steelers, Colts and Rams. He also helped his cause by ranking Washington 13th. Washington wasn’t listed on the vast majority of ballots but finished 6th in production, scoring 113 points.

Auen Winner finished with a similar total but got there different. That entry opened with the two highest-scoring defenses (Steelers, Colts) but misfired on the Rams, ranking them only 18th. And Auen Winner wasn’t as successful at downgraded San Francisco (the 49ers were a top-3 choice on almost every entry but finished below-average in production).

As a group, we failed with the Miami Dolphins. They were a key pick here, finishing 5th in scoring, and we probably all should have done a better job of recognizing the potential of that defense to be better. They spent a lot of money on that side of the ball in the offseason. But hardly anybody put them even in their top 20, including none of our top 4 finishers. You have to get down to the 5th-place finisher, 2 Drink Minimum, before the Dolphins show at at 14th on a list.

—Ian Allan