What is the best FF magazine?

[msinn 1]

Well, there is one other obvious reason to buy them- to factor in the 1-2 "didn't have time to do it right" owners that we seem to have every year. At least one always brings a mag to the draft, if you know who he thinks is over/under valued, it makes it much easier to get your value picks where you want them.

[kutulu 1,561]

In addition to the crapper, I always like to get one or two FF mags for the beach/lake for when I'm on vacation....which is next week, btw.

[#1LionFan 0]

LionsFan:

Give me an e-mail and we can compare Defenses this year! Are you doing your big write up again?

 

Huh? What you talkin' bout' bubba? defenses?

[Chronic Husker 85]

I also like Pro Forecast.

Megla's right. Forecast has THE best format, analysis, overall writing, and accuracy.

[Hitman49er 0]

I've been keeping my mags for the last 7-8 years and I love to pull out an old one and laugh at how wrong they are. I have one from 2005 called "The Fantasy Football Guide 2005- Professional Edition" According to the cover they are America's leading fantasy resource. The best part about this mag is that their WR Rankings have Drew Bennett #1. Projected 2005 was 1350 and 12Tds, Actual 738 and 4Tds. I will always buy magazines because they are fun, but I laugh at people who count on the magazines to draft their teams. Fantasy football magazines make fantasy football easier for people who can think for themselves, so support magazines. NFL.com mag sucks FYI.

[TheMick 0]

An interesting article that also appeared in the NY Times ranked the main sites' rankings.

It's here: http://www.fflibrarian.com/2009/02/accurac...s-for-2008.html

 

Last year's best rankings were, according to the fflibrarian were:

 

1 Fantazzle 55.025

2 Yahoo 56.793

3 Fantasy Trader 57.033

4 ADP 58.293

5 FFToday 60.843

6 FantasyFootball.com 61.475

7 FOX Sports 63.205

8 ESPN 63.253

9 Ask the Commish 63.802

10 Rotoworld 64.815

 

If you take the square root of the average number listed at the right of each site listed above, you get the average amount of ranking spots "off" that each site was per player across all positions.

 

So, for example, the best site was sqr (55.025) = 7.42 positions off on average and the tenth site was 8.05 positions off on average - even though Rotoworld sells their list and advertises it as "The Most Accurate"!

 

Other sites did well at specific positions (check out the article for details), like CBS had the 2nd best QB and TE rankings and KFFL had "by a large margin" the best RB rankings.

 

Consequently, since many of the rankings are free and I'm cheap, I wouldn't pay for magazines. And during the season, even Rotoworld's weekly rankings are free beginning Thursdays.

 

My favorite site for rankings and stats is fftoday.com. They tend to get less carried away by very short-term trends, but they also don't get stuck on last-year's thinking. If you register (free), you can input your league's scoring rules and the many user-friendly pages will appear with data according to your system.

 

My favorite last-minute news is Rotoworld.com and John Halpin's blog at Foxsports.

 

And my Ravenskins have done well the last three years in draft-from-scratch NFL.com leagues, relying mainly on data and insights from CBS (which supplies the user-friendly stat and player pages at NFL.com), fftoday, Fox (John Halpin's blog, Mike Harmon & Roger Rotter rankings), and ESPN:

 

2006 10-4, division champ, 1-1 playoffs (lost final)

2007 10-4, division champ, 1-1 playoffs (lost final)

2008 12-2, division champ, 2-0 playoffs (won final)

 

My week 16 title game starters last year:

 

QB: Schaub (Warner [1 pt] benched due to snow in NE): 9 pts

RB: Forte: 15 pts

RB: Pierre Thomas (Portis [14 pts!] benched due to apparent injuries): 13 pts

WR: Welker: 12 pts

WR: Jennings: 9 pts

WR: Colston: 21 pts

TE: Dallas Clark: 16 pts

K: Nedney: 5 pts

DST: Colts: 13 pts

 

I started Schaub also because my opponent was starting Andre Johnson and Kevin Walter and I wanted to cancel out any TDs by 2 of his WRs.

 

I drafted "too slow" Forte and also snagged Warner in my draft before he was named starter for the Cards. I snuck Thomas through waivers before he got hot, and also added a few players considered hot by some and cold by others: Chris Johnson, Owen Daniels, and Packers DST (hot in first half).

 

This year I'm in a "Winners" league that requires that you were a league champion at NFL.com last year, so we'll see how I do in the "big pond". But I sure don't need a "magazine" - there's too much out there for free to digest as it is!

[Candygram4Mongo 8]

Nobody else ever mentions ProFootball Weekly's mag, but I like it, mostly for the team stats pages in the back.

 

It has very well organized game-by-game stats for all players, which allows me to get a stronger sense of a player's season week to week at a glance, which is a huge help in the evaluation of consistency and dependability of a player.

Also, when making line-up decisions, I can see how a player fared against another team last season, and if they have a strong or weak history against a particular team. A couple of years ago, after looking at JMcCown's great stats vs SF the previous year, I plugged him in, and he came through with 300 yds and a couple of tds for me.

 

I know all this stuff (and so much more) is available here at fftoday, but I like to have it all there on the printed page for reading in the can.

[football is life 0]

There are two I go with each year.

 

http://www.sportingnews.com/fantasy/football/

http://www.footballdocs.com/fantasy_football_magazine.html

 

I like Sporting News because they have some nice articles and information. It's well worth the price and a nice grab to keep in the rotation. I've been getting it for a while, and have no complaints. Good stuff. I like footballdocs because it includes some pretty nice draft software and is updated weekly. Plus, they always seem to nail a few solid sleepers that others don't. Both of these have helped me make enough $$ to keep the wife happy.

 

ESPN drives me crazy. I know you asked for recommendations, but I also have to keep you an anti-recommendation. I mean geese - 60 key sleepers?? That's like the guy that picks all the college football teams to win the championship and then looks back to say he had the champion picked from day one. Not useful at all.