NFL Week 8 – Industry Expert Grading

Week 8 will be remembered as the week of injuries. There were numerous players listed on the Industry Consensus picks that were forced to leave their games early due to injury such as Le’Veon Bell, Matt Forte, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Keenan Allen. Rostering a player that gets hurt can severely decrease your chance of cashing, and if you happen to have a couple of them then forget about it. Hopefully, if you did roster any of these players you also found some “A+” plays to balance it out and gave yourself a fighting chance this week.

Quarterback was shaky this week with only one quarterback receiving a grade above an “A” (Eli Manning). Although the most recommended quarterback (Rivers) did have a strong game and received a “B” grade. And where was Drew Brees the top scoring QB this week? Well, a few experts did call him out, see who in the Extra Credit section. Running back had a few strong plays including Todd “the chalk” Gurley, Devonta Freeman and Darren McFadden. The wide receiver position is where the consensus picks shined this week with 7 plays receiving either an “A+” or “A” grade out of 15 receivers listed. The tight end position was more challenging with only 3 options receiving a “B” or higher out of 8 TEs listed.

Be sure to check out the season long scores for all of the experts that we are tracking at the NFL Industry Expert Grading page.

On to the Week 8 grades, class is in session!

Week 8 Consensus Recap

Each week I will recap the top consensus picks that were posted to review how they graded out. The Industry Consensus picks finished near the middle of the pack this week with a 12th place finish out of 28 experts graded.

Quarterbacks

Highly Touted

B – Philip Rivers – Another 300+ yards and 3 TD game for Rivers, but not enough for a GPP win this week
F – Andy Dalton – First bad game for Dalton this season

Recommended

C – Matt Ryan – Solid game for Ryan, but not elite
D – Cam Newton – Playing during a monsoon didn’t help
F – Ryan Fitzpatrick – Injury destroyed his day and anyone that had him in their lineup

Suggested

A+ – Eli Manning – Huge day, but still wasn’t the best QB in his game
F – Ben Roethlisberger – Other than the first drive Big Ben looked a little rusty
F – Aaron Rodgers – Don’t start QBs against the Broncos

Running Backs

Highly Touted

A+ – Todd Gurley – He does it again, top RB play this week
F – Justin Forsett – Had a good matchup, but didn’t produce with only 74 total yards

Recommended

A – Devonta Freeman – Solid game for Freeman on a down week overall for RBs
B – Jonathan Stewart – Rushing TD helped give Stewart an above average grade
C – Chris Johnson – Two fumbles killed his day
C – Adrian Peterson – Topped 100 rushing yards, but no scores again
F – Le’Veon Bell – Injury destroyed his day (and season)

Suggested

A+ – Darren McFadden – Nice value play with 26 touches for 113 total yards
D – Matt Forte – Yet another player that had to leave due to an injury
F – Doug Martin – Slow day for Martin despite the Bucs winning
F – Danny Woodhead – Only had 5 touches for 45 total yards

Wide Receivers

Highly Touted

A+ – Julio Jones – Caught 12 out of 13 targets for 162 yard and 1 TD, every week option
A+ – AJ Green – AJ was the lone bright spot on the Bengals offense this week
A+ – Alshon Jeffery – Cutler looks for him all the time, 15 targets out of 33 pass attempts
A – Stefon Diggs – Diggs is the man again
D – Keenan Allen – At least he got a TD before leaving with an injury
D – Antonio Brown – Had a TD, but only 49 yards, there will be better days ahead

Recommended

A+ – Odell Beckham Jr. – Looks fully healthy again to me
C – Brandon Marshall – Put up another 100 yard game
C – DeAndre Hopkins – “Only” 11 targets as the Texans didn’t need to play catchup this week
C – Eric Decker – Matched Marshall’s production, but at a cheaper price

Suggested

A+ – Nate Washington – Another A+ day for the cheap WR
A – Demaryius Thomas – Biggest yardage total this season, but still didn’t find the end zone
F – Martavis Bryant – No big plays for Bryant this week
F- Marvin Jones – Everything went to Green
F – Mike Evans – Only 9 targets in a game without Vincent Jackson, expected more

Tight Ends

Highly Touted

F – Tyler Eifert – Another piece of the Bengals passing game that didn’t produce this week
F – Ladarius Green – Hopefully you pivoted to someone else when Antonio Gates was announced as active

Recommended

A – Greg Olsen – Came through on Monday night
F – Martellus Bennett – Only 5 targets for 32 yards

Suggested

A+ – Benjamin Watson – Top TE play of the week, hopefully you pivoted from Green to Watson
B – Gary Barnidge – Has a score or 100 yards receiving in 6 straight games
D – Delanie Walker – Decent game for Delaine with 6 catches for 62 yards
F – Jason Witten – Needs Tony Romo back before he will be productive

Head of the Class for Week 8

Each week I will highlight a few of the top experts for the week. Here are the experts that deserve a “gold star” for Week 8 based on their cumulative grades for all players they touted this week.

#1) RotoCurve (Score: 5.75) finished in the top spot for Week 8. They only had 4 selections, but received 2 “A+” grades from Todd Gurley and Alshon Jeffery to lead the way.

#2) DailyFantasySportsRankings (Score: 4.73) finished in second place for the second straight week, receiving an “A” or better on 8 out of their 15 selections. Key selections were Drew Brees, Eli Manning, Todd Gurley, Julio Jones and AJ Green.

#3) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 4.56) rolls into the third spot this week with 5 selections receiving a “B” or better grade out of 9 selections. They hit on a few consensus plays such as Todd Gurley, AJ Green and Alshon Jeffery, but also had an off the radar pick of Joe Flacco (B).

Study Time for Week 8

If we are going to give a gold star to the top experts of the week, we also need to determine which experts might need to put in some extra study time to pull up those grades. Here are the Week 8 experts that didn’t make the grade this week.

• SportsBlog (Score: 1.20) struggled this week receiving 2 “F” grades from Martavis Bryant and Ladarius Green, out of 5 selections.
• Moxyball-Marcel (Score: 1.20) finds themselves in unusual territory at the bottom of the weekly standings, with 2 “F” grades from Andy Dalton and Tyler Eifert out of 5 selections.

Extra Credit for Week 8

In this section I will look to give some extra credit to experts that received an A+ or A grade on a player that they recommended when very few other experts did. Week 8 extra credit goes to the following…

A+ – Drew Brees (DailyFantasySportsRankings, DK Playbook-Jennings, VenoDFS-Derek)
A+ – Michael Floyd (FantasyPros)
A+ – Michael Crabtree (FantasyPros)
A+ – Brandin Cooks (VenoDFS-Rob Veno)
A+ – Tavon Austin (VenoDFS-Rob O’Connor)
A – Carson Palmer (DK Playbook-Ulrich, VenoDFS-Rob Veno)
A – CJ Spiller (DailyRoto-Mayo)

Overall Leaderboard

To see the full leaderboard through Week 8 head over to the NFL Industry Expert Grading page.

We added a new site to our grading this week, RobVenoSports, and they had a couple experts put up good scores in their first week. VenoDFS-Derek had a score of 3.63 which puts him in first place in the overall standing. Meanwhile, VenoDFS-Rob Veno, put up a score of 3.50, which puts him in third place in the overall standings. We will keep tracking these guys to see if they can consistently provide strong picks and stay in the mix at the top of the standings.

As for the experts that we have been tracking at least 4 weeks, Moxyball-Matt remains at the top with a 3.51 score. We have tracked Moxyball-Matt a total of seven weeks this season. Bleacher report, who we have tracked for 5 weeks, is currently in fourth of the overall standings with a score of 3.31. Holding down the fifth spot currently with a score of 3.28 is RotoCurve, who we have tracked for 4 weeks so far this season.

As for the Industry Expert Consensus picks, they dropped slightly this week down to the 15th spot out of 30 experts listed.

Let’s see who can make the grade in Week 9!

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