Thinking about your fantasy football season and wondering, should I buy a FantasyGuru.com membership? If you’re wondering this question, let me offer you my independent and completely unbiased review for FantasyGuru.com.
What I Love
I love the stats and their presentation on this site. They’re absolutely awesome. The stats are sortable and customizable by any scoring system you have (although some of the more unique options might not be there, for example weird scoring variants of your league) and give you the targets of every player sortable for every week. This is hard to find stuff on the web and it makes research so convenient.
The truth is their customizable fantasy football cheat sheets and detailed strength of schedule (SOS) is the reason why I bought a membership before my fantasy football draft. Membership is $29.95. I didn’t want to do all the stats by hand (make an excel spreadsheet, enter them, customize them for my league, etc.) and spend hours searching for them on the web.
In this regard, I love FantasyGuru and it’s worth all the money. There’s even a $4.95 FantasyGuru challenge that I thought was a ripoff game, but it’s actually a great salary cap game that has a good reputation behind it. I started playing in week 3 and I love it.
FantasyGuru isn’t great for expert opinions. For as much time as they spend, I was surprised how they didn’t list Ladainian as a big time sleeper (I sure knew he was). They also touted Johnny Knox and Jermichael Finley to epic porportions. For the amount of hype they put into these two guys I thought Johnny Knox would be this year’s Austin Collie and Jermichael Finley would be this year’s Antonio Gates or Dustin Keller.
If you were a sheepish subscriber, right now your fantasy team’s might be sunk because they would have had you draft Finley in the 3rd or early 4th and Knox in the 5th or 6th. Finley is having a decent season at 4th best TE but clearly he wasn’t worth his ADP (he was being drafted at or around Gates). Knox was a completely blown pick and right now they’re still making excuses for it. Here’s the company line from the week 4 Report:
“If you actually watch the Bears play, you’ll see we were clearly correct to push Knox. We might have gone a little
overboard, but that’s what we do when we see something we like, and that’s what we’ll continue to do. Those who cover the team and analyze their offense on film agree with us. But his hands are strapped if the OL isn’t going to give the QB any time to throw, and if the QB is knocked out of the game. We are somewhat disappointed, but the guy’s clearly a great fit for the scheme, and he’s the playmaker here. He can’t do well every week, so we’d suggest patience here.”
Talk about denial. Clearly correct to push Knox? You mean by the fact he’s ranked 40th in my non-PPR league and 41 in my PPR league. Clearly they were correct, how could I miss this right? No, I didn’t draft Knox in both these leagues. I’m in 8 leagues and drafted Knox in 3. 2 of those 3 were PPR. The other, I snagged him late. I believed Knox’s worth in a PPR league because I thought he might turn into the little slot receiver machine for the Bears, racking up 7-8 catches a game for 80-90 yards.
Otherwise, I didn’t understand the hype machine on Knox from FantasyGuru. They were so sure of themselves, I had to look and try to figure out what made him so great. I didn’t see anything beyond being a quick PPR guy. Even this notion was wrong as he doesn’t even catch a lot of passes. I wouldn’t go on and on about 1 player but FantasyGuru basically made him a headliner for members and I’m sure got a lot of them to draft him a round early because he was going to be so great.
I really hate the excuse that he’s in the perfect system, that it’s just the offensive line holding him back. Well then he isn’t in the perfect system! FF takes all things into account and offensive line is a huge factor. All that matters in fantasy football is numbers and Johnny Knox doesn’t got ‘em. FantasyGuru talked him up to Wes Welker slot receiver levels and he ended up as a complete dud. FantasyGuru needs to stop trying to choke that pill down, cough it up, and give it up already.
They didn’t completely miss the boat on Finley. I mean, he’s a good TE – easily top 5 – but he’s not in the elite realms. What I didn’t get is why they went out of their way to boast Finley when Antonio Gates looked so good without Vincent Jackson or nagging injuries.
I do like that they took some risks, but I think they had too much self created hype that fed upon itself and continued to grow. I would go into more guys that FantasyGuru loved but Finley and Knox were their marquee guys. These were who they hung their hat on. They had several guys they were warm on that ended up being decent or better (ie Donald Driver, Malcolm Floyd) but their big sleepers ended up being a bust and an underachiever.
It’s like the time FantasyIndex put Tatum Bell on their cover and it read, “Why Tatum Bell is the Key to Your Draft”. You put all your stock on one or a few guys like that and you’ll either going to be Alexander the Great or Lloyd Brawn (think Seinfeld).
All-in-all, I really like FantasyGuru.com. I’ll be subscribing next year but if you’re new to fantasy football or just looking for fantasy football advice, John Hansen isn’t going to wow you with some super secret special knowledge and fantasy football sleepers. What will wow you is how much time and dedication they put into this site and the features that they give you. If you’re a season fantasy football veteran, you’ll love all the stuff they have to chew over, the stats, and the ease of use in the website. Not all of the article features are clearly organized in the pre-season, but overall I love the site and I give FantasyGuru.com a very positive review.
Post any fantasyguru.com reviews you have in the comments section.
8.8/10 rating