With preseason games finally being played, fantasy drafts are right around the corner. So far we’ve covered the fantasy impact from teams turning the reins over to rookie quarterbacks, game scripts and play calling, scoring and efficiency per offensive possession, production and usage in the red zone, and top-down views of the tight end, running back and wide receiver positions for fantasy. Our final positional notebook concludes with a look at quarterbacks in fantasy.
Editor’s Note: The 2017 Draft Guide provides tiers, projections, ADP reports, mock drafts for many different types of leagues, Sleepers and Busts and much more. Get the NFL Draft Guide now.
Replication and Replaceability
Fantasy football is a game with market-like principles inherently built in and even if the actual game of football is consistently evolving, playing fantasy football principally remains the same. Your specialized home league may have unique scoring and starting roster requirements, but the overarching ways to play fantasy football on any major site are primarily the same. The crux of those leagues forces you start at least two running backs and at least two to three wide receivers with just one player at the remaining positions. Because you must start multiple players at those other positions, the supply of those positions is in higher demand than the positions that require you to play one weekly and because those players inherently score more points, you need to have more of them on your roster. They are a necessity.
Therefore, running backs and wide receivers are integrally expensive to begin with. Adding in injury assessment and flex positions only compound that demand for those other positions. In turn, this supply and demand for those positions also creates a surplus on the positions that require less investment during the draft and creates availability for those positions after the draft and into the season. Namely the quarterback position. Quarterbacks are the most replaceable commodity in fantasy football because the position inherently accrues a baseline of double digit points no matter how poor their game is from a reality aspect.
Weekly Average Percentage of Scoring Compared to the Top Player Over the Past 5 Years
| Rank | QB | RB STD | RB PPR | WR STD | WR PPR | TE STD | TE PPR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 88.55% | 81.46% | 84.84% | 86.59% | 87.10% | 81.31% | 83.75% |
| 3 | 81.02% | 74.50% | 76.68% | 78.62% | 80.65% | 72.73% | 72.92% |
| 4 | 75.90% | 68.87% | 71.72% | 72.83% | 74.73% | 61.62% | 66.06% |
| 5 | 71.69% | 64.57% | 67.35% | 67.75% | 70.16% | 57.58% | 61.01% |
| 6 | 68.07% | 59.27% | 63.85% | 64.13% | 67.20% | 53.54% | 56.68% |
| 7 | 64.46% | 58.94% | 61.22% | 60.87% | 64.25% | 48.99% | 52.71% |
| 8 | 61.75% | 53.64% | 58.31% | 58.70% | 61.83% | 45.45% | 49.46% |
| 9 | 59.34% | 53.31% | 55.98% | 58.33% | 60.22% | 41.41% | 46.57% |
| 10 | 57.53% | 49.34% | 53.64% | 55.07% | 58.06% | 37.88% | 44.04% |
| 11 | 55.42% | 47.02% | 51.31% | 51.81% | 55.65% | 37.37% | 41.88% |
| 12 | 53.61% | 45.03% | 49.27% | 51.09% | 54.30% | 35.86% | 39.71% |
| 13 | 51.51% | 44.70% | 47.52% | 49.64% | 52.69% | 35.35% | 37.91% |
| 14 | 49.70% | 42.05% | 45.77% | 47.10% | 51.34% | 32.32% | 36.10% |
| 15 | 47.89% | 41.06% | 44.31% | 46.38% | 50.00% | 29.80% | 34.66% |
| 16 | 45.78% | 38.74% | 42.86% | 44.57% | 48.66% | 28.28% | 32.85% |
| 17 | 43.67% | 37.75% | 41.40% | 43.12% | 47.58% | 27.27% | 31.41% |
| 18 | 42.17% | 34.77% | 39.94% | 42.39% | 46.51% | 25.76% | 29.96% |
| 19 | 40.36% | 34.44% | 38.78% | 40.58% | 45.16% | 23.23% | 28.52% |
| 20 | 38.55% | 33.77% | 37.61% | 38.77% | 43.82% | 22.73% | 27.44% |
| 21 | 36.45% | 33.44% | 36.44% | 38.04% | 43.01% | 21.21% | 25.99% |
| 22 | 34.04% | 32.12% | 35.28% | 37.32% | 42.20% | 19.70% | 24.55% |
| 23 | 31.93% | 28.81% | 34.11% | 35.87% | 40.86% | 19.19% | 23.10% |
| 24 | 29.52% | 28.48% | 32.94% | 35.51% | 40.05% | 17.17% | 22.02% |
The way to absorb this is that over each week of the past five NFL seasons, the QB2 on average scored 88.6 percent of the points posted by the QB1 and so on for each position. The average baseline for the quarterback position in 12 team leagues scores on average 53.6 percent (17.8 points) of the QB1, which is by far the highest of all the baselines for any position. When you factor in the amount of players playing the other positions compared to quarterbacks in real and fantasy, that aspect of reproducing scoring down the line within the position is exploitable from a fantasy stance.
On a weekly level, it’s also a lot easier to find to find those players at the quarterback position providing those starting weeks regularly. Circling back to something we looked at in the tight end post --looking at “starting” weeks over the past five seasons--here is a breakdown of those starting weeks provided in a season by individual players and the amount of those weeks they reproduced in an individual season.
This is why taking your quarterback later and later in drafts has become a normality for fantasy. Many quarterbacks find the main stage several weeks during the season. 50.7 percent of the quarterbacks to have at least one starting week over the past five years went on to have five or more during that given season. The number of quarterbacks producing starting weeks remains above all other positions through seven or more such weeks before falling below the consistently elite running backs and wide receivers for players to post starting weeks for half of the season or more. That boasts well for the truly elite quarterbacks within a season providing a positional advantage, but that advantage is marginalized by the roster requirements and performances for the other positions and by the fact that more quarterbacks are viable on weekly level not only on teams, but also on league waivers. In 2016, we had 10 different quarterbacks post eight or more starting scoring weeks and 14 different quarterbacks yielded seven or more on the season.
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Yardage and Touchdowns
A year ago, I wrote a post highlighting that yards per attempt have a relationship with touchdown rate and are telltale sign for spotting passing touchdown fortune. In that post, notable players that were expected to have a decrease in passing scores in 2016 were Cam Newton, Blake Bortles and Russell Wilson while suggesting buying an increase for Matt Ryan, Jameis Winston and Ben Roethlisberger (as well as Teddy Bridgewater, RIP) based on being less fortunate in the touchdown department than their efficiency passing suggested. This year, the highlighted players look like this…
There weren’t as many significant overachievers last year as there were in 2015, but there are a few things to touch on from that group.
Ryan went full circle from being a clear-cut passer to expecting a bounce back to being one from which we’re expecting regression. He threw for a career-high 4,944 yards and 38 touchdowns on just 535 attempts, the lowest mark since his second season in the league in 2009. Ryan’s 9.3 yards per attempt mark ranked fourth in NFL history and his adjusted yards per attempt (which incorporates touchdowns and interceptions) of 10.1 yards was also the fourth best mark in league history. Ryan threw a touchdown on 7.1 percent of his passes, which is surely going to come back to earth as his previous career-best rate was 5.2 percent. While Ryan is due regression to his career mean, you don’t have to run and hide completely as his mean has consistently proven to be a top-10 fantasy quarterback as he’s finished as the QB8 or higher in five of the past seven seasons.
Mariota ranked just 28th in the league in attempts (30.1) and completions (18.4) per game while 27th in passing yardage per game (228.4 yards), but was a consistently high-scoring fantasy producer because had the fourth highest touchdown rate in the league, throwing a touchdown once every 17.4 pass attempts. Since entering the league, only Aaron Rodgers, Andrew Luck and Tom Brady have better touchdown rates than the 5.5 percent rate Mariota has posted, so maybe this is just the beginning of the next quarterback to join that pantheon of passers. We’ve seen highly efficient/low volume passers have setbacks early in their careers for fantasy purposes, but the added weapons that Tennessee has accrued this offseason don’t make it easy to be scared off from Mariota, either. Still, it’s hard to see Tennessee shifting completely to a pass-first team, leaving Mariota reliant on maintaining efficiency in the touchdown department. That gives him a lower floor than is suggested by his average cost in drafts, but his ceiling has proven to be one of the highest in the league over his early career.
It’s hard to suggest that Rivers overachieved last year given his fantasy season in totality combined with his decimated surrounding skill players on offense, but here we are. Rivers played with many second and third stringers on offense a year ago and still delivered 33 touchdown passes. His touchdown rate of 5.7 percent spiked to his highest total since 2013 and was the second-highest mark of his past seven seasons. Rivers has thrown at least 26 touchdown passes in nine consecutive seasons and, like Mariota, his surrounding situation is dramatically improved from a year ago. There are ancillary reasons to pause on selecting Rivers such as the brutal opening half of his schedule, but a recoil in touchdown rate is not as pressing.
What we’re here for though is the quarterbacks that we can expect more out of in 2017. That list starts with Russell Wilson. Despite his 7.7 yards per attempt being near his career output, Wilson threw a touchdown on just 3.8 percent of his pass attempts in 2016 after throwing for a score on 6.1 percent of his passes previously in his career. Wilson got healthier as the season wore on in 2016 in the form of mobility and his passing followed suit as his health was restored. Over the first seven games of the season, Wilson had thrown just five touchdowns before passing for 16 touchdowns over final nine games. With health on his side as well as one of the lightest potential schedules per Warren Sharp, Wilson is the primary quarterback from the top of the position that I’m monitoring in drafts when looking at a relatively earlier round signal caller.
Andy Dalton posted a career-low 3.2 touchdown rate despite historical marks in yards per attempt suggesting he should’ve thrown another seven touchdown passes given the amount of attempts he had. He still averaged 7.5 yards per pass attempt and threw for 262.9 yards per game, both of which were good for the second-best marks of his career behind his incredible 2015 output. Dalton did that with essentially his best three receivers missing most of the season. A.J. Green basically missed eight games, Tyler Eifert another eight and Giovani Bernard seven. Dalton’s poor fortune in terms of touchdown passes related to yardage may have been tied back into all those injuries. With the Bengals coming into the season healthy and the added rookie playmakers in John Ross and Joe Mixon, I expect Dalton to be one of the better fantasy values within the position in 2017.
Kirk Cousins had his second straight top-10 scoring season last year as he finished as the QB5 in overall output. Despite that success, Cousins was even a little bit unlucky as he ranked third in the NFL in passing yards (4,917) and yards per attempt (8.1) but just 19th in touchdown rate as he threw a touchdown just once every 24.2 pass attempts. The departure of two receivers he had a comfort level with is a minor concern, but Washington still has a strong stable of passing weaponry at Cousins’ disposal that is as good on paper as just about any team in the league and Washington is a team that is still best suited to throw the ball over leaning on their run game. Cousins should push for the league-lead in passing yardage again in 2017, so any uptick in touchdown output should solidify him in repeating top-5 potential within the position and his draft cost is nowhere near that.
↑, ↑, ↓, ↓, ←, →, ←, →, B, A, START
I’m legally obligated to spend a moment talking about rushing production and how it’s still scored for fantasy quarterbacks and therefore elevates specific players over their traditional counterparts like a cheat code of sorts. A player that isn’t considered an elite passer isn’t considered a strong real-life quarterback, but it doesn’t prevent him from being an elite fantasy one. In 2016, we saw the combination of San Francisco quarterbacks –Blaine Gabbert and Colin Kaepernick-- post eight top-12 scoring weeks during the season because they collectively averaged 5.5 fantasy points per game via their performance on the ground, which is roughly the equivalent worth of 1.5 passing touchdowns or 140 passing yards per game.
Career and 2016 Rushing Production for Quarterbacks
| Player | RuPt/Gm | 2016 | FF Pt% | 2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyrod Taylor | 6.70 | 6.27 | 34.35% | 34.96% |
| Cam Newton | 7.01 | 4.39 | 34.25% | 26.12% |
| Colin Kaepernick | 5.31 | 4.90 | 30.77% | 29.34% |
| Russell Wilson | 4.34 | 1.99 | 23.41% | 11.99% |
| Dak Prescott | 4.01 | 4.01 | 22.38% | 22.38% |
| Blake Bortles | 3.08 | 3.37 | 18.40% | 20.10% |
| Marcus Mariota | 3.11 | 3.13 | 17.90% | 18.05% |
| Blaine Gabbert | 1.82 | 4.88 | 17.14% | 40.30% |
| Andrew Luck | 3.26 | 3.07 | 16.79% | 15.18% |
| Alex Smith | 2.20 | 2.89 | 15.38% | 19.75% |
| Josh McCown | 2.17 | 0.42 | 15.24% | 4.19% |
| Jameis Winston | 2.49 | 1.41 | 15.03% | 9.00% |
| Jared Goff | 1.09 | 1.09 | 14.29% | 14.29% |
| Aaron Rodgers | 2.98 | 3.81 | 13.95% | 16.11% |
| Andy Dalton | 2.18 | 2.65 | 13.77% | 16.27% |
| Carson Wentz | 1.69 | 1.69 | 12.80% | 12.80% |
| Brock Osweiler | 1.72 | 1.67 | 12.25% | 14.94% |
| Jay Cutler | 1.62 | 0.48 | 11.23% | 5.13% |
| Kirk Cousins | 1.80 | 2.10 | 9.89% | 11.19% |
| Matthew Stafford | 1.55 | 2.04 | 8.95% | 11.77% |
| Paxton Lynch | 1.25 | 1.25 | 8.80% | 8.80% |
| Joe Flacco | 1.17 | 1.11 | 8.39% | 7.59% |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 1.04 | 0.53 | 6.23% | 3.01% |
| Matt Ryan | 0.83 | 0.73 | 5.08% | 3.39% |
| Tom Brady | 0.95 | 0.53 | 4.80% | 2.49% |
| Sam Bradford | 0.58 | 0.35 | 4.37% | 2.40% |
| Derek Carr | 0.64 | 0.47 | 4.10% | 2.71% |
| Brian Hoyer | 0.57 | -0.03 | 3.70% | 0.00% |
| Carson Palmer | 0.54 | 0.25 | 3.62% | 1.58% |
| Mike Glennon | 0.48 | 0.00 | 3.35% | 0.00% |
| Drew Brees | 0.66 | 0.88 | 3.32% | 4.21% |
| Trevor Siemian | 0.40 | 0.41 | 2.92% | 2.97% |
| Philip Rivers | 0.45 | 0.22 | 2.77% | 1.35% |
| Eli Manning | 0.39 | -0.06 | 2.67% | 0.00% |
| Cody Kessler | 0.23 | 0.23 | 2.40% | 2.40% |
Tyrod Taylor has ranked just 27th in passing points per game in each of his two seasons as the starting quarterback in Buffalo, but that hasn’t stopped him from fantasy relevancy. Despite the lack of passing prowess, Taylor has ranked sixth and eighth of all quarterbacks in fantasy scoring per game as he’s been the best rushing quarterback over the past two years. Over that span, Taylor has nearly averaged an extra passing touchdown for fantasy per game as he’s averaged 39.6 yards per game on the ground while rushing for 1,148 yards combined. No quarterback has relied on rushing for more of his fantasy output than Taylor, with rushing accounting for nearly 35 percent of his total fantasy productivity. With all of that running, he has missed a game in each season due to injury, but has still been in the top half of quarterback scoring in 21 of 29 games as the starting quarterback. He is a tremendous value for cost even if you’re relying on him scoring in an unconventional fashion for his position.
Dak Prescott was ultra-reliable in fantasy as a rookie, scoring 17 or more points in 12 of 15 games (excluding Week 17 when he played just 15 snaps), which tied Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers for the league lead. On top of his unprecedented passing efficiency for a rookie, Prescott also added 64 fantasy points rushing, the third most in the league. It’s hard to envision Prescott rolling over all his tremendous rate stats through the air and the Dallas schedule is decidedly rougher on paper in 2017, but Prescott remains in a highly functional situation that can be aided by ability to score points with his legs.
We discussed Russell Wilson having a down year in the passing touchdown department and he also set career lows in rushing output, carrying 72 times for 259 yards. Wilson’s early season rushing production was hampered by an ankle injury sustained Week 1 and then a knee injury that forced him to exit in Week 3. Over the first seven games of the season, Wilson had rushed for only 44 yards as he was the QB24 over that span in fantasy. Once his health returned, so did his fantasy production. Over the final nine games of the season, Wilson was the QB3 in overall scoring, adding 215 yards rushing on the ground as he was a top-12 scorer in six of those final nine games. Entering this season healthy, Wilson should be back to competing for a top-5 fantasy season.
There was expected regression coming for Cam Newton in the passing game last season, but the bottom completely fell out all-around. Newton was beaten down all season long and the amount of hits that he took added up as he stopped rushing, the component that has consistently been there to insulate his fantasy floor. Newton posted career-lows in rushing attempts (90) and rushing yards (359) for the season and ran just 4.7 times per game over the final seven weeks for 98 yards total as he finished in the bottom half of quarterback scoring in five of those seven games. Newton has never been a player you drafted for a passing ceiling as he’s finished higher than 19th in passing points per game just twice in his career, so that rushing element to his game is vital. The Panthers have invested into getting him more passing targets near the line of scrimmage in Christian McCaffrey and Curtis Samuel to ease some of his burden on the offense as well. He also had offseason shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. Newton is one of the riskier picks because you’re counting on a bounce back to come from things beyond passing, but his ceiling is as good as anyone’s as his 15 games with 30 or more fantasy points since entering the league in 2011 are tied with Drew Brees for the most in the league.
An underrated component to Aaron Rodgers’ fantasy output is the icing he gives you on the ground. Therefore, he’s still the top fantasy option at the position even though Tom Brady is entering 2017 with perhaps the best offense he’s had on paper in a decade. Rodgers rushed 67 times for 369 yards in 2016, which were both career-highs. While the Packers run game is entering the season more stable than a year ago, Rodgers has averaged 48.5 fantasy points rushing per each of his full seasons as a starting quarterback.
A couple other undercover passers that are aided by their #Konami production are Blake Bortles and Andy Dalton. Bortles has been a top-10 fantasy scorer overall in each of the past two seasons and added 40 or more points from the ground in each of his three seasons in the league. Dalton’s 17 rushing touchdowns over the past five years are the second most in the league behind Newton’s 34 and he’s had three or more rushing scores in four of those seasons.
