All 2010 Fantasy Football Articles | 2010 Position Rankings

The quarterback position is important in fantasy football, just not as important as it is in real football. Unless you play in a league that requires two starting QBs, there is plenty of depth at the position which means you have plenty of options.

Strategy #1: Draft a stud.
This is the simplest way to approach the position. Sometime in the first three rounds, pick the best QB available. This year, it appears that there are seven QBs going in the first 36 picks: Aaron Rodgers (1.08), Drew Brees (1.09), Peyton Manning (2.04), Tom Brady (3.01), Tony Romo (3.09), Matt Schaub (3.11) and Philip Rivers (3.12). These guys have a few things in common: 1) they’re good, 2) they’re entrenched in good situations, and 3) they have good receivers to throw to.

One strategy is to set aside one of your first three picks for one these players. The upside is that you probably won’t have to worry about your QB position. You’ll run this guy out there every week and won’t have to make any decisions about whom to start. The downside is that you won’t be using one of your early round picks on another position, like RB and WR, that does not have as much depth as the QB position.

Strategy #2: Wait for value to emerge.
This approach doesn’t preclude taking a QB in the first few rounds, but it doesn’t mandate it either. You might wait until the late 2nd/early 3rd and see if Rodgers/Brees/Manning are still on the board. Or wait until the 4th or the 5th and see if one of the other four players are available. If it’s the latter, then you managed to get a 3rd round QB a round or two later, which allowed you to get a stud QB and use a 3rd round pick on that RB or WR you had your eye on.

The ‘wait for value’ approach could also stretch into the middle rounds as you wait for a well-priced QB. If that value never emerges, don’t fret, because you’re still well positioned for…

Strategy #3: Quarterback By Committee
I wrote a far more detailed post about this last week, but suffice to say, with the depth at the QB position, 2-3 middle- to late-round QBs with schedules that combine well (i.e. favorable matchups line up so there’s usually a good one every week) will form a QBBC that will perform at Top 5 levels at a fraction of the price.

My top recommendation this year is to grab Eli Manning (or Matt Ryan or Joe Flacco) in the 8th, and then Ben Roethlisberger in the 10th. For a three-man combo utilizing only late rounders, grab Big Ben in the 10th, Alex Smith in the 11th and David Garrard in the 12th.

The benefit to this strategy is that you won’t lose much at the QB spot and will be able to load up with tons of talent and depth at RB, WR and even TE in the early rounds. You’ll also have 2-3 capable signal callers on the roster to turn to if one gets injured. What do you do if Drew Brees goes down?

The downside? You can go into the season with a plan, but player and defensive performance may make picking a starter each week more of a chore than you’d like it to be. This is not necessarily the right strategy for an owner who wants a low-maintenance team.

Since I’ve already written extensively about the QBBC, and you don’t have to put much thought into picking a stud early in the draft, here are a few QBs that look like especially good values, even at their current average draft positions.

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Quick — name your top 10 QBs for next season.

Here’s my list:

1. Aaron Rodgers
2009′s QB1 should have another great season. He also can beat teams with his feet. (He led all QBs in rushing yards.) Jermichael Finley looks to be a future Pro Bowler at TE.

2. Drew Brees
The Saints’ offense shouldn’t change much, though they will have a first-place schedule, so the competition will be tougher.

3. Peyton Manning
Steady and dependable. The only downside to Manning is that there’s a chance he’ll sit during the fantasy playoffs.

4. Tom Brady
He threw for almost 4400 yards and 28 TD and the perception is that he had a down year.

5. Philip Rivers
The Chargers are turning into a passing team and Rivers has a number of weapons to throw to (plus great weather in San Diego, even in December).

6. Tony Romo
It appears that Romo has turned the corner. The emergence of Miles Austin has more than replaced Terrell Owens’ place in the Cowboy offense.

7. Ben Roethlisberger
The Steelers are more of a passing team now, and Big Ben is at the center of it all.

8. Matt Schaub
I’d have him higher, but I still think he’s an injury risk. This season, he threw for 4770 yards and 29 TD. Can he repeat? Having Andre Johnson certainly helps.

9. Eli Manning
The Giants threw the ball a lot this season, more than expected. But with Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham, the receiving corps is young and talented.

10. Donovan McNabb
McNabb is another guy that seems to get nicked up with regularity. He missed two games this season and 17 over the last five seasons. I’d rather go QBBC with the #11-#15 guys.

Honorable Mention: Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, Matt Ryan, Jay Cutler, Matt Cassel

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All 2009 Fantasy Articles | 2009 Position Rankings

Generally speaking, there are three schools of thought when drafting a quarterback. The first is to draft a stud in the first round or two and hope that he’s destined for a great year like the one Tom Brady had in 2007. The risk here is if this early pick doesn’t vastly outplay most of his peers, or if the owner isn’t able to unearth a good RB or WR in the middle rounds, the team is going to have trouble competing on a weekly basis.

The next theory is to go with running backs and/or wide receivers with the first two or three picks and then start looking for QB value in the next few rounds. This strategy could lead to an owner getting a player ranked in the top 5 in the third or fourth round, or a guy ranked 6-10 in the fifth or sixth round, or even later.

The final approach is to intentionally ignore the quarterback position in all of the early rounds, instead building up depth at running back and wide receiver (and maybe even tight end). Then in the eighth or ninth round, start to look at drafting a QB or three in the next few rounds with the hope of putting together a cohesive Quarterback By Committee (QBBC). (I recently posted a more detailed article that focuses solely on the QBBC.)

All of these strategies can work, but they each represent a different level of risk. For owners that always draft a QB early, they need that player to stay healthy and perform at a level commensurate with their draft position. The same goes for the owner who waits for value to emerge in rounds 3-6, though his QB has better odds of matching or outplaying his draft position. The owner that holds off until the middle rounds and then picks two or three guys that he expects to start throughout the season ultimately has quite a bit more room for error. If one player has a down year, the other (or other two) could very well pick up the slack.

Which strategy you choose may ultimately depend on your draft position. If there are five or six running backs you really like in the first round, but you have pick #12, you may elect to go with Drew Brees, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning instead of taking a RB leftover. Or if you have pick #4 and don’t deem any of those three worthy of your first rounder, but they’re all gone by 2.09, you’ll probably end up taking another RB or going with a WR.

The key is to look for value. That might mean waiting until Aaron Rodgers slips to you in the early 5th, or going with David Garrard and Jason Campbell in the late rounds as part of a QBBC, or even pulling the trigger on Peyton Manning in the early third, especially if there isn’t a RB or WR there that you like.

Below is a list of several guys that seem to represent good value at their current average draft positions (ADP). We’ll also provide rankings for the entire QB position, broken into tiers. Keep in mind that your scoring system will have a great impact on the value of the QB position.

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With the relative depth at the position, one approach to drafting a fantasy quarterback is to spend the first six or seven rounds drafting running backs, wide receivers and even a tight end. Then, in the eighth round or later, start to think about drafting a QB. Oftentimes, the players available in the 4th or 5th round won’t drastically outscore those QBs taken in the 8th or later.

Why is this? Well, one reason is that, once fantasy owners have a starting QB, they tend to draft for depth at running back and wide receiver instead of drafting a backup QB, whom they know probably won’t sniff their starting lineup, except as a bye week fill in.

Another reason is that most leagues require two starting running backs, which means 24 starting RBs in total (assuming a 12-team league). With more and more real NFL teams utilizing a RBBC, the position is much thinner than QB, which requires 12 fantasy starters of 32 real world starters.

Typically, this results in good depth at the QB position, where the expected production from QB10 isn’t all that different than QB20. This year the QB10 off the board is Matt Ryan (7.01) while the QB20 is Joe Flacco (11.02). To illustrate my point, in a “high performance� scoring system (4 pts per pass TD, 1 pt per 20 yards passing), Footballguys projects Ryan to score 255 fantasy points and Flacco to score 235. Are those 20 fantasy points worth burning a 7th round pick instead of an 11th? Over a 17-game schedule, that works out to less than 1.2 fantasy points per week.

In other words, it’s probably not going to cost you too many wins to go with Flacco instead of Ryan. In fact, you’ll probably be better off because the WR or RB you draft in the 7th round (Santana Moss?) is likely to vastly outperform his 11th-round counterpart (Michael Jenkins?). Footballguys projects Moss to outscore Jenkins by 75 points, a 4.4-point per week advantage. So by going with a Moss/Flacco combo instead of a Ryan/Jenkins combo, you’re gaining a net of 3.2 points per week.

Going one step further: why not draft two middle- to late-round quarterbacks whose schedules mesh well together to create a Quarterback By Committee (QBBC)? That way, you can load up on RB, WR and TE talent in the first seven or eight rounds knowing that you’ll still be able to get good QB play from a couple of later picks by taking advantage of the ebbs and flows of each player’s schedule.

To that end, I took the QB strength of schedule data from Footballguys and calculated the per week projections (by using the aforementioned Footballguys projected stats) for every starting quarterback in the league.

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It seems like there are a number of middle- to late-round young QBs that are thriving this year in fantasy football. Here are eight guys that are 26 years-old or younger and are all in the top 20 in total fantasy points scored in 2008. This list doesn’t even include other sub-30 guys like Eli Manning (27), Matt Schaub (27), Tony Romo (28), Drew Brees (29) and J.T. O’Sullivan (29), who are also tearing it up.

Most of these players were available in the 7th round or later in a typical fantasy draft, and one probably wasn’t drafted at all. I listed their current ranking in parenthesis next to their name and calculated what kind of numbers they’re currently on pace to finish with. Fantasy points are calculated using Antsports’ High Performance Scoring System.

Without further ado, here’s the list (in order of current fantasy ranking)…

(Note: For the “on pace” stats, “29/11″ represents 29 TD and 11 INT)

1. Aaron Rodgers (QB2)
Age: 24
On pace for: 3952 pass yards, 29/11, 280 rush yards, 8 rush TD, 23.7 FPPG
Rodgers has stepped into a very tough situation and has performed beyond even the most optimistic of expectations. Sure, the Packers are only 3-3, but Rodgers isn’t directly responsible for any of the team’s losses. He is confident in the pocket and has a strong and accurate arm. Moreover, he has a nice set of wheels to create more time to throw or to take off and try to get a first down himself. Most of us thought he’d have to take over for Brett Favre after #4 hung ‘em up (for good), and even that would have been a tough situation. But to deal with all that went on this summer and still perform so admirably once the season started – that’s truly impressive. Looking ahead, he has the Colts, Titans, Vikings and Bears, so the upcoming schedule is not easy. His schedule gets quite a bit tougher going forward, so it’s going to be interesting to see if he can carry his good start through the entire season.