QB Rankings Part 2 + The Fantasy Forgotten

And that's what it all comes down to. It's just the volume. How many times is Wilson going to throw the ball? Can Seattle be as dominating? And they could go up. Because I don't think their defense is very good. That's fair. And I'm putting my faith in Pete Carroll and the Seahawks to make sure that the defense is up to snuff. And it's just the regression that's going to hit him, the passing volume. If you give him, so last year.

His outrageous 8.2% of his attempts were touchdowns. Give him 6%. That's a fantastic season, but that's just the 2% drop I talked about. His touchdowns dropped to 26. He is a quarterback. You were only thinking about streaming and would have finished that quarterback 16, even with a very high touchdown percentage, just not an outstanding 8% unsustainable one. So my argument on the flip side for Russell Wilson is,

very much based on the man and the situation he finds himself in, which is, you know, look, if the touchdowns regress, the rushing yardage will go up. If the passing attempts go up. See, I disagree with that. My point is this, on a 16-game basis, right, as the Seattle Seahawks play football in the NFL, he will do.

whatever it takes to have his team in it and win it. It doesn't matter to him whether he's throwing or running or how it's happening. But all we know is that right now he's had a seven-year career where he's done that every single year of his career. When he wasn't throwing it a lot in his rookie year, he was getting it done on the ground. I mean, the Seattle Seahawks are going to be good because of Russell Wilson.

He's literally never finished outside of the top 12. Three of the last five years have been a top five quarterback, and I get it. They want to run the ball. It's not the best, like early in the off season. I said, what was the player I wish was on a different team? So, Russ. One of the reasons that I have a problem with your ranking with Russell Wilson, Mike, and Jason's ranking with Matt Ryan, is I believe you're both ranking him at his worst case scenario.

You just brought up projecting Wilson last year over that span as would have ended up as the quarterback 16. That's where you ranked him. Jason, you ranked Matt Ryan at 14, said it's all about touchdowns. To me, when you look at that ping pong ball, the more appropriate ranking for Matt Ryan is the middle ground of that touchdown. I think you ranked him worst case scenario. I think you both took the worst case scenario approach for Wilson and Ryan.

16 would be a career low by six spots in fantasy. So I could get myself there. Even though I buy the regression, I also buy the positive regression. He could rush for three touchdowns again. He could pass to the running backs more. Rashad Penny's breaking out. So the opportunity is there. I just think the offense will move and be an okay offense, but I don't like ranking him at the basement. Sure. I'm just, I don't buy into Russell.

outperforming his ADP by any stretch. We should bring that up. He's a QB12 right now. Right. That's what I was going to say. The nice thing is for the first time and forever, he is actually someone that I'm willing to draft. I assumed that after this whole argument, we were going to say, it doesn't matter. You're not going to draft him anyways. He's in the sixth round. But he's basically almost in the 10th round on average. The 910 is where he's at. I'd be willing to take him there. So here's a counterpoint against Russell Wilson.

even though you and I haven't ranked at 7, Jay. Does Russell Wilson offer you what you actually want in a quarterback, which is the ability to be a top three guy if things go right? And that's probably not in the range of outcomes for Russell Wilson. If I draft the quarterback late, I want at least a shot at having the best guy, or, you know, Carson wins, I think has the potential of being a top three guy. Jared Goff, could he be a top three guy? I don't know because of the attempts of Russell Wilson could do that.

Sure. I do think you're limited on being a top three quarterback on the season. But, I mean, not in a per game basis. From week eight through 17 last year, which is still the majority of the season, during that stretch, Russell Wilson was the quarterback four. Sure. And I haven't even brought up. Doug Baldwin is gone. And yes, I know the jokes about Doug Baldwin last year, but Baldwin did play the majority of games. Right now, the.

the established pass catchers for Russell Wilson is Tyler Lockett. Like, he's always had to at least two go-to targets. I'm not, someone can step up into that role. But as of right now today, who's, who's the second best pass catcher? DK, DK, uh, big caps. Yeah. Is it Metcalf? I don't know. Is it, is it? Rashad Penny, Geron Brown. I'm talking wide receiver. Sure, sure. Yeah. Um,

No, if you want to see the remainder of the Russell Wilson debate, you can go to the hotel lobby at 16. The pay-per-view event will be. Never stop. Number 12, James Winston. I am at 14. Jason at 11. Mike at 12. He's being drafted as the quarterback 13. The majority of fantasy football prognosticators, they see the...

potential and upside of Winston because we've seen it many times in small samples. However, since 2015, he's finished 13th, 16th, 22nd, and 22nd because he's either not on the field or he's very inconsistent. You get games like week 15 or week 8 last year where he's single digits. I love Bruce Ariens. I love what Bruce Ariens has done to fantasy quarterbacks throughout his career. At a minimum, the average depth of target for every quarterback he's touched,

Big Ben, Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer, who, by the way, would have won the MVP award if he had torn his ACL under Ariens. It goes up. So Bruce will be saying to James, throw that ball. And James will oblige. The rest is up to James. Yeah, he is very tough because every single year we come into the draft season.

And you pull the Jean-Claude Van Dam, as we call it, and you look at those splits. And there's always an incredible patch of fantasy production for James. Last year, once he got his job back, and yes, he had to get his job back. Week 11, he had to get his job back from Ryan Fitzpatrick as well. Week 11, after that he was averaging 260 yards and two touchdowns a game.

He was the quarterback 10 in points per game. And on top of that, he had a 13 to 4 touchdown to interception ratio, which is very, very non-Jamus is not a huge sample size for us to go off of. But the breakout potential for James Winston, it can't.

be ignored. Look, if you just combine James Winston and Ryan Fitzpatrick last year and just say the Tampa Bay quarterbacks, they would have been a top five quarterback last year. Maybe James needs a beard. And Fitzpatrick isn't there. There's no competition. This is Winston's job. And even when he tries to lose it, which will happen a couple games, he's not going to be able to lose it because there's nobody behind him that can step up. I think the offense is going to be good. And my hope.

So early in the offseason, I was extremely bullish on Winston because I see a world where he can really step up and be a top five fantasy quarterback this year. I worry because in reality, we've just seen so many boneheaded plays, so many things that, you know, you just go, oh, why does he do these things that just cost him throwing picks while he's getting sacked? Just let me 500!

It just tosses it up. And you don't see that from any good quarterback. But the one thing that really does give me a little bit of hope that with Arians and, you know, as he matures, that he could become a more reliable NFL quarterback is his age. Like I know he's been in the league a long time and we said, well, we've seen him. But he's, he's still 25. For a quarterback, that is so young. Baker Mayfield is 24.

Right, like he's a year older than Baker, so he's still a young guy that is improving and hopefully maturing. And so, you know, with the weapons of Mike Evans and O.J. Howard and I think the weapons are thin. I think you get one injury and you got a problem on that team. While the show's been going on, Godwin pulled up with a hamstring injury in camp. He made it. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Let me exhale.

He made it back out on the field later on in practice. There you go. And then he left again, Jason. Fantasy football Twitter could not handle Chris Godwin missing time. But tell me how you feel about a team that lost, I mean, Adam Humphreys, say whatever you want about him, massive target share last year in Tampa. O.J. Howard hasn't stayed healthy. If Chris Godwin goes down, all of a sudden you're looking at the offense.

through a different lens of leaning on Justin Watson and Breschad Perryman, and players that enter into Arian system, they do struggle, especially with interceptions to begin their career. Palmer was not a good quarterback under Arian's in his first handful of games, pretty much the first full season through a ton of interceptions. I don't think it's going to happen for him this year. You guys have them ranked a little bit higher, but I think that makes the case for him. You're welcome to...

Yeah, I mean, the counterpoint would just be that, you know, if injuries happen to any team, it's going, if T.Y. Hilton goes down and Andrew Luck is out there, it's going, it's going to hurt. And I think that it could be addition by subtraction. If you're telling me that more targets go to O.J. Howard, Chris Godwin and Mike Evans versus going to Adam Humphreys or long bomb shots that he can't connect with on D Jax. I think that, you know, obviously if Mike Evans goes down, it's going to hurt.

James. Right. But that's true of any quarterback. It just feels a little thinner there because Perryman and Watson having established themselves and you just lost D. Jackson Humphreys. You didn't add, right? Sure. Yeah. No. Kyler Murray at 13. Mike is the most bullish on Kyler. He's got him at 10. Jason at 16. I'm at 13. State your case for Kyler Murray, Mike. Rushing. Running, running the ball.

I talked about Kyler Murray on a breakout show earlier in the off season, but I took a look at quarterbacks who were drafted very high, which implies that a team was bad the year before because they had that early round pick. But quarterbacks that rush, like Cam Newton, Robert Griffin, Vince Young, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, they produce for fantasy on bad teams because of the way that the scoring works.

And Kyla Murray is one of those guys. He's coming into the NFL. His rookie year, his last year, he put up over 1,000 rushing yards in college, and he matched that with over 4,300 passing yards. Carlo Murray is, he is an elite college quarterback. That production is absolutely ridiculous. And you pair him with a college-friendly offense with Cliff Kingsbury.

And I think that it's, as long as Kyle Murray is on the field, he's going to be running. And he can succeed in the passing game as well. But the why he won't bust to me is because of the running.

And he will be running. And he will be running. We saw it in the preseason already. He didn't go downfield. He didn't, you know, run the way he's going to run in the real season. But you saw there's times where the offensive line is a sieve, lets people through. And unlike a Josh Rosen that can't get out of the pocket or make a play, Kyler turns on those little burners. And he's out of the pocket and on the run. So I do think there's enough history of.

Highly drafted top 10 NFL draft picks that can rush on bad teams. And they don't even have to be good at throwing the ball who are great fantasy options. We combine it with the pace of play. And his accuracy that, you know, has been raved about so far in the preseason, the training camp, OTAs. Yeah, I mean, I've got Kyler at 16 right now. He is still a rookie. You know, I've got him down for 24 passing touchdowns, which isn't fantasy gold. But I just.

I still feel like it's too low. You know, you saw Russell and Dak and these guys that kind of have this dual threat ability. They came out as the rookies and they were top 12 quarterbacks. You're paying too much for Kyler Murray right now. That is true. I mean, so we took him in our jujued Smith-Schuster Live celebrity draft because we wanted a share of Kyla Murray. And we took him in the 11th or 12th round. Yeah, we got him. We got him below 80. But he's being drafted in the eighth round now, guys.