The TRUTH About Fantasy QBs: Part 2 + Dynasty Mailbag - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/20

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Hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit. Now we actually get to talk about some interesting names. A couple of guys here. Let's start with Lamar Jackson, who the only reason he is here at quarterback 15 is because he missed the end of the season, missed a week to COVID. So you have five games that he was absent from.

He was still not, Mike, you brought it up earlier. It was not the Lamar that you hoped. Tied for seventh in points per game. Now granted that contains a game of 1.2 points because he got hurt at the beginning. 12th inconsistency. Right. And that is not what you want from a mobile quarterback like Lamar Jackson. One of the beautiful things about the people who have the crazy rushing baseline at quarterback.

is that you get hyper consistency, as seen from Jalen Hertz. So it was pretty disappointing in that way from Lamar Jackson, but he still had, he still had his good games, you know, three games as the quarterback two or better on the week. So let's put this in a broader context because yesterday we talked about Josh Allen. He repeated at number one. So you finally saw a quarterback do that in fantasy. Lamar.

had a disappointing year last year, a strong finish, but a disappointing year overall relative to his MVP season. You look at the game logs this year, kind of seem more like last year, right, than it did the MVP season. So when you paint the picture, now you've got four seasons of Lamar, you had the surge to the MVP level, and then you've had some ups and downs. Nothing to be, you know, still a top-tier guy. Yes. But...

Also, some reason to maybe have some hesitation about the offense. And it's easy to look at the running back and say, okay, well, if they had some running backs here, they figured out. Well, you know, Matthew Stafford had Sony Michelle and injured Daryl Henderson and figured some things out. And, you know, Lamar had injuries and a lot going on, but didn't get it done to the degree that I think fantasy players would have been happy with. So where do you look at his ADP moving forward? Are you taking your shot on a, like you guys painted a picture?

of glory for Joe Burrow on Tuesday and the weapons, right, and the pass reliance, right? Are you turning that direction? You know, it's going to be a little bit about, you know, the cost is, is it a round cheaper to get Joe Burrow or is it around cheaper to get Lamar Jackson? It'll be a round cheaper to get Joe Burrow. It'll be two rounds cheaper. Then I would lean the Joe Burrow route. If you look at, so the beginning of the year,

The first seven games, that was before their buy week. I talked about this earlier. Lamar Jackson was on pace for 4,700 passing yards. That's awesome. And you think, oh, okay, well, that came at the expense of the rushing yards. Not true. He was on pace for 1,100 rushing yards as well. But yet during that stretch, during that stretch, he had four of the seven games where he wasn't a quarterback won. And so you go, well, how does that make sense if he's putting up all this yardage? And the reality is he came back.

to normal touchdown rates. Not bad touchdown rates. League average touchdown rates. A little bit under the average. What was he? 4.4 this year? He was at 4.2 on the season. Okay. So, I mean, isn't the league average usually right around 4-4. Yeah. Well, that's what he was during that seven-game stretch that I'm talking about. Okay. The beginning of the year where I think is, you know, before all the injuries happened before COVID and all that nonsense at the end of the year, that's kind of how I'm looking at him, which is.

He was very good at passing. He was still mobile. He still had a couple good games. But if he throws a league average touchdown on 4.4% of his attempts, I think you're going to have a guy who is about the quarterback 10, quarterback 12, rather than his MVP season when he threw, well, it wasn't it outrageous? Wasn't it like 9%? Yeah, his second year that was 9%. The question for me for Baltimore is, like, because.

Because they did. They threw the ball a lot. He threw the ball 382 times in essentially 11 games, where in all of 2020, he threw the ball 376 times in 15 games. Is that transformation? Was that necessity because the defense was so bad? Or was that...

them really making the change of saying, no, we, we aren't just this run, run, run, run, run team, and then we'll throw a touchdown and you're here or there to Mark Andrews. Have they become more balanced? Because I think there will still be a run-heavy team, but will the balance sometimes skew to pass heavy in neutral scripts? I mean, it's a good question. Yeah, it's a good question, and it's one that we've reflected on with Kansas City in the past.

with the past attempts and the past, you know, you wanted DAC last year. You wanted the DAC with the... You mean Dallas? You said Kansas City. No, I know, but I was talking about Kansas City because they improved their defense. Right, right. It came at the expense of passing volume for Patrick Mahomes. And then I failed to transition properly to talking about DAC last year before their defense was resurgent.

Obviously, he got injured. But you loved it when they were giving up a million points. And then that meant the passing volume. I mean, remember Dax's like projection on the first two days of the year? It's like 5,700 yards and 400 touchdowns because those things are corollary. And if you play better defense and you have a good running game, you win the Baltimore way. And so I don't know that this defense will be this bad again. They had more injuries on that secondary than it was imaginable. Yes.

And then you've got three running backs coming back off of ACLs. So the nice thing with Amar to paint a good picture is that you know what the peak is. The peak is he wins the week. The peak is he can finish the MVP of the league. The peak is that he can do what Josh Allen does and have a really bad passing game every once in a while and still finish number three on the week because he ran in some touchdowns. Or, you know, he's having a bad day and has one drive where he has 65 rushing yards. Oh, man. I'm looking at this game log and I'm remembering because you, you, you, you,

You just hit the nail on the head, Andy. Lamar is someone who can win you a week. Just completely takeover a week. And I look, and he finished quarterback one in week nine, 36.6 points. That's great. But then in week five, he finished as the quarterback two. He was not the quarterback one, and he put up 49.9 fantasy points. That is, how sad is that? Like, you have that kind of a week, like, no.

Sorry, you're not the quarterback one this week. But he can absolutely win you a week. I think he's someone that I would take a stab at if he falls in drafts. But I don't believe that he ever gets back to the MVP season of some ridiculous 9% touchdown rate. And I do think the transition to him throwing more is real because it matches the transactions the team has made to try to get him weapons and allow them to.

allow him to be more efficient from the park. When do you start factoring in the practice field conditions on drafting Lamar Jackson? Oh, man. If you factor that in, you have to drop them several rounds because the amount of hay that they practice on is ridiculous. Get it together, man. Yeah, it's not good. I mean, in the injury, the first time we've really dealt with this with Lamar to this degree, but it's always something in the back of your mind with a quarterback that exposes himself to so much, you know.

Damage. Let's talk about another interesting quarterback. Russell? Russell? Wilson. We already know Pete Carroll's coming back. I don't know if that's a good thing for keeping Russ. He says he's going to explore his options. Here's your options, Russ. Go somewhere you don't like or stay here with Tyler Lockett and D.K. Metcalfe. He can explore his options. Russell's not going anywhere. His options are he's under contract. Well, that doesn't matter very much.

If you're the quarterback and you want to make things uncomfortable, the team will, I mean, you almost saw it last year. He almost forced his way out of that. Almost. And so he's got a full no trade clause. He chooses where he wants to go. And so this is just the quote coming out about him exploring his options and not wanting to be there, potentially. Yeah. I think he should want to be there. That's my point is I think he should want to be with D.K. McHaff and Tyler Lockett and a system that you can help define.

Yeah, I agree. And I think he will be there next year. I know that every fan base out there that does not have a great quarterback is hopeful that maybe he will get traded your way, but I doubt that happens. And I've said this on the show in the past. Russell Wilson, to me, is a target.

in dynasty leagues because this was a really bad year. He's 33. And so I think a lot of fantasy managers might be trying to capitalize and get out because I think it's the beginning of the end. That is not my opinion. My opinion is that what happened this year was really because of the broken hand. You know, you saw just some terrible play.

coming back off that injury. That first month back, I know he had one game where he kind of garbage times some touchdowns that the fantasy finish was okay, but he was terrible in that game. It took a long time. And then at the end of the year, you saw it. It looked like Russ was back. And I think going into next year, I would, Russell Wilson will probably be on several of my fantasy rosters because I think he'll, he'll, he's going to tumble his way down.

A QB 16 finish is not indicative of Russ's career in any way, shape, or form. The one thing about him is he was inconsistent, but always inside the top 10 and had been in the top 10 since 2013. So you're talking about, you know, eight full seasons prior to this one being a top 10 quarterback by fantasy finish. You know, I think his best days could be behind him. I do believe that that's possible because I think that's a tough division to compete in. You know, it's just going to be difficult for them.

You know, is Pete Carroll there one more year, two more years? You know, I guess it just depends. But I don't mind that as a target, and he's got some good football left, much better than what you saw most of the year. He's 33. 14% great games, 43% good. Yeah, I... Much better against bad teams, predictably better. 24 points of game against bad teams, only 15 against good ones. Yeah, when you look at the sample this year, it's really hard to take those splits.

Seriously, because were the good teams when he was playing with the broken hand or the bad teams during that time? I wish that we saw a little bit more rushing out of them this year. That's the only Russian Wilson. That's the only thing that worries me going forward. But you've kind of seen this. You're not going to see more of it. No. It's a 34 year. Exactly. You're not. But we've seen that transition made successfully. Aaron Rogers used to actually run for.

a good amount of yards. You don't almost remember it anymore because now he just uses it to scramble by some time and then use his arm. I think we could see Russ make one of those type of transitions at 34. Let me ask one more Russ question before we summarize some of these later guys. When you draft him next year, are you drafting him to start them every week? Are you drafting them as a, you know, a quarterback that you're going to need to stream with? I am drafting him to start every week and I'm quick to pull the rip cord if I'm wrong. Okay.