The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy QBs + Most Surprising Teams - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/18

bad year for consistency for quarterbacks. That was the most shocking, telling truth to me at the whole quarterback position, which is why we lead off with Josh Allen. Yeah, he makes it easy to have that discussion. I mean, he finished it number one. He was number one in the first half, number one in the second half. He's been number one three or four years in the one year he wasn't. He was number two. And so from a consistency standpoint, Josh Allen is. The truth. I mean... His splits are great. Like, if he's facing... Home road. Top 16, bottom 16. No, he's still giving you, you know, an average of about 26 points per game. Home road. He's not a Jared Gough where you were like, oh, oh, road game. Can't start Josh Allen. Stefan Diggs has a great game. So do Josh Jones. Spon Diggs has a terrible game. That's all right. Josh Allen was great. I was going to bring that up because I think without the kind of like back half of the year where Diggs struggled, if Diggs were to...

depart in this offseason and you hadn't seen that, you would doubt. Sure. Yeah. But now I think you can have enough confidence to say that like Josh Allen is going to go as the quarterback one next year. 76% of the time it was a good game by our consistency metrics. 24% of the time it was a great game. Only 18% were bus games. And yeah, he was the, you know, kind of the pinnacle of consistency at the quarterback position despite a year where, look, he's still playing now. But I think a lot of people didn't expect that to be the case and they struggled.

you know, stealing the division at the very last hour. So, you know, I mean, whenever you have an offensive coordinator fired midseason, you don't expect that it was a great offensive output. But Josh Allen, the truth about the quarterbacks here is that these mobile rushing quarterbacks, if they play the whole season, are so valuable. Why? Because Josh Allen had 15 rushing touchdowns. And that is a baseline. that is unfair to other guys. CJ Stroud was awesome this year, but you can't compete with these mobile quarterbacks that, and I don't think Josh Allen gets enough credit for the tush push. They do that. They do a single back tush push with Josh Allen. And so they, they did that a lot. So one, like a one cheek? Yeah, just a one cheek push to the left. It's just what I couldn't find the rhyme. One cheek squeak? No, no, no.

We're closer. We're warmer, warmer. Workshop it, but like keep it to your shell. All right. But like, workshop it quick and come back. I'll be back. Yeah, like 10 minutes. Josh Allen, 15 touchdowns. Jalen hurts 15 touchdowns on the ground, both of them. So, yeah, you mentioned it. Both teams had struggles offensively at different times during the year. But these are your best two quarterbacks. And could have been even better. It was actually his lowest passing yards per game since 2019. right around 253 yards per game. But he was number one in air yards, number one in 20 plus yard attempts. So had some of those attempts hit more often, then it could have been even better. At this point in January, it feels really easy to say Alan will be locked in as the number one guy. Where he goes in the drafts, whether you're willing to make the pick. Because with all this information,

We could end up with Josh Allen just going like second round, back of the second round, early third round. So that'll be a discussion for another day. The Holmes went in the second round. Yeah. So Alan probably goes in the second. You asked me at the top of the show, like what did I learn that changed how I look going forward? And it's that Josh Allen is worth it. He was worth it two years in a row. And so eventually he'll. You know, these mobile quarterbacks, we saw it with Cam Newton, these big-body mobile quarterbacks, they will fall off earlier. They're not going to play until 40 doing the same running style. But it hasn't happened yet, and I'm going to be fine taking Josh Allen next year. I hated that narrative in the off-season. I was opposed to it from the first mention, the idea that Josh Allen, that he would run less. It just didn't make any sense to. I understand the eventuality, but I thought that that was something that had no chance of happening. You know, Jalen Hertz.

Josh Allen, they are two of six picks that I looked at in the top 30 in fantasy as home runs. Yeah. There were only six players that were home runs. They were 100% worth the pick and delivered huge, and two of them were quarterbacks. So it does say something. It also, in the something that will, you know, cloud how you think about things is the second round this past year was a disaster. It was real bad. So. When you have, which it's just a one year sample. But when you're coming off of a second round, everyone was terrible. Josh Allen continues to be great. You're saying it might drive the cost up? Well, I'm saying it's going to be difficult for it. I don't want to draft a quarterback in the second round. But remembering how bad each draft went in the second. And you're like, oh, Josh Allen.

That feels pretty locked in. Sometimes when you're, when you just get a safe superhero, it, it feels good. And speaking of, you know, the superhero body he has, what about one cheek physique? Does that work? Is that better? But physique does not imply he's getting pushed. Yeah. From the back. Yeah. He has. One cheek peek aboo on the other side. He's, huh? Did we get there? Yeah, we got there. We got there. The one cheek peekaboo. Got it. You know, um, we can't all be winners. We can figure it out. I just need some more names for a singular butt cheek. I'm drawing glute one glute scoot. Oh! Yes. Yes, sir. Sometimes it's just important that I'm quiet and let creativity. Right. Yeah, let it happen. Yeah. This is why you're listening. The one glute scoot. One glute scoot. Josh Allen. They don't really push them on one butt cheek, do they?

Yeah, they really do. He's stronger on one side. He only needs help on one. He usually goes to the left and he usually only has one back in there pushing. I mean, I guess maybe. The glute scoot. I got to go one. I got to zoom in and watch. I don't know about that. Jalen Hertz is more of a discussion just because like Mike said. I mean, if it comes out, the injury, maybe you wash away some of the struggle towards the end of the year. To be honest. The only thing that will really cast a shadow onto Jalen Hertz next year would be a fundamental change to his weapons or they changed the rule. Like if you, if you, like Josh Allen just had a 52-yard run in this playoff game. Jalen Hertz, do we have the number, Kyle, on how many of the 15 touchdowns came from the one-yard line?

because he had 23 passing touchdowns this year and 15 interceptions, which, by the way, was the exact line that Dak Prescott got criticized for last year. So let's just be fair about that. So just a quick look, I'm seeing four touchdowns from inside the five for rushing. What? Per game? I'm on pass. Per game? That's not right. 13. Yeah, 13 to 15. So. Jaylenert's longest run this season was 24 yards. Yeah, and he dealt with some injury, knee injury for a big part of the year that could have affected. I think he's around 600-something yards on the ground. The hand was a problem in the playoff game. So the big point is that he didn't end strong. Right. And so that will, I think, impact the way people view Jalen Hertz going into fantasy drafts. Is he guaranteed to be your number two off the board?

Yeah, for me, he's guaranteed to be my number two off the board. I think he might end up being a better value than Josh Allen. Those two guys, I'm fully fine with investing highly next year. They're rushing touchdown baseline, and his weapons, I do think he was really, really, really banged up this year. For the most part, he was great. I mean, he's the number two quarterback, the number two in our consistency metric. He tailed off a little bit at the end and obviously in the playoffs. It was terrible. Yeah, the end of year number is passing were a struggle, you know, 3,800 yards. 63% of the time, good games, 19% great, 13% bust. I want to give those numbers for each player so you have a lay of the land. And one of the reasons why Mike says, oh, I don't want to draft a quarterback in the second round, but I might. I think by the end of this show, you might. I think that's just, that's the story, is that those two guys were very consistent, but let's go to number three. I was just a real quick.

in case people are thinking it, looking at A.J. Brown's contract, it seems just impossible that they can actually move on from A.J. Brown. Not that they want to, but just saying A.J. Brown with his whole, you know, social media temper tantrum that's going to. All those offensive weapons are back. Yeah. Yeah. Lamar Jackson, number three, number four in consistency, late third round draft pick. Was the number six quarterback in the first half of the year, number two in the second half of the year, had two number one overall finishes in weeks 14 and 17. Jalen Hertz, how many number one finishes did he have on the year? No on any individual week. Jalen Hertz? Correct. You're saying number one quarterback of the week? Yeah. Probably none. None. None. Yeah. Allen had two and then Lamar Jackson had two. You know, his year, 38% of the time he busted.

So this is the Lamar Jackson story that we're used to now. Since the MVP season, you can always start him and win your week because of him. There aren't a lot of quarterbacks where that is true. But you can also start him and get 18 for 27 for 157 yards in a touchdown. That's a thing. Like for Lamar Jackson occasionally, the Gus bus fell into the end zone three times. The defense stepped up. You had a really bad run from weeks 8 through 12 where he was quarterback 28, 18, 16, 4 and 14. I believe that's the same stretch where the Gus bus had 28,000 rushing touchdowns. So that, I mean, that was part of this storyline this year. I know we got to the point where Lamar Jackson became a start sick question because other players were on fire, you know, whether it was DAC who was on fire.

some of these other quarterbacks, Brock Purdy, those started to become discussions part way through the year. But ultimately, he ends up at number three. And part of the reason he ends up at number three, number four in our truth metric is, you know, his bust rate at 38%. That feels really high for a top tier quarterback. But as we're going through only the top 10 finishing quarterbacks, there's not another one. who didn't bust greater than 30% of the time. Like everyone this year busted a lot. And that's what was so gross and surprising to me. The only two guys that didn't that had a sub like 20% bust rate, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts. That's it. And Joe Flacco. Joe Flacco was 100%. Yeah. Lamar was better at home considerably. About five points per game better at home. Something to maybe keep in the back of your mind. That was something that used to factor into.

You know, Jared Goff, Big Ben, yeah. Mark Andrews missed time this year, and he pieced it together with, you know. That was his best run. A banged up Rashad Bateman, Isaiah likely, say flowers, parts of OBJ that still work. So ultimately, we know Lamar's an MVP caliber talent. I mean, we know that about Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes is, that statement is still true of Mahomes of, you know. He's a player that if you started him on a given a week, he could win you your week. He's capable of it. But this year, kind of put to bed some of the red flags. He had the most starts of his career. He didn't get hurt. He had his highest completion percentage of his career, 67%. His highest yards per attempt of his career with the new offensive coordinator. And so even though the first game of the year threw a lot of doubt into whether Lamar was going to help your fantasy team, you know, the next five weeks kind of erased that. Yep.

Number four, fantasy quarterback this year, Dak Prescott, ended up tied for eighth in consistency. It was a tale of two halves for Dak, the 15th quarterback in the first half, the sixth ranked quarterback in the second half of the year. Part of that story that made it so wonderful is he hit waiver wires. Oh, yeah. I mean, he was... After week five, he was on most of them. He was terrible through the first five weeks. And then I know there was a story about... CD Lamb going to, I think it was at the by week, going to McCarthy and basically demanding like the ball more. And it was like, yeah, guess what? That works. Throw it to your best wide receiver because those first five weeks were so, so bad for Dak. Dak is like the fantasy MVP this year for fantasy football. And he's tied for eighth only because those first five weeks. Yeah, he would have been significantly higher. And, you know, from week six on, in fantasy points per game, he was quarterback one.

Mike gave him a pep talk. He came on the show. Mike said, go get him. I said, stop embarrassing me, Dak. And he went from 22012 passing yards per game to 287 a game. Went from a touchdown a touchdown, over two and a half. And his quarterback rating, his 17-game pace from week six on, 4,894 passing yards, 44 touchdown. That's what we're talking about, McCarthy. And this is on a team that has had a, I mean, I know this last game and didn't look like it, but their defense is pretty good. but they still got into these shootout opportunities. Pollard could not. He was allergic to the end zone. So, you know, DAC was one of the biggest stories in fantasy this season. Yeah, so now the question is, can you trust him going forward to air it out like this? What's his schedule? Nice. 29% great games, 47% good, 29% bust. You know, the question for next year, I think DAC will be looked at like a value.

a value opportunity in drafts. I feel like people are going to really potentially fall in the overhype. You think they'll say thank you with an early pick? Yeah, I do. Because it was so, so good. If you take out those first five weeks from week six on, our truth metric, he would have been the number two right behind Josh Allen. We'll see. There are quarterbacks that have played enough years. Like Big Ben did this a few times, and people just threw them right back in the 12th round. I don't know why. But I will say this, Mike, you called the second half sleeper of Dak Prescott. Part of why you called that was because of the schedule. Yes. The schedule was very bad for running backs the rest of the way, very good for quarterbacks, very good for wide receivers the rest of the way. And he dominated during that time. So I'm not convinced that he's just going to be great week and week out the way that he was during that stretch that mattered for fantasy. Yeah, I agree. And he'll be.

You know, if they have the same head coach, does that change? Because that's a play caller. So that'll make a big difference in how we view the season. Number five, Jordan Love. Crazy. Undrafted Jordan Love. His consistency rank was tied with DAC at eight. First half, he was the quarterback 14, second half quarterback seven. There's a lot of similarities between his and DAC's season. I think people probably got on the I'm willing to start DAC train a lot sooner than Love, but the results were very similar. 12% great game, so he didn't have a lot of those weak winning performances. But 47% good, 24% busts. I mean, it's crazy we're talking about him. It's crazy. But from week 10 on, so almost the entire second half of the year, you had Dak Prescott as the quarterback one, Josh Allen is the quarterback two, and then it was Jordan Love. I mean, he was super good. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

I think Al's probably pretty happy about that. Yeah, he is. Oh, he's got such a stupid smile. Yeah, he's got a little grin on his face over there. I love being right. You just look stupid. You had no choice. I've got the receipts of me coming to, standing up for him and you guys all giving me a hard time. That's true. You also picked them to beat the Cowboys, which is so impressive if it wasn't for the fact that you will pick them to beat. I assume you were picking them to beat the Niners. I have the Niners taking it in my pool.

Yeah. He likes money more than fandom. Rather win the pool? Wow, that's a betrayal. Wow. No, no, not a real Packers fan, huh? It's just a bracket, not a pool. I'm sorry. Oh, there's no money on the line. There's no money on the line. Interesting. And I would prefer the Packers to win, but I did take the Niners. So if we make a bet right now, like a $50 bet, you'll take the Niners and I'll take the Packers? Yeah. Oh, because he'll be happy anyways. Yeah. He'll pay $50 for a win. That's the happiness edge. Never mind. It's too late. No takes he backs. I guess I just wanted it on record. He bet against his team. I think what it's exciting about Jordan Love. And it is the opposite for the wide receivers is how many good wide receivers are here now. I talked about it when I think, oh, this was on the dynasty episode this week. We talked a lot about Jaden Reed and his splits with and without Christian Watson. And I think that it's going to be difficult next year. Like Jaden Reed was very, very good. But if you look when he was good and his splits.

with and without Christian Watson, they were dramatic. You're talking about an irrelevant player versus a super relevant player. If you've got a healthy way- Are you talking about Jane Reed? Yeah. That doesn't bother me one bit. Sure, but my point is when you've got Christian Watson, if he's healthy and active, and Jaden Reed, healthy and active, and Donatian Wicks, and all that, it's going to be hard to know necessarily which wide receiver to start, but they all go to Jordan Love. And so going forward, Jordan Love has, I mean, even crafted Musgrave. Like, he's got a great, skill set of receiving options. So it gives me confidence in love going forward. Moving forward. Yeah, no, it makes sense. All those weapons, all those young home runs in the draft. The thing is, it's just, it's kind of messed up. It's kind of messed up. What? They picked a bunch of good ones. Yeah. For Jordan Love. Well, they, and they couldn't, wait, I did not push that button, but they couldn't pick them and didn't pick them.

for Rogers for years. Jayden Reed's the, you know, the road, like, they had, he had Christian Watson. And he had Dawson was pretty great. He had injured Watson. And Doc, if you used the word great with Dobbs last year, I wouldn't call him great. I'm just saying he had him. He had a lot of this. And he had a chance to make the playoffs in the last game and didn't and love did. So look, huge credit. Moving forward, I'd be happy with him in Dynasty. By the way, that if you want the answer, Jaden Rees is the got to play, just so you know.

Like when they're all healthy, just play the superstar. I'm not worried about it, one iota. He got schemed off the field against the Cowboys. Who has him in our Dynasty? Oh, God. Shut up. Shut the hell off. Mute his microphone. Walk out of this set. What's your record in the Dynasty this year? Number one pick. That's right. Yeah, number one. All right. We're moving on. Brock Purdy at six. Brock Party was... essentially undrafted in a lot of leagues, 14th round. Consistency rank of six for Brock Purdy, that says a lot. I mean, if you committed to him, you were in pretty good shape. 50% of the time it was good, 19% great, 31% bust. Some of the busts, they really hurt you, week six, week 16. You know, he didn't have all his weapons the entire year. I think that's important to note, like, when he did, things were very, very good. You know, this was an MVP candidate partway through the year. Debo. Most of it.

Most of the year. Week 16, the Ravens removed him from the competition. And, you know, how are you feeling about the Brock Purdy experience and the experiment moving forward? Do you need him to be paid before you start recommending him as a dynasty star? No. No, he is already established. He's fully legit. He's young. He's a dynasty star. I don't worry whatsoever about, I mean, they're going to extend him. I believe this off season, it is a shame to see him making less than some college kids right now. Let me paint a different picture. The Packers, Al's Packers, blow him out of the water this week. Purdy throws three interceptions. Based on everything that I've heard from Shanahan, he's their dude. He's their long-term dude. I am fully convinced. The league changes quick, man. It does.

Do you have doubts? Do you do you? I don't think that this is going to happen this week, but I think whenever you aren't being paid anything and you have a team with this kind of expectation, odds on favor to win the Super Bowl, if you flop in a big game and Chanahan said success with a million quarterbacks, there'll be questions this off season. I mean, the Philadelphia Eagles just wanted to throw popcorn at their coach and tell him he's out of town for one loss. Yeah, that's Philadelphia. I mean, we thought Jimmy G would be there. We thought Trey Lance would be there. We thought a lot of quarterbacks would be consistent longer term options there. So I'm just bringing it up. I don't like that he's being paid nothing. Who would you rather have in Dynasty between Love and Purdy? Jordan Love. Really? Yes. Okay. Is that because he's guaranteed to be a first ballot hall of famer by the end of his career? Because of the witchcraft happening in Lambo? That's correct. The witchcraft. I can't believe they've done it again.

They better not have. It's not paid out. I mean, letting your first round quarterback sit and learn that it can pay off. Yeah, I mean. You have some patience. Worked for Andy Reed and me and Mahomes sit that whole year. We've got Brock Purdy Weeks 10 through 15 dominated almost 24 fancy points game, 2.8 passing touchdowns. You know, when they have it going on offense, it looks really smooth. I mean, you, when they have it going on offense, Purdy's. giving up snaps to Darnold at the end of the game because they've blown out their opponents. I mean, when they had a full allotment of weapons, the points per game that they were averaging was insane. So impressive season by Purby, a couple of dud games, definitely delivered for fantasy players that got him for free. Mahomes finished seventh. Oh, was drafted first. Oh. Had a consistency rank. You ready for this? 17.

gross but is very different between the first half and the second half of the year for him and I think that there is a somewhat clear correlation that is somewhat scary to me go on Travis Kelsey was very good in the beginning of this season if you remember he was he seemed like man that was worth that first round pick and Travis Kelsey by the end of the season was a very poor pick He was not good the second half of the year, and that correlated to Mahomes not being good the second half of the year. So I'm just saying if Kelsey, if Kelsey has hit that drop off, not to being a bad player. He's still valuable. He's still good. I mean, Antonio Gates was very good the last three or four years from an NFL standpoint, but he was done being the dominant, you know, great fantasy asset, the league leader in yards and touchdowns. If Kelsey has graduated to that.

stage of his career. I don't know if the weapons are good enough for Mahomes to be a superstar. I feel pretty confident that they're going to address it this year. Like they had their success two years ago with, you know, I mean, I guess they technically paid MVS a bunch of money and it didn't work out. And it didn't work out for him to be a superstar. Worked out for the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl. They thought, we can just re-roll this. We'll do it again. And. I think they address it. Yeah, I mean, but what will fantasy players do? What will be the reaction? I mean, he was not a player worth starting over the last six, seven, eight weeks, and yet people did it every week because it was impossible to put him on your bench. I mean, we had somebody in our league trade, Lamar Jackson away to get Mahomes halfway through the year because the expectation was the inverse of this, that Mahomes would kind of keep going, keep improving with this group. I mean, Rashi Rice got better.

over the course of the back half of the year in terms of fantasy production. But there wasn't the Jordan Love Effect. There wasn't this accumulation of five, six passing options that drove them forward. And let's be honest, they had a great defense. This was a problem. We said it at the beginning of the year when we started to see it come together. Like when your defense is that dominant, you become Isaiah Pacheco. And yeah, and it was not just you go to the running game because you can go to it. No, Pacheco was fantastic. And they, you know, last year it was, it was going to be Clyde. And then Pacheco, and Clyde was inefficient. And then Pacheco steals the job. And so I think there's a chance that Mahomes is not like, you know, locked in as elite for fantasy. He will always be capable of a 40 touchdown season. Yes. But this year, 6% great, 25% good, 31% bust. Yeah, it wasn't good after his, they had a buy week in week 10.

After that, he was the quarterback 18 in points per game. He was behind Derek Carr, behind Gino Smith, behind Russell Wilson, behind Jake Browning. I mean, fantasy managers, if you won a title with Mahomes, send us a liar. No, I know you can. I won with this next guy. Jared Goff at 8. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was behind Jared Goff through that stretch as well. Jared Goff was. I mean, he was fine. Yeah, he was. He was 10th in consistency, 7th in the first half, 14th in the second half. Now, but here's here is Jared Goff in just broken down as, as a statistical data point versus defenses. Top 16, 18 points a game. Bottom 16 passing defenses, 23, nearly 24 points a game. Home road splits. On the road, 17 points a game. At home,