The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy QBs + Seeing is Believing - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/19

Well, they're here, the truth series. We dive into every position group. We look at the truth of their performances over the course of the year. Sometimes where guys finish isn't exactly what they did for your fantasy team. Today we start at the quarterback position. And we talk about some teams that, look, we went into the year thinking one thing. They ended up something else and they cost fantasy players dearly. So we take a look at that. We look at the truth. Enjoy. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host. Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. The Fantasy Footballers podcast Thursday, January 19th. We're into the truth, and the truth shall set you free. We've done the deep diving. Jason has poured over numbers, and we are looking at quarterbacks today, the top ten quarterbacks of this past season.

And the quarterback position even as a whole, which I think this year is very different than other years. I think we're seeing some changes in the NFL. So we'll get into all that and have that have an effect on our 2023 outlook. Yeah, I think we've been doing this long enough to notice the trends at each position and how that can change the way you look at the next season's fantasy drafts. I think we're kind of moved. We've moved beyond the kind of default first few years, late round quarterback. That's the way we're going to go because other people aren't going to go that way. We're seeing some more trends at the quarterback position that I think may change the way you look at that decision. Would you agree with that? Yeah, yeah, I would. I think a lot of lessons to be learned and we're going to teach them. And fantasy players are, we're just, we are sharper now. The late round quarterback.

worked so well over and over because, I mean, number one, you would have fans or players of in fantasy football taking their quarterback, number one, way too early, but two, not respecting the cheat code of guys that run, like realizing how much of an edge it gave that player. And you would look at early round quarterback picks, or which should say fantasy football players looked at that, that's safe. I don't have to, like running backs, they busts, wide receivers, have bad seasons. But if I take a quarterback here, it's safe. And that was not the case because you would look back, the top 1280P of quarterbacks looked nothing like the final 12 that finished there. But over the last three to four years or so, we're getting much better at predicting who the top quarterbacks are going to be. And I think there's some logic behind.

that becoming easier due to the running quarterback. That's a very predictable, you know, we're not relying on rushing touchdowns from the quarterback position. We're not relying on, you know, passing touchdowns, which, you know, look at the career of Matt Ryan, how variable that was throughout, or Matthew Stafford in Detroit. All of them. All pocket passers. You can have, up years, down years. You can have a season that looks like Joe Burrow this year, or you can have a season that looks like Justin Herbert this year, where coming into the season, he would have been, you know, a top three. consensus fantasy quarterback because last year he was fantastic. What was the 40 plus total touchdowns that essentially cut in half? Because if you are reliant so much on the rest of the offense to get things done and you can't take it upon yourself when things break down like Jalen Hertz or Josh Allen, you're at their will and things can go wrong easily. And think about other player dependencies.

Yes. You have injuries. That's going to directly affect your, I'll call it, your bottom line of touchdowns. Whereas the running game, it's there regardless of whether you're throwing, you know, Dallas Goddard gets hurt or doesn't get hurt. Justin Fields was like, I don't even need wide receivers. You can get rid of all of them. That's fine. Which is kind of interesting that the two kind of later round, not late, but later around breakouts this year. One was a pocket passer in Joe Burrow that established himself, and one was the running quarterback in Jalen Hertz, who was very consistent. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We'll talk all about the quarterback position, break down the trends, and look at those numbers here shortly. I do want to get into this quick question at the top. And by the way, you can follow us on Twitter at the FF Ballers. We're here all offseason, two shows a week, an extra show at Jointhefoot.com. The quick question is up for interpretation, I think.

on what this represents. But it is which NFL team ended up being the most different from how you envisioned them before the 2022 season. So, Mike, why don't you lead the way with, I think, probably the vote getter in this category. So I'm going to read you some statistics here. These are from previous years from a quarterback. His touchdown percentage, which if you're not familiar, that's the percent of attempts. that turned into a touchdown around the league average is like four and a half percent or so and then you have their players that you know this player's going to finish higher they just they're far more efficient especially when it comes to throwing touchdowns i'll just i'll go back a few years so let's go you know 8.2 percent 6 percent 7.2 percent 6.3 3.3 percent and that is of course russell wilson

who made the gigantic splash trade. Well, he didn't, but the teams did. He goes from Seattle to the Denver Broncos. And I think all public thought process was this is a great move for the Denver Broncos because Russell Wilson is a good quarterback. And we believe that he still is a good quarterback at this moment of time. But he was not. He was, in fact, very, very bad for not only for fantasy football, but football. In general. So to have his statistics plummet in such a fashion where he threw 16 passing touchdowns, granted he missed a few games, but this was the first time ever in his career that he has failed to surpass 20 passing touchdowns ever. And he got a really big check. A really, really big check. So Denver certainly.

what comes out of that is the impact that Sutton could make. Yes, the entire cast of characters for Denver were lost Giovante, where they should have been, like, maybe you didn't believe the full breakout was coming, but you had to at least see, oh, the path for these guys to be solid weekly fantasy football starters where I don't even have to think about it. I'm going to get a wide receiver three, wide receiver two. Well, and it's not just the fantasy football. baller's opinion, ours or players' opinions. You look at the Vegas lines of Super Bowl odds for winning either the division or that's that, the MVP race to start the year. You look at betting props and it's like Denver was supposed to be good. Russ was the highest percentage of tickets and money bet for NFL MVP at Bet GM. I mean, and then it was so unthinkably bad.

I mean, because their defense was so good. Their defense was one of the best in the league this year. Yeah, their defensive coordinators getting tons of head coaching interviews. They still lost almost all their games. That's how bad Russ was. I'm going to throw Tampa Bay in the mix. Now, I did go on record and say this was, you know, the year that Brady's going to see his demise. But what Tampa did that Denver didn't do was, and maybe it's more a product of Brady's career or how. You know, Cortland Sutton wasn't ever at a Mike Evans level of production. That's fair. Neither was, you know, Godwin was an elite producer in fantasy. The Tampa Bay situation this year was you had no dominators on this offense in any way, shape, and form. And even though I thought, yeah, Brady might slow down, you still imagine you're going to get some vintage throughout the year. And they...

were the team that would tease you into the belief that next week will be the week they get it going. Brady is the kind of player that will stabilize the Aryan's departure. He will stabilize the lack of an offensive line. He will figure out a way to make it happen. And week in, week out, all through the season, minus week 17 for two players. There weren't dominators on the Tampa Bay offense. And this was a... a really impactful, important, highly drafted fantasy offense. And I think Tampa just showed you that some, Tampa and Denver for this matter, what you see at the beginning of the year might be all you get. You know, for both of those teams, there were probably, and I, you know, we had those discussions true also. But at the very beginning of the year, I'm sure there was some talk about, well, go by low.

Go buy low on Sutton. Go buy low on Russ. Go buy low on Brady. Go buy low on Evans. But they just were what they were. Yeah, I mean, you just assume with those quarterbacks, those known commodity quarterbacks, that they're going to get it together. And they didn't. And that goes hand in hand with my pick for the team that surprised me from what we thought going into the year with what we know coming out of the year, which is the Indianapolis Colts. They got a huge quarterback upgrade or the potential for that having a strong offensive line with Matt Ryan coming to town. Nope. No, they didn't. Also, they don't have a good offensive line. They suck. Their coach, he's going to be fired. They're going to hire some coach that is not a coach. They're going to hire a dude. They're going to create a coach and, you know, really go after that number one pick. So what did they end up with? The fourth pick overall, this was a team that I thought they were going to win the division coming in.

ahead of... And it was there for the taking. Yeah, I mean, this division was not the most difficult to win, and they were out of the running. They just completely sucked. So it's ironic that this quick question on today's show, unplanned, it wasn't like, hey, let's figure out a way to talk more about the quarterbacks on the truth of quarterback series, but the... The three biggest whiffs here of being wrong about offenses were because we were wrong about the quarterback. That the quarterback was not. Russ and Matt Ryan and Tom Brady were bad. Yeah, looking at, as you were mentioning, the Tampa Bay pass catchers, it's mind blowing to me. Chris Godwin had his highest amount of targets and highest amount of receptions in his career.

this year. 142 targets, 104 receptions. That's the first time he's ever broken 100 receptions in a season. He did it in 15 games played. He barely managed to get over 1,000 yards because his yards per completion was 9.8. The lowest in his career up until that point was in 2021 at 11.3. And he had the lowest touchdown amount since his rookie season. Kyle shared this with us. The Buccaneers did not convert a third and 11 or longer the entire season. They were 0 for 41. That's not true. O for 41 on third and 11 or longer. Yeah, that's true. It's from Greg Allman to their beat reporter. Yeah, so this was a team that had no big play potential. That is unbelievable. I mean, that's, that's one of the craziest stats I've ever heard. An entire season, you don't convert one third and long? You don't get lucky on one third and 11? The, the Bruce Aryan's absence. I mean.

Maybe it's all Tom Brady's fault, but the Bruce Arians leaving this team was detrimental to the offense. Yeah, I mean, every year there are teams that you envision going one direction. It's one of the reasons you don't necessarily want to put all your eggs in a certain team's basket. We get that question a lot in the offseason. It's like, oh, I've got the quarterback and the running back. I've got the wide receiver and the running back. You know, if it's an offense that you are sure of, It can work out. But if you get one of those bad draws and the season goes differently and the coaches are fired, you're in trouble. And you're trying to cash in on the, oh, they're going to figure it out. Here, take my players from me. But, yeah, those three teams definitely took fantasy football players for a ride. Let's talk quarterbacks. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth.

can't handle the truth all right jason you were talking about some kind of uh league wide passing trends we were talking about rushing quarterbacks i know that this was the first time in history that quarterbacks surpassed 10,000 total rushing yards league wide so the rushing quarterback uh plan is uh continuing to permeate out to more and more teams And obviously for fantasy football, when they run for 10 yards, it's like they threw for 25. It's a broken system, but take advantage of it. The quarterback scoring as a whole was really bad. It was down drastically this year. And I think there are a handful of reasons. You just named one of them, right? The passing yardage is going to go down when the rushing yardage. You can't pass them run at the same time goes up. So you lose some of that. But the passing touchdowns, the second few is combined passing touchdowns over the last

decade. 14 teams had fewer than 20 passing touchdowns. It was gross. That's really bad. That is really bad. I think part of that is injury. We had a lot of injuries to quarterbacks this year. Only 16 teams, which is half of the league. Nice. Had their quarterback start more than 14 games. 10 teams started at least three different. quarterbacks this year, Baltimore, the Jets, the Dolphins, Arizona, the Niners, Titans, Colts, Manders, Carolina, and the Rams all had three or more different starters. And it was a down year in deep passing as well. The fewest 20-plus-yard completions over the last seven years. Only 11% of attempts were deep. Only 37% of those attempts were completed.

I think the fact that we saw a lot of backups playing a lot of football this year combined with a lot of stalwart stars. I'm looking at you, Aaron Rogers, and Tom Brady. I thought you were looking at me. Technically, I was looking at you. You had zero passing touchdowns last year, sir. He was looking at me and I'm. No, that's fair. That's fair. I thought you call me a star, man. Well, you are a star. But I was talking about the stalwart of. You're more like the wart. Yeah. You have Tom Brady, Aaron Rogers, and Russell Wilson, three Hall of Fame quarterbacks, potentially, in Russell's case, that all took massive steps backwards in the stat counting category. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you there. Those were guys that you could write in every year as being contributors in that regard, and they weren't.

this year. And when we break down the truth, since this is the first episode of a series, I want to break down what we're looking at. And we'll go through a number of things about these players, but we'll start with the truth data that we gather, looking at four point per passing touchdown league scoring systems. And breaking players finishes down into great games at the quarterback position. We're calling that 26 or more points. Good games, more than 21 points. and bust games fewer than 15 points on the week, which generally put you outside the top 12 at the position. Yes. And technically in the data, we have a super bust category that is fewer. What? Yeah. We have a super? We do have a super bust. It's if you. Boston. Thank you. It's if you score fewer than 10 fantasy points. Like you destroyed someone's week there. And so when we take a look at this data for the quarterbacks, we.

Nobody is starting a quarterback that is injured, so we take that out. We don't factor in injury. So obviously someone that missed a handful of games, they might do better in this metric, but we're just looking at like when a quarterback was played in a situation where you knew you were going to start them, how did they perform? So some of the quarterbacks in week 18, we've also omitted maybe that week. If we knew going into that week, like, oh, we, you know, we said you can't. start in week 18, Tom Brady, because he might not play the game. And then he plays half the game and doesn't play. So we're just saying in live action where you were starting them, how did these quarterbacks fare? And did they cross thresholds that mattered for fantasy and how often? Because you've got two sides of a consistency coin that we've seen with quarterbacks over many years. You've got the Phillip Rivers side where he ends the year as a good quarterback.

because he's never super-busting. He's always going out there and throwing for 15 points every single week, but he's never really helping you win fantasy games. So we try to factor all of it in. Great games, good games, bad games, and just see when they were playing, how much did they actually help your fantasy win total? And I think this year's number five overall quarterback might be in that new Philip Rivers category. But we'll get to it. All right, number one on the list. Don't get me fired up already. You're free to defend him. Patrick Mahomes is number one on our list. He had a total consistency ranking of number three, third most consistent quarterback. He was drafted as the QB2 off the board. And I mean, we shouldn't doubt him. He is, I saw, did you guys see he's about to pass Kurt Warner in like playoff?

either playoff starts or total yards or whatever. And then Kurt Warner replied, and he's like, Patrick Mahomes is 27. He's like, I didn't have my first game until I was 28 years old. Yeah, get wrecked. Yeah. Well, Patrick Mahomes, 41% of the time, it was a great performance. 59% of the time, it was a good performance. Just 6% of games were busts. He was incredible after losing Tyree Kill, after having a team that essentially adjusted their entire game plan. They had the lowest play action rate, the deep passing game, no McCall Hardman for parts of the year, and up and down receiving core with plenty of drops from, you know, Sky Moore and in Juju. And, you know, it was a, it was never an offensive group that you could expect production from outside of Travis Kelsey and late season McKinnon. And yet.

The production for Patrick Mahomes did not waver. It didn't waver in part because they did not have a great running game through the majority of the season. Pacheco came on at the end and had some success on the ground. But while McKinnon was great, that was all through the air. So this team was one that it was just, look, we're going to throw the ball more. Our passing rate is above expectation and we've got the best quarterback out there. It doesn't matter the weapons. He proved that. And honestly, this next year, His weapons are only going to get better. You've got a Cadarious Tony that's going to be healthy. Well, I mean, we think there's no reason to assume that he wouldn't be but other than, you know, history. And then you've got second year for Skymore, and they are going to have the opportunity to grab another great wide receiver. I saw the latest mock draft I looked at, had Jackson Smith and Jigba falling to them at the end of the first. That would not be fair.

So Patrick Mahomes next year, and every year is, you know, he is basically what Aaron Rogers was for a long stretch for fantasy, where he was the number one quarterback or the number two, worst case number three for the better part of a decade. And that's what we have here. He finished the season as the number one quarterback. Congratulations. Yeah, and he's been there before. He also is the second quarterback in history to lead the league in passing yards without a thousand yard receiver. So when you have the stability of Andy Reed and the skill set of Patrick Bahomes, that's enough to trust he will be at the tippy top of the quarterback ranks, Sands injury every single year. 34 of 41 passing touchdowns. Yeah, this is wild. Inside the red zone. That's not. So.

That's not Mahomesian. As you say, there's no Tyreek over the top. It's just, I figure it out. He just gets it done. And the nice thing is their defense isn't great. And when people play against Andy Reed and Patrick Mahomes, they play different. Like they go for it on fourth downs more. They are far more aggressive. They'll start the game onside kicking because they just are like, well, we've got to score 48 if we want to win this game. So it's great. Yeah. So number two, Josh Allen. Josh Allen was drafted as the QB1 overall about eight picks ahead of where Mahomes was drafted. Consistency rank for Josh Allen, number two. He was also the number one and overall fantasy points per game and led all quarterbacks in top five performances. He had 11 top five performances, which was more than his previous two quarterback won overall seasons. You know, this, the only kind of.

what do you call it, the chink in the armor was the fact that he threw a lot of interceptions this year. It was a career high 20 turnovers. That even carried on into the playoff game that we just saw. But, I mean, what more can you say about Josh Allen? Consistent on a weekly basis. What was incredible about those turnover games is that they were better for him. They do have a good defense. See, that's the thing. Buffalo has a... a much better defense in Kansas City. So in games where Josh Allen threw an interception, he actually averaged more fantasy points than in games when he didn't throw a pick and almost double the yardage on the ground. So he was forced to do more because the team, you know, he put him in a bad position. Yeah. And if you look, obviously, you'll notice he is ahead of Patrick Mahomes in our truth metric. And the reason why is because he had unbelievable.

week winning performances all the time. You just talked about that more than in his other number one finishes. To me, he was, you know, he was the best quarterback. For fantasy, when he started the year as the quarterback 24, three, five, one three, it just felt like he should be the number one overall pick. Obviously slowed down a little bit the second half of the year, but thankfully got it back together for the fantasy playoffs. And Mike, you remember he had an injury in the middle of the year that. Yeah, it was the elbow. Yeah, I was trying to remember what ligament it was. Elbow ligament. Yeah, it was the elbow ligament. I remember. But, I mean, do you think that that contributed to some of that middle season troubles? Yeah, you could see him making some different decisions during those games, but played through, played incredible. Next year, I can't imagine he won't be my number one quarterback. Probably are number one quarterback. You, the, like,

Diggs and Gabe Davis another year, but then like the more integration of Khalil Shakir just watching the impact he had on that playoff game with just a small amount of routes because they're making him split time with the Beasles and John Brown. Hopefully Shakir can earn that as the full-time role because if those are the three guys out there and James Cook is in the backfield, Josh Allen could be even better, which is. Ridiculous. 41% great games, which is the same number as Mahomes. 71% good. Mahomes is at 59% and then bus games 12% of the time. Impressive season yet again for Josh Allen and will continue to be. Yeah. Kind of a, you know, where Cam was to some degree in the early part of his career, you know, where you could count on the rushing. They call his number on purpose, you know what I mean? It's not just.

scrambles, it's like quarterback draws. So it was an impressive performance. Yeah, to me, and I think most people might have the four star quarterbacks this year. To me, there were three and three that I'm going to look at next year as a change in philosophy where I want one desperately. I want Mahomes, Josh Allen, or this next quarterback who is actually... the number one quarterback in our truth series, but you'll have to wait. Yeah, you see me reaching over. Oh, yeah, you'll have to wait to find out who it is. When did we turn into a radio show? That was great teeth. Thank you. Thank you. I bet you people stayed around because they want to find out who this next guy is. Yeah, they... Number one in consistency. Number three on the year. And really, I think number three on the year simply because he got injured at the end of the year.

My guy Jalen Hertz was unbelievably great. He was, he won the footy award for the quarterback of the year, and rightfully so, because he was the best fantasy draft pick at the quarterback position by a wide margin. You got the opportunity to get a rushing, a hyper rushing quarterback. with upgraded weapons in the sixth round as opposed to, you know, spinning up that second or third round pick for those other two guys. And he was so consistent. His great games were over 50%. His good games were over 80%. Only 7% bust rate. He was pretty much flawless on the course of the season. Did week 18 count for his? We did count. We did count week 18, which was awful for him. It sucks. Obviously, that shouldn't be counted in most leagues because you're not playing in week 18. But he did.

It was an important game today. He played the whole game. You would have started him if you had him. But saying, like, aside from that, across the whole season through week 15, he had one down game, week four against the Jacksonville Jaguars. And he was a quarterback 15, not like that. Yeah. And it wasn't even catastrophic. He very much was what Josh Allen was his first breakout season from a draft capital perspective. Well, Lamar Jackson was his first breakout season from a draft capital perspective. And what Justin Fields will be next year. I don't know. I mean, do you think Justin Fields is a sixth round pick next year? Yeah, I think he'll be around this draft spot. And I think so you're already pre-calling next year's Jalen Hertz. Yes, I am. My guy, Justin Fields. Yes, that is right. That won't be allowed by the.