The TRUTH About Fantasy QBs: Part 1 + Wild Card Reactions - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/18

Really difficult year to evaluate DAC. Yes. And I think it's going to be really difficult going into the future. They're going to lose Kellanmore, I believe. And if they do, I just don't know how to think about this offense. Mike McCarthy, he's going to be back. There was inconsistency. You didn't get to see everything you wanted from C.D. Lamb in terms of game breaking. You had an injured Zeke, and presumably, I mean, that should have been in the news. I mean, he confirmed he confirmed a torn PCL.

And so much better player before the injury. Do you prefer your players breaking the news at the end of the season where the entire year you're like, what is going on with this player? And they assure you the whole time, no, I feel great. It's fabulous. And then you get to the end of the season like, well, actually.

I've been playing through a torn PCL. Like Robinson, Alan Robinson, didn't he tweet from like a hospital room or something after a season? And he's like, just kidding, I'm hurt. And so would you prefer that or should the player just say, yeah, I've got this injury and I'm going to play through it? Well, I certainly would prefer that. I think they're afraid of announcing injuries for the other teams targeting them. But yeah, I can't stand when the season's over and they're like, okay, yeah, we'll check this out.

This is what I, this is what was really going on, everybody. Check out this peg leg. It's just so, playing on. So bizarre this. You go the whole season. I am perfectly fine. I am very healthy. Season ends. Oh, no, but it was a, I have a ligament. Just say nothing. You know, don't, don't. You can't say nothing because we have all these ridiculous, like our access to players is, is way too high. Like the questions that these players are asked over and over and over.

I don't care. It's just, it's nonsense. But then you've got Aaron and Foster who actually publishes MRI results, which is a little too far. DAC was 38% of the time a great quarterback. So even though he's only number one overall in the week finish was a week 18 that didn't matter for anybody, you didn't have a number three and number two and number three and number two. He had a high percentage of 26 plus point games compared to some of these other quarterbacks. I mean, more than Aaron Rogers percentage wise, more than Stafford, more than Mahomes.

I think you're right that he's very confusing going forward because you wonder the Dallas offense. Like are they really high-powered offense or not? And I think one of the things that got in Dax's way this year is the fact that Dallas led the NFL in points per game, 31.2, including seven games of 35 points or more. And that sounds fantastic, except part of the reason that they scored so much is that their defense scored a bunch this year.

And that's not really sticky. That's not something that year to year, you know, if your defense scores a bunch of touchdowns that you can bank on, they're going to do again next year. But when a defense scores a touchdown, it is bad for the quarterback. Like, for fantasy purposes, your defense scores, now you're up.

a higher chance of winning the game, being in the fourth quarter trying to run the clock out, not really needing to play catch up. And so maybe there is room for him to go north next year with Zeke being older and maybe more. Do you worry about losing the offensive coordinator? Not really. I, you know, Kellamore is one of those guys where it's like, it is funny how many complaints happen about Dallas's offense, but they're all directed at McCarthy, right?

I don't feel like people are complaining about Kalamore. They're only building them up. I don't think people are complaining about the Dallas offense very often, are they? Yeah, I mean, Dallas is just big enough where people complain no matter of it. It looked rough in that playoff game. But I would be a little bit concerned because of Mike McCarthy. He strikes me as a coach that if Kellamore leaves.

I won't be shocked. Taking it over himself. I'm not even going to bring in an O.C. I'm Mike McCarthy, a Super Bowl winning coach, Mike McCarthy, so I'll handle this. Mega Mike. Yeah, as he's known around the fantasy footballer's office, in the his column. Beat this horse right up. This mega stallion, just beat it dead. Joe Burrow ends up number eight, which is, I think, kind of impressive. The end of the year, obviously. 11th and consistency.

He was... What is he? He was so, so much better against bad defenses. 28 fantasy points of game. That's a red flag. It is. Against bottom 16. Joe Burrow would be a case study in a book about recency bias, in my opinion. I'm not taking anything away from him. He was amazing against Baltimore and Kansas City. It was also awful at different times during the year. And so I think the truth of Joe Burrow

is he is he's not I would take gosh yeah I would take tack over him I mean he's exciting he's fun to have on your roster he fits the bill of what Justin Herbert represented coming into the year with potential and like his season this year was a lot like Justin Herbert's last year where you had a lot of these peak games you saw the arm talent you know the weapons are there but 19% good games

I'm sorry, great games on the year. Busted 25% of the time, he's going to be attached at the hip to Jamar Chase for a long time, and that's a very good thing. Yes. Yeah, when you talk about that question of, okay, next year, would you draft DAC or would you draft Burrow? I think DAC might be the safer option, might finish the year better, but I'm definitely drafting Borough if those two guys are back-to-back because I'd want the chance that one of these guys could go nuclear.

Look, when Burrow came into the league, it was the best college film I had ever seen from a quarterback when he was his final year at LSU and won the national championship. And now... Do you have any retrospect of thinking about that tape now knowing... I mean, he's playing with Jamar Chase, which, so I can't take that away, but he was playing with Jamar Chase.

Justin Jefferson and Clyde Edwards Alleyer. I held that against him a little bit, but what you saw at the end of this year, you know, he had, obviously he started great as a rookie, devastating the injury, started slow this year, but I mean, it wasn't like he was.

Those performances, yeah, maybe there were bad defenses, but Kansas City is not a bad defense. Those performances were crazy. Tom Brady has never had more than one game in a season of hitting 404, and Burrow did it in two games back to back. Brady's never done it? Never had more than one in a season. Oh, okay, got you. And so the ceiling, it's kind of like Mike said a, you know, a little bit ago. If they allow him to really be unleashed, I think he could be the quarterback one next year.

Oh, really? I do. If they unleash him. I disagree with both of the sentiments that you said earlier, like where you're like his ceiling is what Herbert did this past year to me, which is like 40 touchdowns and 5,000 yards. Like unleashing. I don't even know what that means quantifiably because he threw 520 passes this year. He was the six most consistent quarterback over the back half. That's where I'm slotting him in. Six sounds good to me. Yeah, I mean, the difference when I say unleashing him.

When you look at how their neutral game script, you know, pass-to-run ratio, the whole beginning of the year, they were run-heavy, slow. That's who they were. And then all of a sudden, you know, the change happened at the end of the year, and it's so far continued into the first game of the playoffs. So I'm just curious, you know, if they become a pass-first team with Chase and Higgins.

already, you know, locked in forever. He's just a very exciting prospect. He was averaging the same amount of passing attempts in the first eight games than the last eight games pretty much. I mean, your pace for weeks one through, one through nine were like 540 in a season. It kind of went up a little bit to like 560 in a season. He was just better. He was just a better quarterback. Well, that's better, better efficiency.

More touchdowns, you know, you throw eight touchdowns in the last two games of the year. Suddenly you threw 34 instead of 26. And it's like, I don't think he doesn't have a bright future. I just don't think it's like I'm not willing to take two games at the end of the year and just give him the number one spot that some people want to do. I'm not speaking to you. I'm just saying like social media. No, I can see that. But it is important to remember like this. You just talked about like maybe the biggest difference was he just got better.

Because this was his sophomore season, and he lost part of his rookie season. This is still, you know, a young quarterback. So going into his next year, I think, you know, you'd expect it to be better than this one. Yeah. I mean, he plays a natural progression of a career. Usually your third year as a quarterback should be better than your second. I would say that that's not statistically necessarily. He may be a better quarterback, but for fantasy that doesn't, you know what I mean? He could be a better NFL quarterback.

And that doesn't mean he's a better fantasy quarterback. That could, but those usually correlate. They don't have to. And Jamar's second year. Yeah, I mean, he still has to play Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Cleveland twice in that division every year. And, you know, he put up nine points against Las Vegas, 12 against Denver. I just think there needs to be some balance with Joe Burrow going into the draft. That's all. Sure. His redfire hot mega games, as we call them, will be better than almost everybody's.

Because he's playing with those kind of weapons. So you got, he seems to be a really rhythm quarterback where the game gets going and you get nuclear performances from him. It's funny, though, because those last two games of the year, he had only had one finish inside the top like six, seven, eight. Yeah, his previous high was eight other than the Baltimore game for the whole year.

So you saw the ceiling. It's great. It's going to be fun. And if you have him in Dynasty, you should be really excited. He is fascinating because I know it's our job to kind of project and prognosticate. But this is one that at the end of next year, you could say, well, yeah, you should have seen this comment. Didn't you see those last two games of 2021? Or?

He's average again. What he was for most this year. And you're like, yeah, it was just two games. We shouldn't have freaked out. He is, as of right now, he is by far the most difficult quarterback to project. His pace before the two blow-up games was 4,400 and 31. That's a fine season. With a 6% touchdown percentage. Yes. Yeah, he was overperforming the league average by a lot. Yeah. His touchdown percentage, I believe, probably went up over those.

Those two games. He'll be hotly debated, obviously. I think we just learned that just now. Nine is Jalen Hertz. Ten is Kyla Murray. Woof. And these two players were actually higher on the consistency side. We do not, on the consistency side, factor in missed games because you would not have started them. So Kyler feels much. Fourth inconsistency. Worse, right? Fourth of consistency is great. If you had him, you...

Didn't feel that because he missed the chunk in the middle of the year. And then once he came back without Hopkins was not what he was to start the season. He was in points per game, he was fourth, which is what matters when you missed, what, three games in the middle of the year? Yeah. And, and, you know, as someone who had him and, you know, we won a championship with him, it still felt.

Like I didn't remember how good he was at the beginning of the year when he was playing with Hopkins, those first seven games on pace for 4,800 passing yards, 41 touchdowns, another 300 rushing yards. Like he was on pace for a walkaway quarterback one performance. And then he really floundered the rest of the season. In the world of, we just talked about Joe Burrow the end of the year, the way that Kyler went out on national television.

with a bunch of poop in his pants. Does the reaction extend to ADP next year? Yeah. It will be a tremendous fear about Kyla. I mean, I think he will fall a little bit. Will Burrow go ahead of Kyler? I don't think Burrow will, but will Lamar Jackson go ahead of Carla Murray. I don't know. Because we're not going to see Kyle. We don't see Lamar anymore either. Yeah. It's a good question. Herbert will go ahead of.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Mahomes will go ahead of Kyler. Josh Allen will go ahead of Kyler. Yes. And then there's a crapshoot of a couple of guys. Dak. Yep, Dak. Rogers. Rogers. And I would, you know, I mean, the Arizona Cardinals have to do something about the wide receiver position because Kyler is not someone who has been able to lift his teammates up. So if they were to go out and trade for Calvin Ridley,