Early QB Rankings Part 2, Smokin’ Happy

My love for Justin Watson as a sleeper. So, I mean, if all of those things, right, if this wide receiving core is a core that I love, this team is one that still projects to have a bad defense at a great offense. They're in a division full of great offenses. I mean, it would be disingenuous of me to say, well, then this doesn't benefit James Winston. But it's not. It's not narrative driven, which is what you guys, I think.

there's this mentality of, we like the weapons, and Bruce Ariens is coming in, so I just love James. He's going to be great. James has done it. James has already performed as a top guy, just not on a season, and I went and I looked and I broke down why. So let's just look at last year, right? He suspended the first three games, comes in relief two different times, goes out once. It was this really wacky season for Dirk Cutter-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers because he's scrambling for his job trying to do everything he can.

to find some magic potion. Overall, the Tampa, I mean, if you take James Winston plus Ryan Fitzpatrick and you just add their stats together like a normal quarterback that plays 16 games, they would have been the number two. They would have been behind Patrick Mahomes ahead of Matt Ryan just from those stats last year. But if you take out Fitzpatrick and you just look at the games, I went through and looked at the games that James played the whole game. You started, he finished, whatever. There were eight of them.

last year. And in those eight games, he averaged basically about 21 points a game in standard scoring, which was ahead of Deshaun Watson, ahead of Andrew Luck. I mean, those are great numbers, and now he's got a good offense, a coach. Now, Fitzpatrick is gone. There's no looking over your shoulder. So I am calling my shot here that I believe James has the potential to be a top five quarterback, and I'm not worried about the risk. Like,

Early running backs, I am risk averse. If I'm wrong and the guy gets injured or the guy, you know, doesn't catch the ball and the projection of those early running backs, I can't just turn around and pick one up off of waivers. But I go, I take the risk with the quarterback and say, look, James could have a true breakout here. He's got the potential. And I'm drafting him super late. No, people aren't excited about James. He finishes the quarterback 22 last year. So I'm going to scoop him up with one of my last picks.

have the potential that he has a breakout. He's succeeded in the NFL and it has a lot of things going for him. That's my argument for James Winston. A lot of that makes sense. And obviously with him at seven, though, you're projecting that kind of a season out of him. That's why he's in your rankings like that. Last year, the Bucks finished the season with the most passing yards as a team. In general, Bruce Ariens has had a lot of success. What's really funny about Winston to me is that even if they hadn't played together,

The comp for me with James Winston would have been Ryan Fitzpatrick historically. And when you look back at after Fitzpatrick had the successful season in New York with the Jets and he had Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker, I see some similarities to him coming in. Winston coming in this year, you've got Godwin, you've got Evans, and the excitement. Now, the problem with James Winston and with Ryan Fitzpatrick is that...

There's pretty much no quarterback more prone to turnovers and mistakes than James Winston. Last year, he only started, I think, nine games and had the fifth most interceptions in football. He has historically been a massive interception thrower, fumbler, and when you look at Bruce Ariens, and if you want to go to the narrative and you want to explain both sides of it, Carson Palmer had a career resurgence under Bruce Ariens, eventually.

In his first season under Bruce Ariens, he threw 24 touchdowns, 22 interceptions under Bruce Ariens. It is a situation where Ariens wants you to drive the ball down the field. He wants you to be cognizant of all these different elements in the offense, and he's got the weapons to do it. I have no doubt that James Winston will have monster games under Bruce Ariens. My biggest concern is the turnover-prone nature and what could –

You could get every third game could be a classic Ryan Fitzpatrick type of game historically where fire, fire, ice. If we want to stay in the Game of Thrones theme here. It's a song of ice and fire for James Winston throughout his career. And he hasn't done. You made the argument he's done it. But you also then said he's never done it on a season.

He has never thrown for 30 touchdowns in his career. There is risk. There is definitely risk, and I get it. He's a value. He's a shot. Everybody's going to pick some guy to take a shot on. Yeah, I would say the risk just comes down to his draft price. If you're drafting him in the double-dazed rounds, I think the risk is absolute minimal. And could there have been a transition for James Winston? Because you're right, he was a turnover machine. But when he got his job back week 11, and he kept it through the end of the season. He threw 13 touchdowns.

and four interceptions across those games. I mean, it was a good stretch. It was on pace for 29 touchdowns at eight interceptions, very not James Winston. It was the best James Winston that we've seen play in the NFL. But during that time, he was averaging 18 and a half points per game, which puts him on that for the season. That would have been quarterback 11. Yeah, that's not that great. Now, which to the defense of that, the margin between.

like Matt Ryan and that 18 and a half points per game, it's very, very small. So I'm not, I don't think Jason's crazy for having him. We've been here before though. We had this exact same end of season projection for him last season. Right. But then he was suspended for three games. So everything kind of blew up in the off season. It did. And so I'm sticking with what I believed two years ago. He's not suspended. He doesn't have a backup that could come in. And if you look at those last games where he played very well, but it was still like quarterback 11, not.

really smoking happy. One of the things I like about Winston. Got to be smoking happy. You got to be smoking happy. If you're not smoking happy, you're smoking sad. One of the things I like about James Winston is that you can figure out when to play him. You know, he shows up for those crazy games where it's like, oh, he's going up against a great offense. And if he's playing a great defense, he, you know, not so much. Like for instance, nobody in the world last year played James Winston on the road.

against Baltimore for that game because Baltimore was on fire. Baltimore held him to four fantasy points that game. Like that was atrocious. If you take that game out where nobody's going to start him anyways, his fantasy points per game are much higher than the quarterback left. I think people should realize we're exhausting the James Winston topic in part because, look, this is going to be a shock to the system to have him at 11. I mean, Jason's ranking, our consensus ranking, puts him at 11.

So it's worth looking at both sides. Now, number 12 is, well, good friend of mine. Josh Allen, Josh Stallion. I haven't at 12. Jason has him at 15. Mike has him at 9. Yep. He is, to me, the most interesting fantasy football quarterback there is. Because there are so many things to love and so many things to hate about Josh Allen.

He goes deep more than anybody in football by a wide margin. He goes deep over 20% of the time. The next closest was like in the 14, 15% range. Mahomes isn't even in, he's like at number four. Josh Allen went deep that many times, but here's the thing. Worst completion percentage in football, but also third lowest pass attempt. So if he had a bad game, it was a bad game. If he had a good game, it was a good game, not throwing the ball a ton, pressured like crazy, and still put up a Monster Fantasy season.

Mike, you have him the highest and I love him. Let me paint the picture of Josh Allen. Last year, so it was his rookie year. He never surpassed 245 passing yards. He had a 10 to 12 interception or touchdown to interception ratio. That's bad. Four games under 50% of passing completion, 53% on the year. But.

We play fantasy football, and once he returned from his injuries, week 12 through 17, he was the number two quarterback, putting up nearly 24 points per game. And he was only 0.2 points per game behind the Sean Watson, who was the number one quarterback through that stretch, because in four of six games, he had 95 or more rushing yards. He had a rushing touchdown in four of six games. This is, he is Tim Tebow. I like him.

a lot more than James Winston for a lot of reasons. Not only just how he finished last year, but I see so much upside in what Josh Allen is going to do. Now the completion percentage, guys, I'm going to be honest with you. I will be super surprised if that improves this year. I don't think it... Now, it'll improve from 53, but like, you know, like 54, maybe. We all have goals. 55 is the goal. But here's why. If you look at the worst receivers in all of football,

Since 2016 in terms of reception percentage. We talked about Michael Thomas, 77% from Drew Brees. The two worst in all of football, Zay Jones, who's already on the roster, John Brown. Last year, John Brown was bad. John Brown caught like 40-something percent of his passes last year. He was, that's just the nature of John Brown. He gets targeted 16 yards down the field. And here's John Brown.

Going to a place where he likes to throw the ball deep. I don't think the completion percentage is important for Josh Allen as a fantasy owner at all. Now, Cole Beasley had one of the highest reception percentages in football, so maybe he helps a little bit. Nothing has to change for Josh Allen to still be great. And if it does change with the weapons, he's greater.

So it's, for me, it's, Tim Tebow is actually, he's far more Cam Newton than he is Tim Tebow to me, because he's just, he's very athletic. I think, I expect him to continue to run the way he did towards the, the second half of the season. It's gross. I don't like it. I don't, I don't, I don't like the fact that I'm real happy to play a quarterback who completed 53% of his passes. But here we are, because this, that's the way that fantasy is scored.

Yeah, so I have him down at 15. I'm not nearly as bullish as you guys on Josh Allen. I certainly see the upside. My reason is this. Obviously, Josh Allen, his fantasy production comes down to his legs, not his arm. He's not going to be throwing, you know, 350 yards a game in three times. That's not what he does. But, you know, he can.

I mean, over the last stretch when he was back in the game, he was, was he the quarterback one or the quarterback two. I mean, he was two, by, by, by, by, by one point for games. Right. I mean, he was unbelievable. And that all was because of his rushing. And so I want to make a, a point, though, he lost, you need to remember, he lost all of his weapons. Like Kelvin Benjamin was his number one. They got rid of between injury and, you know, trades. He basically was down to.

Who did he lose? Well, he lost Kelvin Benjamin. I wouldn't say he really lost him. Kelvin wasn't a part of that end of season. That's what he's saying. He ran more because the passing weapons were not there. You're saying that because he didn't have passing weapons, he ran. Yes. And now look at what they did this off season. They went and they got him every passing weapon they could mediocre or not. They're trying to make sure that he can throw better, right? Look at the beginning of the year. What they wanted to do with Josh Allen. He was on pace, a 16-game pace.

for 413 rushing yards. That's pretty good. That's really, I mean, that's nice. That's going to be top three or four in the league. But that's what they wanted out of him to rush. The last part when he was that top in quarterback, do you know his pace? He was on pace for 1269 rushing yards because he was more of a running back than he was a quarterback, similar to Lamar Jackson. But I don't believe that's what they want out of him.

If they did, I'd be like, oh, he's my quarterback three. But what they want, they were more competitive as a team. What they want is to win games to figure out his way. And that's the way that Josh Allen's going to have to win games. So that will be figured out quickly. Lamar Jackson at 13. We all have him about the same spot. 11, 12, 11. Lamar Jackson, I was disappointed because from the time he took over, I was expecting to get a great performance from him. We never really did. 15.

20, 16, 18, 16, 16, 16, 26. Look, we know he runs the football. The story is very similar to that of Josh Allen. I mean, they both were the top two runners in at the position. Number one was Lamar Jackson. Number two was Josh Allen in terms of yards at the quarterback position. Both guys have to learn how to throw the football to give you sustained great performances on a week-to-week basis. Lamar Jackson's problem was fumbles.

Why do we like or why do you like Jackson over Allen, Mike, or I guess both of you? Or not Mike. No, I like Allen more than Jackson. Yeah, I like Jackson more than Allen because they had designed runs for him on, you know, every third play. My worry with Lamar Jackson is whether he can sustain that and not get injured. But while he is not injured, I know for sure they want him to run the ball far more than I believe Buffalo wants Josh Allen to run the ball.