Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Top 20 Quarterbacks, Numberfire's JJ Zachariason, News

In total, at most, if you're in a 14 team league, let's say, then there's 14 quarterbacks being started every single week in your fantasy league. Given that last year, 41 different quarterbacks, that's nine more than there are teams in the NFL, had at least one top 12 performance. So a QB1 performance, you can see that there's just this surplus of quarterbacks in this new NFL. There's not as big of a gap between...

say in terms of fantasy, in terms of real football, it's a different story. But there's not as big of a gap between maybe the third best quarterback in the league. I'll exclude Aaron Rogers and Andrew Luck in that conversation. But, you know, someone like a Drew Breeze to a Ryan Tanahill, let's say. So, but then, you know, what's streaming then is.

is taking advantage of the predictability aspect of the quarterback position. So, you know, just very logically, very high level, you think of predictability as which position or which players are going to be most predictable before heading into a week. So you're not doing any hindsight analysis. You're thinking what's going to happen. And in terms of quarterbacks, you know, quarterbacks are dropping back to pass at least 30 times per game, almost every single quarterback. So you have this larger sample size.

compared to what you get at a running back and wide receiver and a tight end especially. So therefore, they're just more predictable. There's a lot of math behind that as well. So because of this predictability and because of this surplus, you can pinpoint good matchups for these quarterbacks and kind of build this giant Frankenstein quarterback. And that's really the next question I had for you is because the numbers back up.

the streaming quarterback philosophy, and we talk about it a lot, but that means a owner has to make a lot of decisions. And so, like what you said, the quarterback matchups, what do you look for in those QB matchups? How do people make those decisions? Because it's easy to look at, you know, the hindsight and say, okay, these five guys did well last week, but how do you make the pick to start those guys?

Yeah, I mean, that's a very, very good question because it's obviously you need to have the confidence going in and not, you know, you're going to be throwing Mark Sanchez under center and on your fantasy team and doesn't feel comfortable. But the one thing, one thing to stress is to really use Vegas to your advantage. Team totals are very, very important. There's a high correlation between fantasy output at the quarterback position and how many points Vegas thinks that team is going to score because obviously if a team scores a lot of points, it's because of the quarterback.

Some things that people tend to overrate is the idea of garbage time. So I actually just did a presentation last two weekends ago in Atlanta for the Daily Fantasy Boot Camp. And a quote that I used in the presentation was, it takes a garbage performance to create garbage time. So the only reason why these quarterbacks are in this garbage time in the first place is because they didn't perform well.

during the first, second, and third quarters of the game. So really, there's actually no correlation between passing attempts and fantasy output. So people tend to overrate what passing attempts do to a quarterback performance. But what you really should be pinpointing is the efficiency side of things and those Vegas team totals. And if the quarterback is a favorite, if a quarterback is a favorite in those games, he's tending, he's going to be more efficient and therefore they're going to score more points.

So who are you then right now? Because we're still, you know, obviously pre-draft. We're not anywhere but pre-week one. And so who are you targeting right now in the draft, a late-round guy or someone that you hope will become and maybe stick as a quarterback one that you think you can get late in a draft? Yeah. So I think that's another key point, too, is that when you're going into your draft, you're not necessarily going in saying, hey, I'm going to stream the position. I think that you can more than ever do that. But at the same time, you want to find a guy.

that could potentially become like a plug-and-play player, a middle, you know, like a QB6-ish, because that's roughly what you could, and what we did, Denny Carter and I last year on Living the Stream, did stream a QB6. But, you know, a guy that I'm targeting a lot is Sam Bradford just because of his early season schedule, being in the offense that he's in. He has that upside. I'm not a huge Bradford guy from a real football perspective, but you have to love.

any quarterback in that system. I think if you can get him late enough, he's rising a little bit. Ryan Tannehill has that top five upside with all their new weapons. And then if you move down a little bit more, I think that you're fine with getting, just taking a shot with someone like Colin Kaepernick. Just just go.

Just going Yolo. That was my next question. So I was going to say, what's your thought on Colin Kaepernick? Because I've taken a lot of heat. I'm like one of the only people that has him inside of a... In the world. In the world. It has him in the top 10. So do you see potential there because of his numbers increasing year after you? Yeah. I mean, I think that you're drafting him in the 13th round, let's say. And it doesn't matter if he doesn't pan out because your worst case scenario is that you're streaming quarterbacks. And that's a very, very viable option.

With Kaepernick, I think GameScript is going to be very interesting with him. I think he's going to be able to get those scrambling yards because that offensive line is so poor right now. And, you know, I'm not one to, I don't like to overstate what a rushing quarterback can do in fantasy, but we have seen examples of rushing quarterbacks like Tim Tebow.

being able to be incredibly fantasy relevant because of what they can do with their legs. I think, you know, we have seen Kaepernick as a very, very fantasy relevant quarterback in the past, and the fact that he's so cheap now, you know, there's some upside there because of what we know. And it's not like you're investing a sixth round pick in the guy. So a guy we get asked about a lot is Tom Brady. And my answer is always the same. I said, look at his last couple years. He's actually been a...

sub-average quarterback one who always gets drafted very high. We have the suspension this year. What are you advising people to do on Tom Brady? Yeah, I'm telling them to avoid the situation completely. I mean, not only, the thing is that not only is he potentially going to miss those games, but if you do draft him, you have to hold him onto your bench for those four weeks, and that's, that's,

You don't want to have wasted space on your bench during the first four weeks of the season where that's where all the waiver wire gems are coming out and guys are getting hurt and so on and so forth. So, you know, that's one aspect. Then the other aspect, which you hit on is that those middle round quarterbacks, like I can actually, you know, I might have written a book called the late round quarterback, but I actually can get behind.

an early round quarterback, an early round stud, like Andrew Lucker, Aaron Rogers, much more than I can get behind a guy like Matt Ryan, a guy like Tom Brady, those guys that you're getting in the seventh round, let's say, maybe even the sixth round in some home leagues or fifth round. Those guys are just completely replaceable in fantasy football. Like, Matt Ryan, sure, he's a safe option. He essentially, he just epitomizes a QB8. Like, that's what.

That's what Matt Ryan is. He doesn't finish higher than a QB7 any single season than he plays, but you're drafting him for this floor, but this floor that's completely replaceable through streaming. So Tom Brady kind of falls into that. He's a little bit better than Matt Ryan. But at the same time, you know, I'm not targeting him at all because of those first four weeks of the season.

Yeah, so we have, you know, we give the advice of essentially what you just said. I like the top guys and the back guys. But no matter what, no matter how often we give that advice, I think most people are really uncomfortable streaming quarterbacks. And so they look for those average guys. I was going to bring up Matt Ryan because I know myself and Mike, we have Matt Ryan as our number three quarterback just statted out. We believe in Kyle Shanahan's system coming in. And you wrote an article that I believe says, please.

I love the title. Please stop drafting Matt Ryan so high in fantasy football. So we can argue here. I understand the past being that he's been very, very average. But since we've been talking about projecting the future, do you not see any potential upside with the Shanahan system and Julio Jones being healthy and those things that would propel him to a top tier finish? Is that out of the question for you?

No, I don't think it's out of the question at all. Like, I mean, it's certainly in his realm of possibilities. It's just a matter of, like, banking on that and seeing where you can draft him. So if you're, if you're using middle round equity on a guy like Ryan, who in the past, you know, we have, what, a seven, eight year sample on the guy, who in the past has just been just a replaceable guy. Like, he, that's, that's, that's mostly the reason that I'm avoiding him just because.

When you look back on a season and you look at the top tier quarterbacks, not only are they not always the guys that people have drafted early, like last year where we saw Peyton Manning and Drew Breeze, but really the only two of those quarterbacks are you getting a decent to significant advantage from a week-to-week perspective.

What I mean by that is, is to me, if Matt Ryan can put up Andrew Luck or Aaron Rogers numbers this year as to what many people think that those two quarterbacks will put up, then sure. That's a steal where you're getting Matt Ryan. If he can be that elite quarterback, then certainly. I'm just, you know, I'm using the historical evidence to just kind of project of what Matt Ryan kind of is. But I do love Shanahan. I love that offense. I think it's going to be really solid. So the last guy we'll touch on is Joe Flacco. We are huge.

supporters of Mark Trussman, we are on that team. I know that you constantly talk about being on Team Trestman. Do you, are you supporting Joe Flacko at all? Are you taking any stock in him?

I still am kind of just treating him as a streamer this season, mostly because the weapons there are not very strong. And now Perriman's just kind of dealing with this tendon injury. But, you know, I'm certainly on team. I'm on team trustmen mostly for what he does for running backs to be fair and what he does with them out of the backfield. I think that he's seen success in his first year with quarterback. So that's the upside with Flacco. But at the same time,

There's just so many quarterbacks out there that I'm not going to necessarily be stuck on a guy like Flacco, even though, sure, you know, he could have top 10 quarterback upside. But again, I'm only looking for upside if you can finish maybe in the top two or three. Right. So we've been talking to JJ, Zacharisen, editor-in-chief of the small, tiny, super-tiny numberfire.com that no one's ever heard of. Also hosts the podcast, live in the stream. And where can people find you, JJ?

Yeah, I'm on Twitter at late round QB, and then obviously, like you said, over at numberfire.com, just cranking out as much content as we can. Yeah, so thank you, JJ. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, guys, thanks for having me. All right, thanks to JJ once again for joining us. I think you got a lot of perspective in terms of starting quarterbacks and fantasy football, the importance of waiting.

If you have one of those late-tier guys, I think that helps fill in the gaps for a lot of people. It doesn't mean, you know, if you're in a two-quarterback league and scarcity is not an issue anymore, then you need to adjust. You're going to draft quarterbacks higher. You're going to draft them in the first round. You're probably going to have 10 of them gone soon. But in terms of a normal league, it gives you good perspective on that. So we're going to go through our top 20 and maybe more if we got time, quarterback. So before we get to our top 20 quarterbacks.

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