Early QB Rankings: Top 10 Countdown, Grandpa Vibes - Fantasy Football Podcast for 4/23

It's a big week on the fantasy footballers podcast. Lots to talk about some big announcements and the top 10 early rankings of the quarterback position. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a moment and enjoy. Hey, this is Patrick Mahomes, quarterback to the Kansas City Chiefs and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. It's a brand new week. It's a big one. I don't think Jason's excitement can be contained. It's not every day when we, you know, we record in the morning that Jason Moore is like screaming at the top of his lungs as we leave the office heading to the studio and he's just like hyped for the show to the degree that he was today. Sometimes you're metabolizing McDonald's or something. I've eaten and so I'm, you know.

unresponsive, but today, today I did come in with a lot of energy. I'm super excited for not just this episode, but this entire week. There's a huge week for the NFL, huge week for fantasy football, huge week for the fantasy footballers. So fantastic. Yeah, it's going to be a blast. Mike Wright is here. I certainly am. You are equally excited? I am. Just expressing it in a different... I was given Jason his... His little platform there. We have some huge stuff to talk about. And I mean, I don't want to overshadow that. But I'm really excited in the news section to talk about a new nickname that we have received from the NFL. I don't know what you're talking. I don't either. You'll remember once we get there. It is ultimate draft week, which means we have an ultimate draft week giveaway. This is a special week every single year.

Why? Because you have a chance to win a listener league spot. Come and play with us. We're also giving away a signed jersey up-and-comer, Justin Jefferson. I've heard of him. A signed Justin Jefferson jersey. Assigned Travis ETN jersey. And to enter, all you've got to do is pre-order the 2024 UDK by Sunday. So you go to Ultimate DraftC.com, pick that up. You get the pre-order price. You're going to get it anyways. And this will enter you to win a listener league spot along with a couple of signed jerseys. And we remind you if you've already preordid your entered to win already. Good to go. And the best part about this, not only do you have a chance to be in the listener league, but the best part is you're getting the ultimate draft kit, which is actually going to help you tremendously this year to have a great draft to bring home the championship this year. And then as Jason said, it's a big week for the NFL.

The draft kind of takes over everything. We've got a couple of shows this week. And then we have a draft special live on NFL Plus near the end of round one on draft night. So you can tune into that, get our live reactions. It's going to be a lot of fun. We expect you to be there with us. Okay. Or you're grounded. I really expect it. All right. Let's talk about that news. News and notes from around the league. Well, I feel like we could talk about the Chargers for a while. after the video we got of Greg Roman and Jim Harbaugh just hanging out. I'm sorry, that's not his name anymore. Ah, that's the name. Gero. That's Greg Roman? Oh, I thought you were talking about hard dog. No, no, no, no. That was us. Hard dog and Gero. Gero. Jim Harbaugh, aka Hard dog. Be careful. Let us know.

that like a video which is it was a tremendous video the video like so the dad vibes were off the charts but it in a very funny and endearing way and he just keeps calling greg roman gero which is absolutely ridiculous but it was i love it it was troubling on some levels like the the level of uh like dad best friends that was going on in that video they were at a an RV park. They had each of their own separate RVs. They're sitting there on like the lawn chairs. They're, they're tapping drinks. They're like full. It's like G row, G bro. I mean, this is. If the G stands for grandpa, this was not dad vibes guys. This is this is we're dads. We would never be out there. Like when we retire, you know, maybe then someday we'll have the vibes they have. They were hard core in it with their trailers. I just.

I just feel like there's something there about the commitment level between these two gentlemen. Like Jim Harbaugh loves everything Greg Roman has ever done. Yeah. And the only reason this is all coming up, bearing the lead here, is that the Chargers signed J.K. Dobbins. The Baltimore Chargers. The Baltimore Chargers. It's a one-year deal. He's 25 years old. He's coming off at Torn Achilles. This was a flyer coming from the offensive coordinator. formerly of Baltimore that gives him an opportunity to come and play with another running back from Baltimore in Gus Edwards. Yes, so Greg Roman was there with Gus Bus and J.K. Dobbins said, I like those guys. Let's bring them over. We're going to run our scheme, which is my scheme. So, I mean, we've talked about this the entire offseason. They want to run the ball. And originally when we were talking about what a good coach and what a winning coach Hard Dog is, which he is,

It was, he's going to use his personnel. And he's going to, he's going to do what his personnel fits, not just, you know, look, I've run the ball in the past. But what he has decided to do is make his personnel fit running it in the future. Timmy, go ahead, Mike. The, it's just one, it's another checkmark for Gus Edwards, in my opinion that I agree completely that J.K. Dobbins will be recovering from his Achilles. Really, really hope that Dobbins can. get back to any kind of form of the player he was, which was electric and special. But he's been hurt basically his whole career. This doesn't stop the Chargers, of course, from spending a day two pick on the NFL draft. However, this is just like it's another part of the drumbeat growing that if the Chargers don't do that,

Gus Edwards will be shaping up to be a very interesting value running back. See, I'm curious because you both agree with that right off the bat that like Gus is the winner here. Dobbins should be ready for training camp and this is a one-two punch that when they were. He won't be. You don't think he'll be ready for training camp? Oh, I think he'll be ready to be on an NFL field. Not meaningful snaps for this team. Yeah, I don't think that he can unseat. Gus Edwards while he's in this recovery year. It's just so it's so interesting because he's always been the leader ahead of Gus with this group of people together. So obviously if he's if he's not capable, if he's not able to perform, then clearly he would not be the starter. There was one team willing to take a chance on J.K. Dobbins like this. And it was his former offensive coordinator. The demand for J.K. Dobbins wasn't there. Yeah, it's a bet. And I am.

I'm almost certain they're going to be drafting a running back. The question is just going to be, you know, does it go well beyond? Because they have a top pick in each round. So is it like, instead of third round, is it fifth round? You know, is that the way that they view this backfield? That will tell me, where they take this pick will tell me what they think of Dobbins' health. I also think that this does significantly impact. Like, let's say they get a day two running back. I still think that this significantly impacts that running back because this is not going to be. It seemed like, okay, you have Austin Eckler Workhorse Roll available for future running back. But now it seems like this is going to be a time share. Committee. Yeah, a committee between several backs. Yeah. And I don't know that there's anyone that's going to be just a fantasy star in this backfield. No, I believe it'll be a committee. But I'm until I see like several running backs return from an Achilles.

successfully, I will just keep going on the probability that he won't be close to what he was. Yeah, there's one thing to get snaps. There's another thing to be nearly as explosive as you were before. Yeah. You know, I think it was Ray G. Ray G went out and talked about the fact that like, because he was showing a picture of Aaron Rogers and the fact that you could see muscle atrophy in the recovered leg. And then he showed a picture. Shout out. Great, great follow. But he showed a picture of himself recovering and how atrophied the leg was. Like you're a running back. I mean, it's ironic. He's back to JK1. I was just saying this was this was. Oh, yeah. This was JK. He's got a strong leg though. We've seen it. We've seen him with one strong leg. And he dominates. He just can't all the way pull out, pull away because you know, that one strong leg isn't enough. At Ray GQU.E on Twitter if you want to follow that.

and see that picture I'm talking about. But look, I could talk about the Chargers all day. I really could because I think the actual most meaningful fantasy thing to happen to the Chargers that will impact more people in this entire draft will not be whether or not they run the football. It will be how much you undervalue the passing game and how appropriate that will be, whether they're going to probably draft somebody to compliment the passing game. Everyone's going to be all out on that, even though Lamar Jackson had MVP seasons and threw the ball prolifically with Greg Roman. And I think it's going to be a matter of, do we appropriate the risk properly as fantasy managers when it comes to Palmer and Kuge and whoever else they do. Well, today is our top 10 early quarterback ranking show. And I can tell you who's not being discussed today. He's not in there? Nope. Not for me. Yeah. I think I'm probably the most.

still okay with, but he's not, I didn't clearly have them high enough to push our consensus. Royce Freeman, one year deal with the Cowboys. So, um, let's go Royce. Rashi Rice expected to receive at least a multi-game suspension. This was from an article that came out on ESPN today, Adam Schaefter. Uh, that was, it was kind of a throwaway line, but Drew Davenport also came out and confirmed like if Shepter thinks that that's going to happen. It's meaningful information. Multi-game means, I started thinking about this. Means two or more. Yeah. Well, okay. Technically speaking, you're correct. I started thinking about this, though, in the respect of like, you know, we can say in Dynasty, okay, it doesn't really affect Rashi that much because there's a few games. Except it puts the team in a position where they have to potentially address the position, which does affect Rashi long term. Like if he was there from week one, maybe they don't feel the need to spend as early of a draft pick. And if they go first round pick,

I'm going to be concerned about the long-term outlook of Rashi Rice. I think that's fair. Zay Flowers will not face league discipline. Insufficient evidence to support his involvement in anything that violated the conduct policy. There were some issues with Zayflowers that came up earlier, but he's going to be fine. Always nice when the NFL just comes out and confirms it says nothing to see here. Move on. Joe Douglas, no news to report regarding a trade of Zach Wilson. This is the funniest piece of news. Why did we put this in here? What are we doing? That must have been Kyle. Just to have fun. But any minute now, guys, any minute, I'm sure we're going to have that hot trade for Zach Wilson. They must ask him about this at every press conference and he just has to keep saying nothing to say. I don't, I think he preempts it. He probably starts his press conference. Hey, everybody.

No news. No news to report on the Zach Wilson. Yeah, I didn't see this one, so I don't know the tone, but I love that the quote is, just no news to report. The throw in of the word just, there's just no news to report right now. Literally nothing to say. Please leave me alone. And I want to get your thoughts because I enjoy when they happen. But the Broncos released New jerseys. They put some new jerseys out. I saw their. car commercial announcing that it's pretty cool yeah not a big fan uh it was me it was just it was just vanilla yeah nothing impressive i'm happy that the fans have new jerseys i hope that you convince yourselves to like them what jersey of what player do you buy uh that team javanti i mean this team is going to be

Payton Manning. Yes, that's the, that you got to buy a throwback right now. Go classic. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Any other news over there in Ducers Alley? You go classic Broncos quarterback and you go Peyton. Yeah. Nothing over there, Papa Josh? No, I'm good. All right. Were you big fans of the jerseys guys? Me. Yeah. That's how, that's how I am. I want to be impressed, by the way. I am a, I'm a jersey nerd. I'm a logo nerd. And so my, I start. from the place of benefit of the doubt on most of these. And so what was your final takeaway? It was just could have been made on a create a team on Madden. That's how it felt. They always brag about the fact that we took input from 10,000 people that contributed to this and that and the other. That's the problem. That's the problem. You just need one good designer to make something hot. Art and design is not supposed to be.

This crowdsourced, that's how you end up with vanilla. You know, give me a special flavor for goodness sake. Just hire the best designer. Yeah, we want cookies and cream over here. Yeah. At least a cookie, though. All right. Something chunky. Enough Jersey talk. Let's talk quarterbacks. Quarterbacks. All right. We have been doing our early rankings episodes. We just took care of wide receivers, took care of running backs. It's not a deep dive. It's an overview looking at where we have players stacked up right ahead of the draft. So things will change. If you equip some of these players with better weapons from the draft, which is littered with a bunch of wide receiver options that could go very high, you know, things will change. But you want to dive in? Sure. Over the last decade, this is the stat we've been given out for each of the positions, an average of 4.2 quarterbacks repeated as top 10 options from the previous years.

So that sounds like it needs a caveat because you had, what was it, 2.7 wide receivers or sorry, running back. 3.7 wide receivers, 2.9 running back. About three running backs and four wide receivers each year. So this is a little bit higher. This is a little bit higher, but it is less important in the sense that like you're only starting 10 to 12 in your league, right? Single quarterback, yeah. Yeah, so I'm just saying like. Am I getting that wrong? Because if you repeat 4.2, so you got some turnover at the quarterback position, but like finishing, like the goal to me is not finishing top 12. Right. That's all I'm saying is this like I'm not, if I get top 12 at running back or top 12 wide receiver, I love it. It's amazing. It's great. Repeating there is very powerful. Yeah, you win the league. But being at 10 or 11 or 12. Is worthless. That's, that's Phillip Rivers. Philip Rivers, year after year after year after year was around the quarterback 10, 11, 12.

And on a week by week basis, he just accumulated those stats over the course of a season. Most of the weeks, he didn't help you win your fantasy league. Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, certain years, Patrick Mahomes, those guys help you win. So I see your point. It doesn't really matter if you have the quarterback 10 or 11 or 12. It just doesn't help. There's two ways that you can help me as a quarterback in fantasy. Number one, be a difference maker near the top half, like top five. The other way you can help me is. be a value that I take late in my draft allowing me to pick up other players. I've got one more way for you. Uh-huh. Hot streak! Oh, baby. Wait, what? A hot streak. When you get a quarterback on a good hot streak? Like a deck. Is that going back a couple of years? I guess. That's actually not been on the show. That was from foosball around the office. It's been mentioned. Have we been? Yeah. I feel like maybe. Hot streak. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But a good hot streak can really help you out.

Thank you, Jason. Yeah, no problem. Incredible analysis. Let's jump in. This is our consensus. The guys do it for multiple weeks. Really helps my team. Are we in four or six point for our consensus? Our consensus is six. We usually play in six point scoring. That's our standard leagues. That's our league of record. There is not as big a change as you think between a four point passing touchdown league and a six point passing league. You've got. obviously a little bit more change for your Jalen Hertz who's going to rush, or Josh Allen, who's going to have so many rushing touchdowns. But for the most part, it's less drastic than you think. And as far as the quarterback position overall, we get questions every year, every year. Well, I plan a six-point per passing touchdown league. So should quarterbacks be more important? No, not at all. All right. At number 10.

in our consensus, early rankings, 25 years old, finished as the quarterback five in his debut year as a starter, is Jordan Love. I've got him at 10, Jason at 10, Mike at 8. I think this is one of the offenses that you could see the most consistency and improvement from over the course of the year, so I don't mind someone jumping all in. Quarterback 9 in basketball, Mike, talk about... why you have them the highest and some of the bullish arguments for Jordan Love. So he is fascinating because I'll bring the name up of C.J. Stroud that the fantasy football community, rightly so, is super excited for C.J. Stroud. And you're like, oh, that was his rookie year. You know, he's got all these weapons around him. And it's like you can.

copy paste almost every argument for C.J. Stroud over to Jordan Love. That was basically his rookie year, except he was way better than C.J. Stroud for fantasy purposes, 4,000 yards, 32 passing touchdowns. Gave you four rushing touchdowns as well. 11 finishes inside the top 12, the second most passing touchdowns. And his, the wide receiver names for Jordan Love are not. as all inspiring, at least on the surface, as C.J. Stroud. Like, Stefan Diggs still carries a ton of name value, and Tank Dell is kind of like, was like this breakout rookie that everyone fell in love with. Meanwhile, Jordan Love is just surrounded by really, really good players, and he has a good pass catching running back. And they let him throw. Like, they let him go after it. So going into year two,

Yes, I know, not his real year two, but essentially his second starting season. I don't know like ADP and cost and everything and range of outcomes. Jordan Love and C.J. Stroud to me are like, I, you're going to pay a lot more. I'm just going to go for Jordan Love. You're going to pay a lot more for Stroud. It's a compelling argument. If you look at the last nine games played over the season, you talk about a hot streak. Hot streak. Jordan Love, 68% completion on pace for 4,600 yards. 38 touchdowns and five interceptions. A 108 quarterback rating in that stretch, running for another 143 and 4. That is insane. Those numbers are kind of kind of. Outrageous. If you could do it over the course of an entire season. But we, you know, we see that we're going to. He was the quarterback five. Yeah. He had a great season. I think the real question.

when you're talking about Jordan Love, I love the comp to C.J. Stroud because this is mostly a pocket passer, right? He's going to add 150 rushing yards or something, but he's not moving the needle there. He's mostly a pocket passer and young with a great receiving course. So a lot of good comps. My worry is, it comes down to like, what do you really believe? Do you believe he's a superstar? Because Stroud, in his rookie year, did seem like he is going to be a superstar. came in a little less touted, had time to develop. And so now I think it's like, did he just come in at kind of what his ceiling is? Because that would make a little bit more sense. We've seen seasons like this. I just want to caution us like he had 4,000 yards, 32 touchdowns. Awesome. Here's the season in his second season in the league. This player had 3,987 passing yards at 32 touchdowns, almost identical numbers.

It was Derek Carr. Who's a good quarterback? He's had a good career. But he's not a superstar. He's not a fantasy sensation. Did you just call him a good quarterback? Yeah, he's good at playing quarterback. I feel like that flies on the face of everything we've ever said about Derek Carr. Not ever. Certainly this last year. Watching Derek Carr was brutal. If you look at the tier of quarterback, good is not good. There's like, there's like, you know, Hall of Famer. And then there's like. you know, superstar and then there's great. Before great is franchise. Yeah. And then you've got good is like one of the lowest tiers. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Yeah. And then Zach Wilson is the bottom part of it. But just no news. My point. God, I wish there was news. There's just still nothing to report. Um, my, my point is do we believe he is more superstar or more, um, tenure vet?

Like Derek Carr's a 10-year vet. And I struggle with this because of how we viewed Jordan Love coming in as a rookie and having to sit for so long. And even when he got the few chances, showed a lot of weakness. But he looked great. He's on an awesome team. So, I mean, if you have to pick superstar or 10-year vet, I lean the 10-year vet. I'm starting to be. I'm starting to be moved with Jordan Love. emotionally. He's like a sunset over the ocean. I'm being moved by Mike's words as eloquent as he displayed them. The Stroud, I'm so much more confident in the offensive scheme and success that they have in Green Bay long term and what has been proven there. And so, and then I'm staring down, if I stared down both of these in the draft and there are multiple rounds apart, I think Mike is moving me. That's all I'm saying. And that was my larger point. I haven't met.

Eight. You guys have them at 10. I'm not saying, I'm not calling. I'm moving. Yeah, there we go. This show's supposed to be a little bit of that, a little bit of flexibility. I'm not calling for Jordan Love, the QB of the draft, top three. No, but in this range of guys we're talking about, ADP is so important to what is the, like, What does it cost? And what does it truly cost in terms of not just where I draft the quarterback, but what player did I skip to go all in on a particular quarterback? All right. Let's take a quick break and come back with another interesting situation. All right. I'm sure we will talk a lot more about Jordan Love over the course of the off season. We've got to get on to a player that finishes the quarterback four won me a championship. He's a beautiful man. And his number.

He's not under a new contract, but comes in at 9. Dak Prescott. I have him at 6, Mike at 11, Jason at 9. So you two can fight. I'm in the middle. Yeah, look, I just still believe in the fundamentals of this entire offense. And the stretch run for Dak, I brought this up before. It wasn't just like a handful of games. It was actually, you know, the majority of the season. It was 12 of the 18 games. If you take his final 12 games, That's where his stretch run was. That is nearly a 5,000 touchdown pace, a 44 touchdown. Five thousand yards. Five thousand yards. Four thousand yards. Those are outrageous numbers and the fundamentals of this offense are consistent and the same. You didn't get running production last year. You probably aren't going to get prolific production this year. No matter who they draft, it's going to run through DAC and CD. And so these are two players that are playing for contracts. Couldn't be a better situation.

I love the draft value of Dak. I think he's going further than he should. I have him lower, clearly, but I don't have a problem with, with Dak. He can go on an absolute heater. His, hot streak. Yeah, there, there it is. By the way, we just went on a trip to Los Angeles for about four days. We had some meetings we got to do. And somehow during this trip, it was determined by Jason that every time he landed a joke, he would say swish and validate his own joke whether or not we thought it was funny no but once i say swish i know that it was a he would confirm the joke it would be like he'd say something and me and mike wish we had like a crickets button and then a couple seconds later he'd just from the back seat he'd be going swish that's right i mean when it hits the bottom of the net yeah i mean take it back points scored it's a real power move yeah it was try it try it at home next time you have a good joke

Maybe you don't get the response you want. Swish. It feels good, man. And then walk away, right? I mean, go to the other end of the court. Oh, absolutely. Smoke bomb that. But it was, my slight concerns with deck are he beat the crap out of bad teams. And he beat the crap out of teams when he was at home. Of course, he has all of his home games. But being, the splits are pretty wide, you know, 19 points a game versus tough defense is 26. against bottom half defenses. So that's where that's all. That's where my concern comes is can the hot streak really keep rolling? There's certainly a chance that it can, but they were like they finished in first. They will have a first place difficulty schedule. What I like about DAC is that when he is on its nuclear, he finished one, three, two, one, three, three, seven, three. So he had.

A tremendous amount of finishes that were weak winning. But, you know, we've also seen a lot of DAC over time. You're going to have variability in the touchdown. Which is why he's the QB8 in basketball. Yeah. If the general public were all in, I mean, it's a little surprising that he's only at eight after what he did. I think it's so many years of being kind of not at that league winning level. Sure. Yeah. When you're a mid-level guy, people want to look elsewhere. They just keep searching for. Yes, keep searching for a league winner, but this is his third time in his career where he's been a top six fantasy quarterback in the course of the season. That being said, he's had a long career, so we are used to him not finishing there. I obviously am in the middle, on the rankings between you guys. He is an okay pick, but I doubt that he continues that nuclear pace he was on. I mean, there was a reason in the middle of the season, you know, Mike was saying this is the guy who you could pick up off of waivers at that point.