The TRUTH About Fantasy QBs in 2020, Part 2 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/21

easily go undrafted in the majority of single quarterback leagues next year. And so it's one of those like if the first four or five weeks, he's got a lot of, you know, home games against bad projected opponents, then that's someone I'm going in on. If he is, starts his year with a difficult schedule, I think he's going to be a schedule based draft decision for me next season. It's nice that they found, you know, coming into the year so much doubt with.

digs leaving it's nice to know that you have you know the ascendant talent of jefferson number 12 at the position with a 22 uh that's where matt ryan ranked inconsistency 12 in total points 22nd in consistency ew that's that's 44% of his games busted is that though is matt ryan let's let's figure this out does that make matt ryan on the truth episode the worst fantasy football quarterback

that's possible. Yeah. Because he finished death. You start 12. He finished at 12. So you're the worst of the starters. And then you were so inconsistent that you could deliver. I'm looking at his consistency chart. It's shocking to have six games outside the top 25 on the week. Yeah. And he would start. He wouldn't just be bad all the time, though. He would start the run of those games.

after he finally convinced you that you should be starting, Matt Ryan, opening up with a QB finish of 7 and 6. Then went on a run, three straight outside of the top 24. Then he's back. Okay, okay, Matt Ryan. We're going into the bye week. I trust you, my man. Take me there. Another run all outside of the top 15. This was infuriating. Matt Ryan is a better quarterback than this.

in my opinion. You had the Julio Jones problem. They totally botched his situation with his hamstring, which is the interesting thing about the hamstring story. I don't know if you guys remember. Devante Adams had a hamstring problem at the exact same time as Julio Jones. And the Green Bay Packers sat Devante down and said, we want you to heal up. And Julio Jones, I don't know, forced his way on the field. The trainers told him he was good to go.

And you see the tail of those two seasons could not be more opposite. One of the coaches was secure in his job, and one of them was playing to have another year. And so you get Julio on the field. Obviously, that's a huge question. We presume Julio will be here and be the starter. I think by the time next year comes, you could have another quarterback on this roster. And Matt Ryan is an untouchable draft pick other than if the first couple games of the season.

start well. Does he get the deed to P. River at this point? Is that handed off to Matt Ryan? I mean, yellow ice? I was immediately. Oh, yellow ice. Oh, Maddie yellow ice. Oh, goodness. I think. Oh, what's funny is in my head. Good to know we went about half a show without a yearn related reference. Jason, you know, we've talked, it was a couple shows ago about the city of Atlanta. It seems like the local press is.

Like, we need to move on from Matt Ryan. Is it time to move on from Matt Ryan? You're telling me, aside from family life and all that, I'm just saying, you know, the professional situation. Hey, Matt Ryan, you could go be the quarterback for the Colts next year. Or would you rather be the quarterback for this team? Like, Matt Ryan, the player, I'd be very happy to go play for the Colts and replace the P. River.

Well, they had a lot of close games this year. They had a lot of opportunities to win games, and that was with a missing Julio. So I don't know if they think it's as bad as maybe the fantasy community feels like it is. Look, the only quarterback out there that can rival Matt Ryan in consistency, awfulness was Matthew Stafford, but he was because of injury. It wasn't his fault. He had games where he'd start for, you know, a drive or two, and then...

went out with injury. Matt Ryan did this all on his own. This is yellow ice. They do. This is yellow ice. They do feel similar, though, because the fan bases with the kind of mediocrity of the teams have a weird fatigue that the rest of the outside world doesn't have for those players. There are Detroit fans who want to move on from Matthew Stafford. There are Falcons fans that want to move on from Matt Ryan. By the way, here's one area where he was consistent. In 2019 and 2020, he couldn't.

put up numbers against top 16 defenses. So when you're looking at that streaming equation, look, nine points worse against top 16 defenses last year, nine points worse, essentially this year. I think you're looking at this all wrong, Andy. Nine points better against bottom 16. Oh, okay. Ten points better. I guess it's a matter of perspective there.

So we can move on, though. Let's touch on a number of these later quarterbacks. We can be brief and bring up guys that you guys really want to talk about as well. But Derek Carr finished 13th at the position, 16th in consistency. You know, this was a pretty consistent against top and bottom defenses, home and away, but just right there in that Derek Carr zone, which is not really a fantasy place to be. Nope.

6% great games would be something to highlight there. And we'll share some of these truth charts with you guys on Twitter so that you can see some of the breakdown. But busted 38% of the time. Yeah, okay. And you couldn't really get a handle on which games it was coming. Sometimes it would be a bad matchup.

He has a good game, a great match, if he has a bad game. At the end of the year, his splits were about the same. So he wasn't really a great streaming candidate. I don't think he's got the weapons to get me excited. He's got the wallerous, and that's it. I think they whiffed on their draft picks. I banned him. Didn't I ban him? I haven't sent in the car since then, nor will I. Well, he sent it in because he was, I think he was the number one quarterback on the week after you banished him. Yeah. Now, are we talking guys at random or are we going?

Let me walk through just a few more real quick, and if you guys have comments on them, you can share them, and then you can bring up some names if I miss them. Big Ben, at 14, consistency of 19, says he wants to come back and play again. He is as close to a hands-off fantasy quarterback as you can get. I mean, 7% great games, 33% good. Those numbers stink. Busted a third of the time.

I mean, this was not a good year for Big Ben. You look at the consistency chart and, you know, it's crazy. Gross. He's done. I mean, it's just, it's over. He should probably go the way of Breeze and Rivers. I think it's over for Big Ben. It was wild that with a season of 3800 yards and 33 touchdowns, you know, that's fine. But he still managed to sustain several fantasy relevant.

pass catching weapons, you know, from Claypool, Deontay Johnson. It was just wild that the quarterback didn't come through. He's a 16-game pace of 648 passing attempts. That is, that he's throwing the ball. They didn't run. They couldn't run. Of every game, and he, you know, he got 3,800 passing yards. He's.

washed. Honestly, it reminds me of what happened to breeze. He did take downfield shots, but the way the offense moved was dinks and dunks, and Juju was a possession guy, a few yards from the line of scrimmage, and you threw screens to Deante. And you're going to lose Juju this off season. So it's not getting better, I don't think, for Big Ben. Stafford finished at 15th, consistency rank of 21st. Honestly, Stafford was probably my biggest disappointment at the quarterback position.

for the whole year based on how we finished last year. Some of that's not his fault. Kenny Goliday was essentially gone for the entirety of the year. But you didn't see. He'd be gone next year. He absolutely could. And then he had his injuries. He had injuries. Marvin Jones could be gone too. So this whole off passing offense, Matthew Stafford could be gone. I mean, that's not a zero percent in the offseason for this team. Sure. If you're building with a six-year contract with Dan Campbell, a decision is going to have to be made on whether Stafford's your future. I think you'd be.

an idiot not to keep him there. But 4,000 yards, 26 passing touchdowns, injured frequently, only a handful of games in the top 10. If I'm the Colts and I get to decide between Stafford and Matt Ryan, give me Stafford all day. I agree. I agree. There's got to be a decent age gap between them, right? I think Stafford's only 33. What? No way. Is that true? 33 years old. That is correct. He's been around forever.

So Stafford has a, I think that's why I would keep him if I was Dan Campbell. Two-year age gap. Matt Ryan's 35 right. Yeah. Cam Newton. All right. Do you in? Cam Newton? Yeah. I don't think he starts another game outside of an injury. Baker Mayfield. Here's a player that. That's the one I want to talk about. Sure. Yeah. Why don't you talk about Baker? Because he was the 17th ranked fantasy quarterback, 28th in consistency. That is not good. That's awful.

But his second half of the year, he was quarterback 15 in consistency. We talked about this a lot through the season. He had a ton of weathery, awful, impossible to have good fantasy success games in the middle of the season where he had his worst stretch. In the beginning of the season, when there wasn't the weather problems and you had O'Dell Beckham, he was met at best. But as the season went on,

When they got after the weather and O'Dow Beckham was not part of this team and you just let Baker run the offense, he was good. He played well. He looked good. He looked good in the playoffs to me. I think he is going to be someone I'm interested in next year. And I'm really curious what this team is going to do with O'Dow Beckham. Can they look and say our offense is better without Beckham? Can we move on from him?

Or is it just going to be Beckham added back in? And if so, is that worse for Baker? Well, I don't think Baker, you know, we're going to have a differing opinion here. No, I gave Baker credit in the playoffs. I think Baker executed the quarterback position extremely well down the stretch for the team. I agree with every sentiment you have. However, this is like giving me a less athletic lower floor Russell Wilson.

type of solution for my fantasy team. The identity of Kevin Safansky has always been to run the football. They have two elite running backs. They have a good defense. I do not think I'm going to be able to ever count on Baker in the current environment outside of a streaming potential. Mike, where do you see Baker's future? Because this, in totality, was not a good year for Baker. Yeah, I would say it's an okay.

year for and the weather in cleveland plans to be about the same year to year that's fair that is i mean it's not good they're not changing it absolutely um yeah i lean more on the side uh with you andy that i like baker mayfield i think that baker is a good quarterback who can execute but with his situation and those around him i don't think that he can make that jump to being a top tier

Wide receiver. The question of... What about a quarterback, though? Sorry, a quarterback. I started thinking wide receiver because it's an absurd question. It is an absolutely absurd question to say, is a quarterback better if you remove an elite wide receiver who, in the first couple years of that wide receiver's career, he did things that we've never seen in the history of the NFL? Could that quarterback be better if he's not on the team? It's an absurd question. And yet it is a very fair question because we have seen...

You know, about, we've seen enough games with Baker and O'Dell Beckham together to say that it's, it doesn't work. Could it be fixed? Sure. But at this point, it just, whatever the connection is between those two guys, it just doesn't work. I've thought a lot about that whole situation because Kevin Safansky came out and said how, you know, how committed to the team O'Dell Beckham is, how excited he is to have him back next year. The contract is not conducive for Beckham leaving.

You know, Landry's the best friend. Like, I think Beckham's back in full next year. And I wonder if it, you know, this team found itself with a brand new head coach halfway through the year. I wonder if it was less Beckham than we think. Played Baltimore, Washington, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh in that beginning part of the year. Those are four extremely good defenses during those Beckham years. So, you know.

I saw enough Higgins and Hodge in the last part of the season. And Baker just learning an offense at that beginning point. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's absurd that this is even an okay discussion to have. It's not hot takey. It sounds like a stupid hot take. Is Kirk Cousins better without Justin Jefferson? Like, what? What are you talking about? That's a stupid question. I'm glad you brought up the opponents, Andy, because hopefully O'Dell Beckham.