The Dynasty Lifecycle of Quarterbacks (Fantasy Football)

The struggle in dynasty fantasy football often revolves around balancing short-term needs with long-term potential.

This brings up the following questions:

• How do you navigate the delicate balance between building a championship roster and ensuring its sustainability for the years to come?
• How long should you wait for a player to break out in the NFL?
• Or, when should you trade away a proven veteran for a promising rookie, even if it means sacrificing immediate production?

In the Dynasty Lifecycle series, we attempt to answer these questions by leveraging historical data (provided by @Stathead) to understand the peaks and valleys of an NFL player. For each position, let’s focus on these key numbers to accomplish the following:

• Evaluating the Draft Capital
• Finding the Breakout
• Avoiding the Decline
• Mapping the Lifecycle

If you have any questions, reach out on Twitter @FF_MarvinE!

Evaluating the Draft Capital

As with every position, draft capital remains the most predictive variable for success in the league. While there will always be outliers, first-round prospects will always have the higher breakout rates for fantasy football.

The impact of draft capital can be evaluated in multiple ways. One way to analyze fantasy performance is by examining each round’s breakout (or hit) rates. In my analysis, I set a fantasy point threshold to define a breakout performance. For the chart above, a threshold of 16.0 fantasy points per game was used, which is based on the average QB12 performance over the last two decades. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of players who met or exceeded the threshold by the total number of players drafted in each round.

To no surprise, the first round leads in breakout rate at 64%. They also lead in total quarterbacks drafted with 39, which is more than the second and third rounds combined. In addition, 69.4% of the breakouts in our sample size are from quarterbacks drafted in the first round. Intuitively, this makes sense considering the significant investment teams make when they draft a quarterback that early. As a result, they often receive multiple seasons to prove that they have the talent and skill level to be a franchise cornerstone. We saw this most recently with Tua Tagovailoa, who did not break out until this third season. On the other hand, Mac Jones received multiple opportunities to start but never produced a QB1 season. As a result, Jones will now be a backup to Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville this upcoming season.

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