Fantasy Football Strategy: Elite QBs & Questioning Myself

We get hundreds and hundreds of questions submitted to our website. I sometimes get lost in the avalanche.

Heck, every once in a while I check my LinkedIn and find people slipping into my DMs either asking for a job or asking random dynasty questions. There is a love/hate with Start/Sit questions depending on what mood I find myself in.

This question came up on a recent Fantasy Footballers episode:

Are Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen worth 2nd round draft capital?

My gut reaction was “Nah. I’m not doing that.” We did the research on the topic and I began questioning myself.

QB Strategies in Fantasy Football

Keep in mind that we play a game that does not consistent of simple binary decisions: this-or-that. However, we’ve seen how traditionally there have been two camps for QB strategy: elites or late round guys.

The prevailing strategy (yes, I know not in your league!) in the early 2000s when fantasy football was exploding was grabbing an elite QB. Between having Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, or a cheat code Michael Vick year, QB ADP not only was elevated but it was celebrated. Over time, there was a discrepancy in the market with cheap, late round QBs with league-winning upside being overlooked. Analysts such as J.J. Zachariason did an excellent job promoting this strategy and opening the wider fantasy football world to this conversation.

However, as this strategy took on more life, the value in the later rounds began to evaporate as more and more of your league mates also were waiting to pull the trigger with you. It was a standoff, a Cold War where one person waited to see shots fired first. The pendulum swung to the point where it would’ve been easy to lock into late round QB as gospel and proclaim “this is the way”.  But as JJ and countless others have shared, we play a game that functions as a market with simple supply and demand opportunity costs. Hopefully, you were paying attention in Economics class because fantasy football is not always a this-or-that binary decision. There is nuance and a chance to ask deeper questions: “what does this QB have to do at his price to pay off?”

Opportunity Cost

This is the common argument: what other players/positions you are passing on if you take a QB early? The inverse is also true: what QBs are you passing on if you wait for a QB late?

ADP Performance

Because we play in a game with a cost benefit, we hat does this player HAVE to do at their ADP to “pay off”. Using fantasy points per game expectation in 4 point passing leagues:

• A 1st round pick needed 24+ fantasy points per game
• As you move past pick 15, needed to hit 22.5+ fantasy points per game

We’ve had 21 QBs drafted in the 1st 2 rounds since 2011. Over last 10 years, ALL the early QBs were taken Pick 16 or later. Here is how they performed relative to ADP expectation:

Here is the simple data we used on the show:

• 11 out of 21 QBs (52%) paid off relative to their ADP
• BUT… we’ve been dang good at it over the last FIVE years.
• SEVEN of the 8 QBs drafted in 1st 2 rounds since 2020 were relative hits.

Takeaways

ADP is getting sharper and sharper over time. It does not mean it is perfect but we are drafting elite QBs at better spots than early 1st round guys a decade ago.

Instead of looking at this as a pendulum swing, perhaps there is a nuanced middle ground that you and your league mates may have landed on this past year: we saw a lot more rosters (in 1QB leagues) hoarding 2+ QBs.

Instead of going into the season subscribing to just one strategy, there was a 3rd door that also could be equally viable. Any strategy can work, in theory. If you hit on the right Elite QB (Lamar Jackson), congrats! If you held out and took Jayden Daniels at the end of your drafts, you felt like the smartest person in the room. However, there were also people who picked up Baker Mayfield and paired him with another serviceable QB like Bo Nix to mix and match all year long.