Every year I go into my league’s draft (this is our 20th season together) trying to figure out which QB is going to lead my team to the “Joe” (my league’s Lombardi Trophy). For the last couple of seasons, I chose Drew Brees.
He is a good choice, right? Well yes and no. The great thing about Drew Brees is that when he scores, he scores in bunches. But when he doesn’t, it usually means doom to my team.
In most fantasy sports, consistency leads to winning. For example, knowing that I can expect at least 15 points from my QB, and at least 10-15 points from each of my running back/wide receiver/tight end slots puts me in the position to win each week. Consistency is a great start but there are also a handful of other factors that can help you choose the right QB. To help me decide on my QB this season, I scoured the internet to gather information from a bunch of fantasy football heavy hitters and collated the data into a Qlik Sense app to see if I could make some sense of it. I ranked each QB in each of the categories and created a weighted total for each QB. I included categories such as touchdowns (passing and running), passing yards, QB strength of schedule, age, games played, quality games (games where the QB scored 17+ points), and Average Draft Position (ADP). After crunching the numbers, here is what I discovered:
If you are going for TDs, there are 4 QBs who are projected to throw an average of 2+ touchdowns a week (Andrew Luck, Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning and Tony Romo).
If you are looking for a strictly yardage QB, Matt Ryan is projected to average just over 300 yards a game and the next three QBs (Brees, Luck, P. Manning) are projected to average 290-299 yards per game.
Here is a chart that shows the projected TDs vs Yardage with the bubble size showing you the QB strength of schedule (A bigger bubble indicates an easier schedule).
In this final table you can see the data for each QB. You can use the list boxes to filter the data.
So who am I targeting for my QB this season? Surprise! It’s Drew Brees, again J. There are several reasons why. These include: his QB SOS is the 7th easiest, he is projected to average just shy of 2 TDs and 300 yards per game, he played in all 16 game last year and he had 10 quality starts (I am hoping that number increases a bit). I am also leaning toward my hometown QB Sam Bradford as a sleeper.
Using the comments below, tell me who you are targeting this season.
Data for these charts was pulled from FF Toolbox, CBS Sports and ESPN.
Photo credit: Foter / Public domain