Fantasy Football: Quarterbacks

Hey guys, I’m the Fantasy Guru here again to give you insight and help you win your fantasy football league this season.

This week we begin a four part series where each week we’ll look into a different offensive position. Last week, I introduced my first rankings of the fantasy football season. This week we can use these to study the fantasy relevance, value and importance of the field marshal of a football team – the quarterback.

To begin with, I want to introduce you to the concept of tiering. For those of you who don’t know what I mean, tiering involves taking players and putting them into groups or “tiers” based on where they are ranked and where they are likely to be drafted. This is a system I have used very successfully in the past in order to get my head around player values and it also helps when it comes to making rankings – especially at the running back and wide receiver positions where there are so many players involved.

For quarterbacks, I tend to use six tiers – Elite, Very Good, Starters, Sleepers, Backups and Waivers. A quick note here – the tiers I will be using here generally apply to 10 and 12 team leagues but you can easily adapt them to larger leagues.

The Elite tier of fantasy quarterbacks numbers just three – Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Drew Brees in that order. Strictly speaking, Aaron Rodgers is in a tier on his own as he is the only quarterback I would take in the first round generally but the other two must be considered alongside him in order to help keep a flexible strategy. Anyway, these three are in the Elite tier because they are the ones I know I can rely on. Quarterbacks in the Elite tier are those who you know you can draft with utmost confidence and that will provide guaranteed production. Elite quarterbacks will generally have the highest floor – meaning that the worst they may give you is the best of any other – but they also have a very high ceiling – that being the projected limit to their production.

The Very Good tier consists of four quarterbacks – Michael Vick, Cam Newton, Eli Manning and Matthew Stafford. At this tier, the ceiling of players is still relatively high but the floor is lower. These quarterbacks are the kind who may have reliability issues of one kind or another but are still of an exceptional quality. In the case of Vick and Stafford, the obvious reliability issue is health, in Cam’s case it’s experience and with Eli he is here based on his 2011 performance and is very much on a “show me that again” leash given that his ability last year was considerably more than he had shown previously.

Next we have the Starter category – Tony Romo, Peyton Manning, Matt Ryan, Matt Schaub and Philip Rivers. At this level we are looking at players who should be in your starting lineup most weeks and should be drafted as the #1 quarterback on your team. If you are drafting and the members of this tier are gone then you’re taking a massive risk with your team compared to the rest of your league. These players tend to be those who have proven they can perform well but are missing something. In terms of Romo, Rivers and Ryan that something is the ability to perform consistently and do much more than a satisfactory job week to week. With Schaub and Manning, they are in this tier due to severe injury and team concerns.

Next the Sleepers. This may seem an odd name for players ranked around the top 15 but when it comes to quarterbacks this is the area where you tend to have a player or two jump into Starter or Very Good status by mid-season. This year the player in this category are Ben Roethlisberger, Robert Griffin III, Andy Dalton and Jay Cutler. Yes, Ben Roethlisberger is a sleeper for the simple reason that he hasn’t been able to live up to Starter status on fantasy teams recently but has all the tools to get back there should he perform. In terms of RG3 it’s all about upside given we haven’t seen him play yet. With Dalton and Cutler it’s about skillset and team setup – both of these players have shown they can perform well but need to step up in order to become every week fantasy starters. All players in this tier must be considered as backups by those whose #1 quarterback is in the Starter tier.

Now we come to the backups who in a 10 team league are Alex Smith, Joe Flacco, Sam Bradford and Josh Freeman. These are players who are not expected to perform well in fantasy but should provide adequate assistance when your #1 quarterback has his bye week. It is recommended drafting one of these quarterbacks as your backup if you have a Very Good #1 or if you drafted a Starter #1 and missed on a Sleeper as backup.

Finally we have the waiver players who is basically everyone else. Names to note who could come into fantasy relevance this season are Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer and Ryan Fitzpatrick – of course there are others but these are the ones to watch in my opinion.

When it comes to draft strategy, quarterbacks are likely to be in more demand than ever this year due to the lack of depth at running back. The necessity to own a top quarterback will be high given that so much risk will be associated with running backs that you must have a stable quarterback to support that risk. Unless your running back corps is ridiculously deep – you own two of the top six or three of the top ten – then it is imperative you have a strong stable situation at quarterback.

Also, I would note to anyone who takes a quarterback in the first two rounds that your other pick be a running back if possible in order to have a stable corps as wide receiver is deeper than usual. For those of you who like to wait until later to draft a quarterback, be warned that you must have a very good running back combination to do so or you will likely find yourself struggling to win this season.

I hope these hints and tips have been useful. If you have any questions about your fantasy team, about tiering or about the quarterbacks discussed here then feel free to tweet me @chrissmithsz or leave a comment below. Next week I will be discussing the running back position once again using the tiering system to help explain how best to draft running backs this season. Until then, this is the Fantasy Guru signing off.

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