My Quarterback rankings for this week are a day late and a dollar short, but I swear these have not been adjusted after Thursday night’s total destruction of the Falcons.
Disclaimer: this article is being written by someone in the grips of sick brain, so please take all advice with appropriate grains of salt.
Week 10 saw some normalcy return to the NFL: Patrick Mahomes threw for 400 yards and 5 TDs: buy-low window decisively slammed shut on your greedy fingers. Josh Allen once again looked superhuman, throwing bombs against the Jets at will and locking on to Stephon Diggs. Matt Ryan once again looked like a scared little girl, Trevor Lawrence is in danger of being permanently broken by the dysfunctional man-child known as Urban Meyer.
One anomaly from week 9 that the NFL universe declined to right was the Rams being pushovers against tough defenses that beseige the quarterback. Matt Stafford was again subpar, although his first pick was definitely caused by Odell Beckham quitting on a route in his first game. I don’t see Odell as a positive for this team and surfaced these concerns as I poured boiling water down the sink (props to @cooterdoodle).
Anyway, since distinguishing causation and correlation is passé, let’s just say that Odell is a cancer and that’s why the Rams lost again, not that McVay can’t figure out how to respond to the type of defense that Vrabel and Shanahan threw at him. Because he’s a genius folks. GENIUS.
Let’s get down to the QB Sit/Start analysis for week 11.
Obvious Superflex QB1 Starts Week 11
Tom Brady vs the Giants: Because Brady, and because it’s the Giants.
Josh Allen vs the Colts: Are the Colts good? Yes. Will it matter? NO.
Lamar Jackson vs the Bears: Last time we saw the Bears they actually put up a pretty decent fight against the Steelers. Hopefully no one postures too hard at the Ravens sideline. The NFL is a freaking joke.
Patrick Mahomes vs the Cowboys: Jekyll and Hyde defense, but Mahomes is rolling as soon as I declared him a questionable start last week.
Dak Prescott vs the Chiefs: The Chiefs defense still sucks, and Dak looks right after his week 9 vortex of the absurd game.
Kyler Murray vs the Seahawks: Two weeks to rest a tweaked ankle should be plenty. I’d imagine Kyler is amped for this NFC West battle.
Aaron Rodgers vs the Vikings: The opposite of the Samson effect, his hippie-dipshit girlfriend got him to grow out his hair and sapped his strength. Barely a QB1 this year.
Joe Burrow vs the Raiders: Burrow had a terrible two-week stretch prior to the bye, though week 9 (of course) was more a case of one bad interception and some really bad drops. Expect a much better performance.
Jalen Hurts vs the Saints: I believe Hurts is good at real football, and think he just needs a little time to transition his game. Saints are good against the run so he might have to resort to actually throwing the ball, which I think he can do.
Russell Wilson vs the Cardinals: The big question is how hurt is he going into this one, and how badly will Carrol’s stone-age offense hold him back. Check injury reports on the former, we already know the latter.
Justin Herbert vs the Steelers: Will someone please get this kid some strawberries and a battleship? Herbert has been pretty awful his last two and the Steelers are no slouch.
Ryan Tannehill vs the Texans: Tannehill has two top 10 QB finishes, so you can trust him to finish in the top 12 against the Texans who barely qualify as a football team. Regardless who starts for the Texans expect Tannehill to be gifted great field position at least a couple times via interceptions.
Risky But Worth-It Superflex QB2 Starts
Derek Carr vs the Bengals
Almost always good for around 300 yards, the big question around Carr is where are the TDs? Only 5 across his last three games. He really needs to get his tunnel-vision connection with Waller back going, but even without he remains the top of the QB2 heap with QB1 upside. Start with confidence.
Justin Fields vs the Ravens
Fields is really coming along, and actually managed to pull a decent game out of the week 9 vortex of suck. His lone interception was basically a batted pass that feel into the defender’s arms. The Ravens are not an especially strong defense this year, and dare I say it, the Bears could be on an upswing. I think Fields is one of the stronger QB2 starts this week with QB1 upside due to his rushing floor, which is averaging about 60 yards his last 4 games.
Cam “Grandmama” Newton vs WFT
Cam didn’t really provide enough passing work to evaluate last week but he did score two TDs, one on the ground, so we know that we can at least rely on his vulture points. I expect something like 180 passing, 56 rushing, and two TDs of each variety. I also expect Christian McCaffrey owners to pull their hair out, but at least he won’t be killing every single drive like his predecessor The #DarnoldSpiral. Start without confidence.
Grandmama style for days…
Mac Jones vs the Falcons
Jones is basically the opposite of Jalen Hurts: a great real-life QB who is spotty, at best, at fantasy. Either he gets yards without TDs or TDs without yards, as Belichik is committed to ugly wins this year. I think Jones will develop into a QB1 with his skillset, but not this year. He does make for a solid QB2 start this week against an extremely inept and uber-conservative Falcons team. Mid-range QB2 start.
Carson Wentz vs the Bills
A friend of mine offered to write an article for my new fantasy site. Here it is:
It’s humorous that A) Wentz has not, in fact, been dog-shit lately and B) He is on this same friend’s team, but this week against the Bills I think we can expect him to be close to that. The Bills are just killers on opposing QBs, just ask Mike White. I think Wentz will be sub-250 passing and maybe just one TD. Start with caution, but he’s better than a lot of the other crap out there.
Kirk Cousins vs Green Bay
Cousins has turned in two straight top-10 performances (7 and 9) the last two weeks, and almost cracked 3-hundo last week, but I have a feeling things will be different against Green Bay. They managed to keep Mahomes in his funk, and are third in the league in allowed passing yards per game. I don’t see a big game from Cousins against the Packers, probably more of a Cook game.
Tua Tagovailoa vs the Jets
Tua marks the last of the viable QB2 starters, and I would check injury reports. He did not look right coming in for Brissett last week, fluttering several passes badly. The Jets constitute the resistance of a thrice-used condom in the passing game, so even with a gimpy hand he can probably score more than the rest of the pack here.
Trevor Siemian vs the Eagles
OK, so the guy has strung together some good games and he’s starting over Hill for a reason, maybe other than Hill sucking bad enough at QB to lose a job to Jameis Winston. You can’t really argue with 298 and 2 off the waiver wire late in the season, but he’s done this for stretches before and the wheels came off suddenly and drastically. Seems like even the Eagles could take advantage of him. But probably an ok QB2 start.
Sit These Guys in Superflex for Better Options
Joe Flacco vs the Dolphins: A better option for the desperate than those below, likely available on your WW right now, Joe will still struggle against the Miami pass rush that has found its footing in the past few weeks.
Ben Roethlisberger/Mason Rudolph vs the Chargers: They are basically the same racist player at this point, and neither will do well against the Chargers.
Matt Ryan vs New England: Possibly no Cordarelle Patterson which leaves Pitts the only weapon Belichik will have to focus on taking away. The Falcons are falling apart on the gimpy withered arm of Ryan.
Taylor Heinicke vs the Panthers: 4 TDs over his last four games, the Panthers pass rush is going to eat this guy alive.
Baker Mayfield vs the Lions: This guy is held together by duct-tape at this point. Not even the Lions could make him a good start.
Trevor Lawrence vs the 49ers: We all just saw what the Niners D did to Stafford right? Yeah, bench.
Daniel Jones vs the Bucs: Can we declare this a failed experiment yet? Seeing nods all around, ok. Failed experiment. Next.
Tyrod Taylor: Few debuts were more disappointing than his three-interception, five-sack disaster.
Jared Goff vs the Browns: One touchdown over his last five games, 114 yards passing last week. Time to see what Blough can do.
There is no question Jalen Hurts is good at pretend football, or what we call fantasy football. He’s third overall in standard PPR scoring this year behind only Brady and Lamar Jackson, and ahead of Stafford due to his high rushing floor.
But Hurts lacks the job security the other four listed enjoy. Even Brady, who will be entering the 2022 season at age 45, has much more job security than Hurts, aged 23.
The Eagles not only stand at 3-6 this season, decidedly out of the playoff hunt in the stacked NFC, they have three first round picks, all currently projected in the top 15. So while the Eagles have plenty of needs, it’s going to be tempting to spend at least one of those picks on a QB unless Hurts decisively makes his case for being the franchise QB going forward.
If Only There Were a Way of Looking Into the Future
There is no time machine or crystal ball, but there is at least one player we can look at who bears striking similarities to Hurts. Running QB, Heisman finalist, inaccurate passer who many questioned could ever transition to a true starting quarterback. You might have heard of him, Lamar Jackson.
Lamar circa 2019
The comparisons don’t stop there. They both sat for most of their rookie year behind an established QB. And once you look into the relevant statistics of their first 13 games, the comparisons only get more compelling.
QBR
QBR is an excellent predictive metric for game by game performance. Other than his spike game in his 8th week, Lamar’s QBR line looks very similar to Hurts, with the variance starting in game 11 with Hurts trending north and Lamar trending south.
Of course this doesn’t really measure stats that impact fantasy performance, but we’re not really concerned with fantasy performance here. We know that Hurts is killing it in terms of fantasy, the question is whether Hurts is showing the metrics that will make the GM and Head Coach comfortable with him at quarterback.
Completion Percentage
One of the biggest knocks against Hurts has been his accuracy, and while completion percentage is not the perfect metric as it doesn’t account for drops and intentional throws out of bounds, across a large enough sample size it’s good enough for a general measure of accuracy.
You can see from this chart there is little variance between the two QBs for their first 13 games. Lamar was labeled as inaccurate when he started out as well, and while he isn’t the most accurate QB in the league now, few would argue that he is one of the league’s most valuable QBs and one any team would like to have as a starter.
Passing Yards
Both quarterbacks are great with their legs and can produce on the ground. That’s never been in question, but both have also had to fight off the impression that they are really just glorified running backs, whether that’s fair or not.
If anything, Hurts has shown more as a passer than Jackson in terms of this metric across their first 13 games. Hurts has 4 games north of 300 passing yards while Jackson has only 1 which came in his 8th game. For the past 4 games Hurts has had low attempts while the team is focused on winning games on the ground. Also something Lamar dealt with in the beginning of his career.
Interceptions
The most visible way a quarterback can hurt his team’s chances to win is by turning the ball over. This is the one area that Hurts has underperformed Jackson, as Jackson had a long stretch between game 3 through 10 where he did not throw a single pick.
Hurts has not had a 3-interception game like Lamar, and is trending in the right direction now with no picks game 11 through 13, but that also comes with decreased attempts.
Conclusion
First, Hurts is not Lamar Jackson. Lamar merely profiles as the most recent and viable comparison when looking at Hurts’s early season trajectory.
The biggest difference comes in the stat that coaches and GMs care the most about, Ws and Ls. Currently the Eagles sit at 3-6, and in 2019, Lamar’s first season as a starter, the Ravens went 14-3 and won their division with a 6-3 division record. There is no chance that Hurts has a season as good as that.
But any good coach and GM knows that no single player, not even the quarterback, should have the full weight of the record on their back. How much Roseman and to a lesser degree Siriani, assuming he comes back for another season, weight the above metrics remains to be seen, but dynasty managers should take heart that Hurts’s progression is not nearly as dire or awful as the headline-hungry media have made it seem.
I would say that Hurts is a hold unless his value increases to the point where he can be traded for a starter with stellar job security and an established track record as a top-10 fantasy producer. All Hurts needs to be a top-five fantasy QB is a little faith from the front office.
I actually had a decent week last week at tight end, I recommended sitting Mark Andrews (who posted another dud) and Goedert, but whiffed on Uzomah.
This week the big question is around the Chiefs offense. Kelce has not deserved the number 1 ranking in a while, and Waller and Kittle both made strong claims to the number 1 spot, but Waller takes it this week due to targets and matchup.
Pitts has been a roller coaster and I am not sure if it’s going to get any better. Ryan is simply taking what the defense gives him and if that is someone named Olamide Zaccheaus so be it. Andrews will always be a crapshoot, and Hockenson is just not looking great in that cesspool of an offense.
Goedert I don’t think will ever be consistent. He has no excuses with Ertz gone, and still not getting it done from a fantasy perspective. It’s not his fault the Eagles aren’t throwing the ball but it’s not yours either.
Oh, and regarding Higbee, you can forget about him for the rest of the season. Here’s why:
There really is only one question about week 9 at wide receiver, and that is what the hell happened?
I don’t know if it’s even worth going over, but let’s just say out my top 10 wide receivers for week 9, 2 finished in the top 10 (Keenan Allen and Cooper Kupp). Here are some names that did finish in the top 10: Elijah Moore (#1 overall), Olamide Zaccheaus (#4), Malik Turner (if you say you even knew this guy was in the NFL I call bullshit).
Week 9 was like Armageddon, Ragnarok, and Revelations combined. Hopefully week 10 gets a little more normal. Aaaand this literally just happened:
Former Browns’ WR Odell Beckham Jr is finalizing a deal with the Los Angeles Rams, per sources.
Not sure if he will play this Sunday but that definitely decreases the value of Van Jefferson as his targets and role will likely disappear. Robert Woods will take a hit in value as well. Why they felt they needed to add him is beyond me as they already have three great wide receivers, but here we are.
