A bunch of good quarterbacks are emerging - RG3, Wilson, Luck, Kaepernick. So are we now overflooded at this position? Does increased supply mean we should all make quarterback less of a priority in drafts?
Not so fast.
Teams are passing more now than they used to. There's no question that the floor has risen. If you wait until the 6th, 8th or 10th round, you'll get a good quarterback.
But the ceiling has also risen. It's not enough now to get a quarterback who throws 25 touchdowns and finishes with 4,000 yards. The top quarterbacks have also gotten better - a lot better.
Consider this chart. And I'll concede it simplifies things, since it leaves out the rushing production (which is a big part of the game).
It shows the average production of a top-10 passing team, versus the average production of the next-10 passing teams. That next-10 production, that's what you might expect to get if you choose to ignore the quarterback position. Think Eli Manning, Joe Flacco, Ben Roethlisberger or Philip Rivers.
And this study assumes the fantasy scoring system of 1 points for every 20 passing yards and 4 points for TD passes.
Ten years ago, the average difference between the top 10 versus the next 10 was 30 points per season. Not much. Last season, the average difference was 70 points per season.
The biggest spread was in the 2011 year, with an average difference of 96 fantasy points per season.
So while it's easy to say that it's best to wait on a quarterback, keep in mind that the guys who usually say that kind of thing haven't really looked at anything closely or thought it through.
In a rough sense, unless you get really lucky in the later rounds and are able to find this year's breakout quarterback, you'll be taking a loss at that possession. In a rough sense, if you draft two or three of the seemingly lower-tier quarterbacks - Flacco, Rivers, Matt Schaub - you'll probably finish about 800-plus yards and 8 TD passes behind all the teams that have top-10 passers. And the best-of-the-best quarterbacks will really blow you away.
We would all love to select other positions in the early rounds, but the reality is that quarterbacks like Brees, Brady and Rodgers have significant fantasy value. It's very dangerous to let a quarterback of that quality slip out of the second round.
PASSING: TOP 10 vs. NEXT 10
Year Yds TD Pts
2002 259 4.3 30
2003 488 7.7 55
2004 716 10.1 76
2005 473 4.2 40
2006 589 6.3 55
2007 479 11.5 70
2008 786 7.0 67
2009 792 6.4 65
2010 659 5.0 53
2011 908 12.7 96
2012 782 7.7 70
Ian Allan
May 13, 2013