I’m not ready to draft him yet, but I find myself being just a little more interested in Johnny Football nowadays. He’s going to run, and the way fantasy football leagues are run, guys who can run tend to be pretty good.
Manziel doesn’t have superior speed. He’s not Michael Vick, and he’s not even as fast as Russell Wilson. But Manziel likes to run and will call his own number around the goal line. He showed this at Texas A&M, and he showed it in his preseason debut, running for 27 yards on 6 carries. I take this as evidence that when he becomes the starter in September or October, there’s a good chance he’ll run for something like 40 yards per game.
Let’s look only at quarterbacks who’ve started at least half of the season in the last 15 years. So, there’s about 32 of those guys each year. Only 32 of those guys (about 7 percent) ran for over 30 yards per game. And of those 32, all but four of them finished that season as top-14 fantasy quarterbacks. That’s using the scoring system of 6 points for touchdown runs, 4 for TD passes, 1 for every 10 run yards and 1 for every 20 passing yards. That kind of system is inherently biased in favor of mobile quarterbacks.
Manziel will no doubt struggle as a passer, but check the numbers. Of the 14 guys in the chart below, 14 of them averaged under 200 passing yards per game. Of those 14, 10 of them were still top-14 passers.
I’m not saying you should make Manziel one of the top-20 quarterbacks selected in your league. But once he’s in there, I expect there will be many games where he challenges for top-10 quarterback numbers of the week (even if he’s pretty ugly at times doing it). Tim Tebow, crappy as he was, was the 12th-best fantasy quarterback of the 2011 season.
QUARTERBACKS RUNNING FOR 30 YARDS PER GAME | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Year | Player | St | P Yds | TDP | R Yds | TDR | PPG | Rank |
2006 | Michael Vick | 16 | 154.6 | 1.25 | 64.9 | .13 | 20.0 | 6 |
2013 | Terrelle Pryor | 9 | 196.2 | .78 | 61.4 | .22 | 20.4 | 17 |
2004 | Michael Vick | 15 | 154.2 | .93 | 60.1 | .20 | 18.7 | 16 |
2011 | Tim Tebow | 11 | 150.0 | 1.00 | 56.6 | .45 | 20.3 | 12 |
2012 | Robert Griffin III | 15 | 213.3 | 1.33 | 54.3 | .47 | 24.2 | 5 |
2010 | Michael Vick | 11 | 258.5 | 1.82 | 52.1 | .82 | 30.5 | 1 |
2002 | Michael Vick | 15 | 195.7 | 1.07 | 51.8 | .53 | 22.4 | 5 |
2012 | Cam Newton | 16 | 241.8 | 1.19 | 46.3 | .50 | 24.5 | 4 |
2002 | Donovan McNabb | 10 | 228.9 | 1.70 | 46.0 | .60 | 26.8 | 1 |
2011 | Michael Vick | 13 | 254.1 | 1.38 | 45.3 | .08 | 23.2 | 6 |
2011 | Cam Newton | 16 | 253.2 | 1.31 | 44.1 | .88 | 27.8 | 4 |
2006 | Vince Young | 13 | 158.9 | .85 | 40.6 | .54 | 18.8 | 9 |
2005 | Michael Vick | 15 | 160.8 | 1.00 | 39.8 | .40 | 18.6 | 7 |
2000 | Donovan McNabb | 16 | 210.3 | 1.31 | 39.3 | .38 | 22.1 | 8 |
2002 | Daunte Culpepper | 16 | 240.8 | 1.13 | 38.1 | .63 | 24.2 | 2 |
2001 | Daunte Culpepper | 11 | 237.5 | 1.27 | 37.8 | .45 | 24.0 | 2 |
2013 | Robert Griffin III | 13 | 246.4 | 1.23 | 37.6 | .00 | 21.3 | 11 |
2000 | Kordell Stewart | 11 | 161.0 | 1.00 | 36.7 | .55 | 19.0 | 9 |
2013 | Cam Newton | 16 | 211.2 | 1.50 | 36.6 | .38 | 22.5 | 7 |
2000 | Cade McNown | 9 | 176.2 | .78 | 35.9 | .33 | 17.5 | 14 |
2013 | Russell Wilson | 16 | 209.8 | 1.63 | 33.7 | .06 | 20.7 | 14 |
2001 | Kordell Stewart | 16 | 194.3 | .88 | 33.6 | .31 | 18.4 | 12 |
2012 | Michael Vick | 10 | 236.2 | 1.20 | 33.2 | .10 | 20.5 | 13 |
2000 | Rich Gannon | 16 | 214.4 | 1.75 | 33.1 | .25 | 22.7 | 6 |
2013 | Colin Kaepernick | 16 | 199.8 | 1.31 | 32.8 | .25 | 20.0 | 21 |
1999 | Doug Flutie | 15 | 211.4 | 1.27 | 31.7 | .07 | 19.2 | 10 |
2008 | Tyler Thigpen | 11 | 213.1 | 1.55 | 31.2 | .18 | 21.0 | 8 |
1999 | Steve McNair | 11 | 198.1 | 1.09 | 30.6 | .73 | 21.9 | 3 |
2012 | Russell Wilson | 16 | 194.9 | 1.63 | 30.6 | .25 | 20.8 | 12 |
2003 | Daunte Culpepper | 14 | 248.5 | 1.79 | 30.1 | .29 | 24.4 | 1 |
2001 | Donovan McNabb | 16 | 202.1 | 1.56 | 30.1 | .13 | 20.1 | 9 |
2001 | Rob Johnson | 8 | 183.1 | .63 | 30.1 | .13 | 15.4 | 23 |
—Ian Allan