Tips for Drafting Top Fantasy Quarterbacks
by Hoai of RotoPicks.com
There's a reason why we call them "franchise" QBs. Quarterbacks are the face of football. They are the leaders of their teams. They get all the credit when their team wins and all the blame when the team loses. Having such high profiles, QBs are so dissected and talked about that is easy to think that you can pick a signal caller on reputation alone. That might work for the truly elite, but once you get past the no brainer, truly elite, top 2 or 3 QBs in the game, a little scouting can go a long way. In thi article, I will give you valuable tips for drafting top fantasy quarterbacks.
From a numbers standpoint, there are a few stats I like to look at to gauge how well a QB is playing. I choose these stats because they not only show past success, but they are also very projectable to future performance. Now I am only using stats that can be easily found on any major sports site. I know there are proprietary "next level" stats offered by some stat heavy sites, but I won't discuss them here because they aren't readily available or understandable to a lot of people. (And let's face it. If you're someone who looks at advanced stats, you probably aren't reading this article.)
The first stat I use to screen QBs is completion percentage. It may sound simplistic, but a top fantasy QB needs to be able to get his playmakers the ball in order to be successful. Completion percentage shows that a QB has an accurate arm which is the most important physical attribute he can have. Completion percentage also shows that a QB has good command of his offensive playbook, has the ability to read defenses and is sync with his receivers. Completion percentage is a measure of consistency for a QB, and consistency often leads to productivity.
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When I look at completion percentage, I use it as an initial screening tool to weed out the guys who may not be consistent fantasy starters. Using stats from the 2012 regular season for the top 20 fantasy QBs, the mean completion percentage of this group was around 62%. Not surprisingly, 8 of the top 10 fantasy scorers at QB were above the mean. This included the top 5 scoring signal callers.
Now it isn't enough to have a high completion percentage. A solid fantasy QB also has to be productive with his passes. What's the point of having a bunch of completions if they are all one yard check downs. So the next stat I look at when evaluating QBs is yards per attempt. Yards per attempt is actually the most accurate metric that correlates to fantasy success. Using the same stats from the top 20 fantasy QBs from the 2012 season, the top 9 fantasy scorers all finished in the upper half in yards per attempt which was set around 7.37. The one outlier of the bunch was Matt Schaub who had a very good ratio numbers across the board but did not get many scoring opportunities while handing the ball to Arian Foster in the redzone. So unless a QB plays with an elite RB, it's pretty safe to say that a QB who has a yards per attempt average of 7.40 or above is almost assuredly a top ten fantasy QB.
Another key indicator of fantasy success is sheer volume of opportunities. In order to account for the differences between non running QBs and guys who incorporate down field running as part of their game, I broke the QBs into two categories. Using the same set of stats from the 2012 season, I set the over under for rushes to distinguish a running QB at 2 carries per game. Anyone under 2 rushes per game was considered a pure passing QB and anyone above is considered a running QB. For the traditional pocket passers, every Qb in the top 10 averaged over 36 pass attempts a game. They made up 5 of the top ten passers, but they also made up 3 of the top 4. For more run oriented QBs, the line which separated the good fantasy QBs from the bad seemed to be 3 rushes per game. Every QB who averaged over 3 rushes per game was in the top 10 QBs. I don't know if this is a one year anomaly or a sign of things to come, but it is a something worth noting.
The last set of stats that I thought would be helpful in distinguishing fantasy QBs is turnovers. For this I looked at TD to INT ratio and turnovers per game. Looking at that 2012 stats, 8 of the top 10 fantasy QBs had TD to INT ratio of 2.20 or better with the lone exception being Cam Newton who made up a lot of his shortcomings as a passer with his incredible running ability. The same eight passer averaged under 1.00 turnovers per game except the no. 1 passer, Drew Brees, who overcame is high number of turnovers by having more pass attempts than anybody else.
In conclusion, a quick look a simple stats can give a nice indication of how well a QB is playing and provide a good indication of future success. The actual numbers may vary slightly from season to season, but QBs who have high completion percentage, high yards per pass, high volume of passes or a couple down fields runs per game, and keep turnovers under control, win consistently in real football and score consistently in fantasy.
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