Quarterback By Committee

Photo: Imagn Images

Over the past several seasons, there have been quite a few very popular articles that look at an interesting approach to building a fantasy team with late value picks. Based on the theory of using both Strength of Schedule ("SOS") and taking two players as a combination to build one very good starting duo, a Quarterback by Committee ("QBBC") can be built as a standard fantasy league strategy. In general, this is usually a wise move because very early on in fantasy drafts there are a ton of running back and wide receiver prospects to go after to build a great team. While there are a few studs at quarterback and also a few choice defenses, there is rarely a need to pursue an elite quarterback very hard in the beginning stages of a fantasy draft.

So with this in mind, this article will apply the normal method applied to the other positions (running back, wide receiver, and tight end) and defenses for the quarterback position. Let's take a look at how to go about building this committee and then we can digest and discuss the results.

HUDDLE UP

So how to begin? Defenses and quarterbacks are relatively easy to committee together. There's usually only one quarterback and certainly only one team defense per NFL club, so the approach is pretty simple as far as picking out which players/teams to try and pair up. However, it is not likely to have every fantasy quarterback available to me for this process. After all, the goal here is to wait at the position and pick up two value picks later in the draft to form our combo and serve as a solid committee. The following criteria are used to decide which players to start with for evaluating:

CRITERIA #1 - QB11 AND BEYOND

This seems pretty simple. If we want to have a duo that puts up QB1 numbers, that means we typically want QB12 or better production - else we would just draft QB12 or higher and forget the whole idea. This year we include QB11 Aaron Rodgers since his ADP (94) is so close to QB12 Carson Wentz. So here is the list of players, based on their Average Draft Position (ADP):

Table 1 - 2020 Quarterbacks to Consider for QBBC

In 2020, there is quite a bit of depth at the quarterback position, so while we typically do not need to go beyond QB24, adding a few more quarterbacks in reasonably stable starting roles is worth analyzing, if only for thoroughness. Taking these 17 quarterbacks makes 136 potential committees, so there had better be a decent one (or several, we hope) out of all of those couplets. Now, before looking over the method of how to pair them up and the results, we need one more rule:

CRITERIA #2 - NO MORE THAN ONE QB FROM ROUND 8+ AND ONE FROM ROUND 10+

This could get tricky here, but understand the overall goal. The point of QBBC is to free up the first 9-10 rounds of your fantasy draft to pursue all of the other positions for your team. Grabbing three to four running backs and four to five receivers after grabbing a stud running back or wide receiver in Round 1 sounds like a pretty good draft plan. This also gives you the flexibility of grabbing a stud tight end, depending on your personal preference, or even to get QB1 if there's a huge value play available and have the QBBC be your QB2 in a Superflex or start-two-quarterbacks league. Flexibility is the name of the game here. We all want value in our drafts, and having the ability to grab lots of RBs and WRs in the first 9-10 Rounds gives us that ability.

Here is the good news - all of the quarterbacks on the list ranked higher than QB17 have ADPs above Round 10 or higher (later), The first two quarterbacks on the list - Aaron Rodgers (QB11, ADP 94) and Carson Wentz (QB12, ADP 96) while QB13 (Matthew Stafford, ADP 103) would push this rule, so do keep that in mind if looking to build a QBBC with two of these three candidates. Any pairing using one or more of these quarterbacks or even including the next four (Daniel Jones, Cam Newton, Jared Goff, and Ben Roethlisberger - all in Round 10 based on current ADP) will require quick triggers on that second player for the committee. Deciding to wait until Rounds 11-12 to get the second quarterback in the pair to finish out your QBBC may be pushing it a little too far and may not get the desired quarterback combination.

So what do we do now to figure out some quarterback pairs?

CRITERIA #3 - USE FOOTBALLGUYS' QB STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE

This sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Just take the quarterback strength of schedule to figure out when certain players are more likely to score well. What was done here is similar to what the Projections Dominator and Draft Dominator do for you - take the projected fantasy points and slice them up over 16 weeks based on the strength of schedule. This result is called the distributed fantasy points for each quarterback.

After all 17 quarterbacks are mapped out with distributed fantasy points on a weekly basis, the next step is to just compare all of the possible quarterback pairs to find the best duos for QBBC. So here we are - time for some results.

Table 2 -Quarterback Committee Pairs for 2020

As we can see from the table above, we have some very good pairs to select from for QBBC. There are 91 pairs that are worth more than Carson Wents (QB12) by his lonesome, who is projected to finish the season with 323.1 points. Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:

Table 3 -Quarterback Committee Pair Appearances by Player

As we can see from the table above, the results do not narrow the field that much this year - at all. Every quarterback in the QB11-QB21 range appears at least nine times, while most are in the double digits. The good news is that there are a lot of options, and most assuredly several quarterback pairings will result in very good QBBC options this year - possibly even exceptional. Examining the list of Table 2 options along with some ADP and situational information should make putting a combination of two of the 12 guys together pretty easy, or even using one of them with a key late pick for our committee. To find out the best strategy, we need to look closer at all of the results.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Now that we have 91 possible pairs that are better than Carson Wentz by himself, what exactly does that mean? Should he be the basis of our comparison? Of course not. Remember our goal - find a pair of quarterbacks that can combine for QB1-type fantasy production. To figure that out we need a better metric, so here are the projections for the top quarterbacks in standard scoring:

Table 4 -Projected Fantasy Points for Top 12+ ADP QBs

Now, we see that quarterbacks in the Top 5 are pretty well defined heading into 2020, with Lamar Jackson joining Patrick Mahomes II this year as the clear top two choices, with Kyler Murray, Dak Prescott, and Deshaun Watson about a point a week behind to round out that group. After that things get rather unclear, as the projections for QB6-QB12 tightly bunched between Russell Wilson’s 338 points and Matt Ryan’s 320.9 points - or less than 20 points apart - or just a little more than one point per week. Notice that Aaron Rodgers (QB11) was excluded from the math, as his ADP of QB11 seems to be more related to his name recognition than either his projected production or his disappointing 2019 numbers (QB11, his worst full season fantasy finish since 2015). This tight grouping makes it a very strong year to consider QBBC, as taking two names from this group (or a key second quarterback with one of these options) should be extremely competitive. To make it fair and compare apples to apples, we need to adjust how we view Table 4 and the committee choices in Table 2. The committees represent 16 full weeks of play, while the individual players in Table 4 all have a bye week - so we have to add a correction to make the comparison more even. A reasonable number for a bye week fantasy starting quarterback would be about 20 fantasy points, so if we take a baseline of Drew Breeks (forecasted as QB7, ADP of QB8, 326.2 projected points) from Table 4 and add 20 points for a bye week spot starter, we have 346.2 points. The Top 15 choices for QBBC from Table 2 meet or exceed 346.5 points. All of this means that choosing the correct pair can give us the result we wanted - QB1 production on the cheap.

Here is a quick synopsis of the best 30 QBBC options for this coming season, along with my own personal rankings and selections: