2024 Lessons Learned: Your 2025 Quarterback Strategy

As we close the door on the 2024 fantasy football season, it's beneficial to look back and see what lessons we learned. In this week's roundtable series, I asked our Footballguys staff to discuss their fantasy New Year's resolutions for each position and their overall takeaways for approaching drafting in 2025.

In today's article, we discuss the quarterback position.

Lessons Learned at Quarterback

Target Dual-Threat Quarterbacks

Jason Wood: I don't think the quarterback position was particularly surprising this season, as things mostly played out as expected. Four of the top five quarterbacks—Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Jayden Daniels—are elite rushing threats who are also hyper-accurate passers. Based on preseason ADP, the only real shock was Sam Darnold finishing as QB8 with 4,153 passing yards and 35 touchdowns.

One point I think is important to remember—though it's not unique to 2024—is that the Late-Round Quarterback strategy is a fallacy if your goal is to dominate. Lamar Jackson averaged nine more points per game (26.0 vs. 17.2) than the QB12, Kyler Murray. For comparison, that's the same gap as between Saquon Barkley (22.0 points per game) and Tony Pollard (13.1) or Ja'Marr Chase (23.6) and Adam Thielen (14.5).

Jeff Haseley: Spending big on a quarterback might win your league if you can also hit on several other players at different positions. It comes down to drafting a quarterback who will get rushing yards and/or rushing touchdowns, along with decent passing numbers. Thirteen quarterbacks had 300 yards rushing this season. The lowest finisher of that group was Anthony Richardson, who had 499 yards rushing and six rushing touchdowns in 11 games, finishing 25th. Drake Maye had 421 yards rushing with two rushing touchdowns in 13 games, finishing 21st. Every other quarterback with at least 300 yards rushing finished no lower than 15th (Caleb Williams). If you're not a rushing quarterback like Jared Goff (56 rushing yards), you better have the stats to make up for it. Goff had over 4,600 yards passing with 37 touchdown passes and finished only 7th. The next-highest quarterback with under 100 yards rushing was Jordan Love (83 yards), who finished 18th. The key is to draft versatile, dual-threat quarterbacks with a good supporting cast.

Will Grant: For many years, I advocated waiting on a quarterback, targeting two in rounds 7-10, and playing matchups in a Quarterback By Committee (QBBC) approach. However, as Jason pointed out, I've taken Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson early in the last three years and have been very happy with the results. In leagues with 12-14 teams or short benches, having one quarterback can save you a couple of extra draft positions / free agent slots for your standard flex positions.

If you miss out on the top four choices, you are probably better off waiting a bit and taking the QBBC approach. That can certainly help you compete with the mid-tier quarterbacks who are drafted after the top guys, but you'll need to make up the difference against the top teams with better running backs or wide receivers.

Running quarterbacks are the way to go in any case. If you look at the top twelve fantasy quarterbacks this season, only Jared Goff had less than 200 yards rushing, and only Goff and Sam Darnold had fewer than two rushing touchdowns. Brock Purdy finished at QB13 despite only having 20 passing touchdowns because he had 323 yards rushing and five rushing scores. Having a quarterback who runs, especially in the red zone, really makes a difference in your week-to-week scoring.

Be Willing to Go with a Rookie Quarterback

Andy Hicks: Jason brings up some great points about running quarterbacks and their dominance at the position. The angle I will take here focuses on rookie quarterbacks. Historically, rookies struggle for fantasy relevance. Cam Newton in 2011, Robert Griffin, and Andrew Luck in 2012. Plus a few others sprinkled in through the years such as C.J. Stroud in 2023. This year, we have three of the top 12 rookie fantasy scoring seasons of all time. Allowing for a 17-game season, Bo Nix and Jayden Daniels are the top 4 of all time for rookie quarterbacks. Caleb Williams finished 12th for a rookie all-time. All three of these rookies rushed for over 400 yards.

NFL teams are comfortable now drafting dual-threat quarterbacks. They expect them to play immediately. These rookies do not have to be good NFL quarterbacks just yet as long as they can run the ball. Even Drake Maye ran for 400 yards. I have historically undervalued rookie quarterbacks for numerous reasons. Individual circumstances need careful assessment, but I will not dismiss out of hand any rookie quarterback expected to play that can run.