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For the eighth straight season, I'm advising fantasy football owners about a good starting point for their quarterback projections/rankings. My Rearview QB article analyzes the production of every quarterback from the prior season after adjusting his performance for partial games played and strength of schedule. If you're a first time reader, here's my argument in a nutshell: using last year's regular end-of-year data is the lazy man's method. When analyzing a quarterback, many look at a passer's total fantasy points or fantasy points per game average from the prior season and then tweak the numbers based on off-season changes and personal preferences. But a more accurate starting point for your projections is a normalized version of last year's stats (for a different view on a starting point for your quarterback projections, see this article.)

The first adjustment is to use adjusted games (and not total games), which provide a more precise picture of how often the quarterback played. Second, you should adjust for strength of schedule, because a quarterback who faced a really hard schedule should get a boost relative to those who played easy opponents most weeks.

Let me be clear on something: this should be merely the starting point for your quarterback projections. If you think a particular player carries significant injury risk, or is going to face a hard schedule again, feel free to downgrade him after making these adjustments. (And it should go without saying that if you think a quarterback will improve or decline - or, in the case of Tom Brady or Joe Flacco, his supporting case will improve or decline - you must factor that in as well.) But those are all subjective questions that everyone answers differently; this analysis is meant to be objective. The point isn't to ignore whether a quarterback is injury prone or projects to have a really hard or easy schedule in 2013; the point is to delay that analysis.

First we see how the player performed on the field last year, controlling for strength of schedule and missed time; then you factor in whatever variables you like when projecting the 2013 season. The important thing to consider is that ignoring partial games and strength of schedule is a surefire way to misjudge a player's actual ability level. There's a big difference between a quarterback who produced 300 fantasy points against an easy schedule while playing every game than a quarterback with 300 FPs against the league's toughest schedule while missing 3.6 games.

Adjusted games are calculated by taking each quarterback's pass plus rush attempts in a game and dividing them by all of the team's passing and rushing attempts by all quarterbacks in that game. Below is a list of how each quarterback ranked in fantasy points per adjusted game, with a minimum of four adjusted games. The scoring system used is 4 point per passing/rushing TD, 1 point per 20 yards passing, -1 per INT, 1 point for every 10 yards rushing and 6 points for every rushing TD. The league average QB scored 19.30 FP/G in 2012.

Looking at partial games helps to isolate performance versus playing time.  Colin Kaepernick ranked 5th in Fp/Adj G, slightly higher than his current ADP of QB8 (of course, if he still had Michael Crabtree, he might be closer to QB5).  Robert Griffin III III is a player who can be an elite quarterback when healthy, even though he ranked "only" 7th in fantasy points.  You might remember 2012 as a disaster on all levels for the Eagles, but Michael Vick was actually in the top 12 in FP/Adj G. Through nine weeks last season, Vick ranked 11th among quarterbacks in both fantasy points and fantasy points per game (he suffered a concussion in week 10 and missed most of the rest of the season). Similarly, Ben Roethlisberger was a much more productive player when he was on the field than his final fantasy rank indicates.

On the other hand, Andy Dalton finished as QB12, but that's only because five of the 16 quarterbacks ahead of him in FP/Adj G missed time. Similarly, Josh Freeman (13th in fantasy points, 18th in FP/Adj G) and Eli Manning (14th/22nd) rode good health -- and not great fantasy production -- to borderline QB1 numbers. There are reasons to like Dalton (adding Tyler Eifert and Giovani Bernard), Freeman (second year in Mike Sullivan's system, the return of Davin Joseph and Carl Nicks), and Manning (a healthy Hakeem Nicks and poor yards-after-the-catch numbers by his receivers in 2012) this year, but your baseline for them should be their ranks on an adjusted game basis, not their end-of-season totals.

But before digging too deep into the analysis, we need to take a look at each quarterback's strength of schedule. A positive number indicates a hard schedule, and no one had a more difficult schedule than Ryan Lindley last year.

The AFC South had it very easy -- Schaub, Locker, Luck, and Henne had four of the five easiest schedules. Conversely, the NFC West was brutal -- Lindley, Skelton, Bradford, Wilson, and Kaepernick had four of the eight hardest schedules. And now we've got another reason to like Vick, if he can actually win the Eagles starting job: his better-than-expected Adj FP/G average looks even better once you adjust for strength of schedule.  

Note that these strength of schedule ratings are themselves adjusted, so Lindley's schedule doesn't look hard because the defenses he played allowed didn't allow many fantasy points to opposing QBs because of games against Lindley. Rather, the adjustments to the defenses and the quarterbacks are both iterated hundreds of times until the results converge, eliminating this issue.

The table below shows how each quarterback ranked in Adjusted Fantasy Points per Adjusted Game:

• Drew Brees, Tom Brady, and Aaron Rodgers were the top three quarterbacks last year, and they remain that way after these adjustments.  But Griffin and Kaepernick were not far behind, at least after adjusting for strength of schedule and games played.  Those players, along with Cam Newton, because of the fantasy value their legs add,can be top-five quarterbacks in any given week.
• If Chip Kelly brings a high-tempo offense to Philadelphia, Vick is a fantasy steal at his current ADP. He played poorly last year -- some of that due to a tough schedule -- but still was a useful fantasy player when healthy. He has an ADP of QB18, but that will likely spike if he wins the starting job. He could be a useful player to draft late and trade if he gets off to a hot start.
• Andrew Luck's a fantasy quarterback I'm avoiding. He ranked just 16th in Adj FP/Adj G, and that's despite throwing 627 pass attempts. The flip side is that many quarterbacks make big leaps between years one and two, and I would expect the same from a star prospect like Luck. But with an ADP of QB10, it seems like fantasy owners are already baking that into his draft value.
• Colin Kaepernick averaged 25.0 Adj FP/Adj G last year, and that's not including his incredible playoff performance. And while Matt Ryan was at 22.9 Adj FP/Adj G,he still is being drafted a round or two earlier than the 49ers young star. Some of that is due to Ryan having a longer track record and a higher floor, but I'd prefer waiting a round or two and grabbing Kaepernick or Griffin then spending an earlier pick on Ryan. But as always, know your scoring system: if you receive 6 points per passing touchdown instead of 4, that makes Ryan more valuable relative to rushing quarterbacks than a 4-points-per-touchdown system.

Which defenses were the toughest for opposing quarterbacks in 2012? The Steelers, Cardinals, and Bears had the toughest defenses for fantasy quarterbacks last season.  In addition, the Giants had the most difficult schedule (i.e., facing a lot of elite quarterbacks) while the Colts defense had the easiest (i.e., facing lots of weak quarterbacks). Much talk was made about New England's improved defense, but after adjusting for the strength of the opposing quarterbacks, the Patriots fall to #32. Part of that was because Tom Brady tends to make opposing quarterbacks throw lots of passes, but in fantasy football, those count, too. Against Kaepernick, Manning, Wilson, Luck, and Flacco -- the only above-average quarterbacks the Patriots defense faced -- they allowed 27.9 FP/G.