Quarterback By Committee

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) 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 - QB13 AND BEYOND

This seems pretty simple. If we want to have a duo that puts up QB1 numbers, that means we want QB12 or better production - else we would just draft QB12 or higher and forget the whole idea. So here is the list of players with which I started, based on their Average Draft Position (ADP):

In 2019, there is little need to go beyond QB24, as the uncertainty of a few starters (either due to competition or a rookie pushing the veteran), but the gut call here is that we should not really bother for anyone beyond QB24. Taking the Top 24 quarterbacks from the ADP list leaves 14 quarterbacks to pair up and see how they do. That makes 66 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 good idea to me. 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 three QB2 candidates - Ben Roethlisberger (QB13, ADP 102), Jameis Winston (QB14, 106) and Tom Brady (QB15, 108) are all going off the board in Round 9, while Dak Prescott (QB16, 116) and Philip Rivers (QB17, 119) are the only other quarterbacks averaging as Round 10 selections. We will have to keep that in mind when we look at the result because if we decide to wait unit Rounds 11-12 to get the second quarterback in the pair to finish out our QBBC we may be pushing it a little too far and may not get the combination that we want.

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 I did is similar to what the Projections Dominator and Draft Dominator do for you - take the projected fantasy points and slice them up over 17 weeks based on the strength of schedule. This result is called the distributed fantasy points for each quarterback.

After all 12 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.

Quarterback Committee Pairs for 2019

As we can see from the table above, we have some very good pairs to select from for QBBC. There are 66 pairs that are worth more than Ben Roethlisberger (QB13) by his lonesome, who is projected to finish the season with 320.6 points. Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:

Quarterback Committee Pair Appearances by Player

As we can see from table above, the results do not narrow the field that much this year - at all. Every quarterback in the QB14-QB24 range appears 11 times, along with Ben Roethlisberger's 12 appearances. 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 66 possible pairs that are better than Ben Roethlisberger, 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:

Projected Fantasy Points for Top 12+ ADP QBs

Now, we see that quarterbacks in the Top 4 are pretty well defined heading into 2019, with Patrick Mahomes II the clear top choice, but after that things get rather unclear. The projections for QB7-QB12 (and for that matter, all the way to QB15) are less than 10 points apart - roughly one or two touchdown passes can make the difference between QB15 and QB7. That small difference of 10 points is less than one point per game, so it is no wonder that a QBBC approach makes a ton of sense for this season (as does waiting to draft at the position). A strong pair of QB2s can easily compare favorably to one or more of these Top 12 options. 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 17 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 Ben Roethlisberger (forecasted as QB11, ADP of QB12, 320.6 projected points) from Table 4 and add 20 points for a bye week spot starter, we have 340.6 points. The Top 54 choices for QBBC from Table 2 meet or exceed 340.6 points. With so many choices, we can raise the bar to QB6, Matt Ryan, who also projects as QB6 with 335.3 projected points. Using a similar bye week fill-in and we need a QBBC pair with 355.3 projected points, which still provides 14 pairs on Table 2 that fall in that range, which 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 17 QBBC options for this coming season, along with my own personal rankings and selections:

PLANNING FOR SUCCESS

Considering all of the results, the QBBC committee recipe for 2019 has a pretty straightforward plan - take Ben Roethlisberger (ADP 102) in Round 8 or 9 and then take Lamar Jackson (ADP of 129) in Round 10 or 11. Roethlisberger is one of the two quarterbacks suggested in Table 5 for all of the Top 4 options, as well as two more just outside of the Top 10, so getting him based on his high projections (320.6 points, projected to finish as QB11) is the most critical part for the committee. The great news is that there are so many quarterbacks to consider in 2019 that Roethlisberger is sliding down the draft boards, especially with the departure of Antonio Brown to Oakland. So Plan A,for QBBC in 2019 is clear - draft Roethlisberger. After that, it becomes one of a matter of preference for the second half of the committee. My personal preference steers me towards Lamar Jackson, as Jackson's ability to tuck and run the ball on his own increases his fantasy value and overall fantasy floor in any given start. Taking Jackson in Round 10 secures the top QBBC pair and rounds out the best plan for the committee this season. If Jackson somehow slips through your fingers, Dak Prescott is a nice fallback position, as is Tom Brady or Jimmy Garoppolo. All three backup plans project out to be a Top 5 QBBC, so that is a nice consolation prize - which goes back to the main point of getting Roethlisberger to lock in the best QBBC possible.

Plan B for QBBC revolves around the question of "What happens if Ben Roethlisberger is not available?". Well, in that scenario the best bet is to take QB14 immediately with Jameis Winston and follow that pick with Lamar Jackson. That pairing is the fifth-best QBBC, so again this is not a bad fallback position. The worst case here is that another owner steals Jackson as well, so Kirk Cousins (QBBC #7) is still not a bad landing spot.

Two last QBBC options are still worth discussion. First is the duo of Lamar Jackson (QB18) and Kirk Cousins (QB19), which represents a higher risk pairing, but also the cheapest Top 8 QBBC pairs in terms of ADP. The pairing of Jackson and Cousins has some risk, but if you are in a Best Ball league or are looking to have your QBBC be your super-flex QB2 pairing, this is a solid path. Lastly, the pairing of Roethlisberger and Winston is worth a mention - if only for the reasons that they did NOT appear on the charts. This all comes down to scheduling, as both quarterbacks have Week 7 byes, but if you look at this duo and consider having a 20-point bye week filler, the projections have this two-headed monster right on par with Roethlisberger-Jackson. So, if you can somehow get both AND cover that Week 7 hole with a favorable quarterback matchup (Quarterback Strength of Schedule suggests a Joe Flacco option if you dare), this is an interesting option. Just keep in mind that owning three quarterbacks in the middle of bye weeks could be painful.

Example schedules for my favorite QBBC options are provided. Here I give you the best weekly plays for each quarterback, based on projections.

Suggested QBBC Schedule Plan - Ben Roethlisberger and Lamar Jackson

Suggested QBBC Schedule Plan - Lamar Jackson and Jameis Winston