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Anatomy Of A Top 10 QuarterbackBy Brandon Anderson Today we begin a new series at Sports Outlaw looking at the anatomy of a top 10 player at each major fantasy football position – quarterback, running back, and wide receiver. We will try to see what it looks like to be a top 10 player at each position. What players will remain from last year’s top 10 quarterbacks? Which ones will fall out? And then which players will be replacing those guys in the top 10? Many people think they should just throw some names on a dart board and hope they get lucky. This series will show that there is more science to this matter than one might think at first. Warning: this article is not for the faint of heart. Fact #1 – Peyton Manning and Brett Favre have each finished in the top 10 QBs every year of this millennium. Surprising? Probably not. But it’s a fact worth mentioning either way. Surely everyone in the world has Manning in their top 10. So what about Brett Favre? Well it’s pretty clear that he won’t be playing in Green Bay this year, if at all, so all bets look to be off there. But Manning is as safe as they come. Fact #2 – Other than Manning and Favre, about 4 quarterbacks from the previous year’s top 10 repeat into the following year’s top 10. Yes, that means that just 60% of each year’s top 10 repeats from year to year, a tidy D- if you’re a student. That’s actually quite a good percentage though, as you’ll see in future Anatomy pieces. In five of the last six seasons, exactly four QBs other than Manning and Favre have repeated, and the only season that didn’t follow that pattern (2005) had just two repeaters instead of four. There are eight quarterbacks not named Manning or Favre that finished in the top 10 last year: Tom Brady, Tony Romo, Drew Brees, Derek Anderson, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Hasselbeck, Carson Palmer, and Kurt Warner. History shows that only four of those guys will be back there again this year. Well we can probably safely rule out Kurt Warner right away. He doesn’t even look to be a starter this year with Leinart healthy again. But which other three QBs will drop? Fact #3 – Matt Hasselbeck has never finished in the top 10 in back to back years. Hasselbeck finished as the #7 QB last year, but he was just 22nd the year before. He placed 5th in 2005 but just 13th in 2004. The previous year, 2003, was his highest finish at #4, but again that was coming off a finish of 19th. For whatever reason, Hasselbeck just can’t seem to put together back to back strong campaigns. A big part of that has been injuries. Hasselbeck does not seem to have the “injury-prone” label, but he misses a few games just about every other year. This is an even year, which does not bode well for Hasselbeck. He’s due for an injury, and this is also not the Seattle team of old. Blindside protect Walter Jones is not the top notch blocker he once was. Stalwart RB Shaun Alexander is gone, replaced by veteran Julius Jones. The receiving corps is thin with the losses of DJ Hackett and Marcus Pollard in free agency and yet another Deion Branch injury. This looks like a year to avoid Hasselbeck in those early rounds where he’s sure to go. Fact #4 – If history is any real indicator, Tom Brady may have about a 50% chance of finishing in this year’s top 10 QBs. Okay, so that’s less of a fact and more of a postulate. But listen up. Tom Brady had a season for the ages in 2007, a monster season, if you will. If you go back and take a look at other such monster seasons in NFL history – we’ll call any season where the QB scores 390 or more (almost 25 ppg) a “monster season – you’ll find seven other such seasons: Dan Marino ’84 and ’86, Steve Young ’94 and ’98, Kurt Warner ’99, Daunte Culpepper ’04, and Peyton Manning ‘04 So what happened to each of those QBs after their monster seasons, their fantasy MVP adventures? Well, they hardly fared as well. In fact, it wasn’t even close. In five of the seven year-after seasons, the QB was injured and missed at least 4 games. In fact, three of the seven year-after season resulted in that quarterback missing over half of the year and becoming nothing but a monster fantasy bust. The only two quarterbacks who played a full 16 game slate during their year-after campaigns were Dan Marino ’85 and Peyton Manning ’05. So how did they fare? Marino dropped 18 passing TDs, and Manning dropped 21! Both of them dropped 8-900 passing yards as well. Let’s put it another way. Marino and Manning essentially regressed to their career averages. Manning threw 28 TDs that next year, right at his career average of 28.6 not counting the monster season. Marino tossed 30 TDs the year-after, just above his career average of 28.5 outside of that season. In all, the average monster QB in his year-after campaign dropped about 24 TDs a season, and three of them actually lost 33 TDs apiece. To be fair, three of the seven monster QB years were had by guys that were big time running threats, and that naturally puts one at a greater risk for injury. But Marino and Warner also were significantly injured, and they are as much of pocket passers as one can be. You are probably thinking, no big deal, this is all history. This is Tom Brady we are talking about – he’s not going to drop off that record pace! Let me ask you this – you don’t think folks would’ve said the exact same thing about every one of those QBs above as well? Facts are facts. Monster seasons take a toll on a quarterback, and even those that survive still see a huge dent in their numbers. Brady may lose 8-900 passing yards and drop back to just above his career TD average. So pencil him in around 4000 yards and 26-28 TDs this season… if he does stay healthy all year. It will still place him in the top 10, but probably closer to the middle than you’d think. Fact #5 – Carson Palmer and Drew Brees are becoming as safe bets as Manning and Favre in that top 10. Palmer has been a top 10 QB since the second half of his first whole season in 2004. Brees has been top 10 since 2003, except 2004 when he missed one game and finished #12. Both of these guys have dealt with major injuries that should’ve knocked any ordinary QB out of the top 10 – Palmer’s knee and Brees’ elbow. Both of them have played for awful teams and for playoff teams, and still finished in the top 10. These guys have faced everything the NFL has thrown at them, and they are tried and true top 10 quarterbacks. Both of them have two star targets, and both should be safe bets to finish up in the top 10 once again. If you’re counting, that now places Brady, Brees, and Palmer into three of the four spots for repeating top 10 QBs. We’ve already ruled out Warner and Hasselbeck. That means that only one of Tony Romo, Ben Roethlisberger, and Derek Anderson should be repeat offenders. If you have already read Sports Outlaw’s Buy Low / Sell High piece on quarterbacks, you should have an idea which guy we’re taking – Tony Romo. He simply has much further to fall. Big Ben and Anderson would only have had to drop 40 points to miss the top 10 last year, but Romo would’ve had to drop about double that much. But don’t be overconfident in Romo. He’s one TO injury or tirade away from being a quarterback with very ordinary targets, and it wouldn’t be too inconceivable to see him drop. Still, he’s our choice for now. So who will jump into those slots now vacated by Warner, Hasselbeck, Roethlisberger, and Anderson? Fact #6 – Of the 26 QBs who have jumped into top 10 over the past six seasons, only 3 of them did so after starting all 16 games the previous season. Most of those new top 10 QBs were either making a big leap or else returning from missing injury time. Those are pretty bad odds, and that is not good news for those with high hopes for Jay Cutler, Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, and Jon Kitna. They’re out. Fact #7 – In the past four years, 7 of the 18 new top 10 QBs have been guys returning from a previous top 10 appearance – and all of them missed time to injury the previous year. That’s about 2 returning QBs per season. There are four candidates to return from injury and ride in the top 10 again: Donovan McNabb, Jake Delhomme, Marc Bulger, and Jeff Garcia. We’ll rule out Garcia. He’s got a shot, but it’s a run-oriented team now and Garcia does not even have the starting job locked down. We’ll rule in Delhomme, who had the 3rd highest ppg of any QB in the league last year before his injury – see also Sports Outlaw’s QB sleepers piece. So what about McNabb and Bulger? Honestly, all I’ve got to offer is a gut instinct – McNabb. He’s fully recovered from that ACL injury of two years ago and playing with possibly his best set of receivers ever. Bulger has maybe his worst, an over the hill Torry Holt and no more security blanket in Isaac Bruce. But you’ll have to make that call yourself. Fact #8 – In the last three years, 8 of the 14 new top 10 QBs have been quarterbacks in their first full year starting for their team – and 5 of those 8 were starting for their first job ever! That means about 3 QBs per year in the top 10 are first year starters for their team. It doesn’t look like this works for guys who were starters the previous season for a portion of the games but didn’t finish the job due to injury. There are no such QBs who became top 10 members the next season. That looks like it rules out Matt Leinart, Matt Schaub, Jason Campbell, Tarvaris Jackson, and Kellen Clemens. Several other teams look like pretty bad bets here as well. Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, and Atlanta could all have quarterbacks making their first year starting, but none of them even has a clear starter at this point, and all of them look like teams that could be rotating starters as the year moves along. So who does that leave? It leaves us with five options: David Garrard, Aaron Rodgers, JaMarcus Russell, Brodie Croyle, and Trent Edwards. Garrard is the first choice here. He already had a high enough average ppg last year to have qualified as a top 10 QB if he had taken all of his team’s snaps, and he may only improve in his first full year as a starter. What other QBs may make the leap? The one constant here is a great pair of targets. In the past we’ve seen Derek Anderson (Edwards/Winslow), Kurt Warner (Fitzgerald/Boldin), Jon Kitna (Williams/Furrey), and Eli Manning (Burress/Shockey) make the leap. Well when you put it that way, the final cut comes easily. Aaron Rodgers has the best set of receivers by far, led by Jennings and Driver – he gets Favre’s old spot in the top 10. And coming up in second by a long shot is Brodie Croyle with Bowe and Gonzalez. Would you be surprised to see these two in your top 10 at the end of the season? Sure, but weren’t you surprised by those last few names as well in their seasons? And what will it cost you if you’re wrong, a 10th or 15th round pick? Why not give it a shot? Fact #9 – This year’s top 10 quarterbacks, in alphabetical order, will be: Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Brodie Croyle, Jake Delhomme, David Garrard, Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb, Carson Palmer, Aaron Rodgers, and Tony Romo. And that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so! | |
