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Top Quarterback or Quarterback Tandem?

One of the questions that many fantasy football players ask themselves is when to draft their starting quarterback. Many sites suggest waiting before drafting your starting QB because there is generally good value in later rounds. In our Average Draft Position Analysis Article we came to the conclusion that the two groups that have value at QB are the top three and the 13 to 16 group. However, the problem with the 13 to 16 range is that there are some risky picks in that group so this made us think: what if we selected two QBs in that 13 to 16 range to increase our chances of finding a big sleeper and reduce the risk of being left without a starter? In the following article we will compare the strategy of drafting a top QB with a below average backup to the strategy of drafting two QBs in the 13 to 16 range.

For this analysis we used average draft position statistics since 2003. The first step is to look at how many total points your best QB would have averaged in the past eight seasons had you always gone with the strategy of drafting a top three QB and a below average backup (19th to 24th best). There were 18 different possibilities in each season (1 and 19, 1 and 20, 1 and 21 and so on…). The following table shows the average number of points you could have expected from your best starting QB in each season in a scoring system that gives 1 point per 20 yards, 4 (or 6) pts per TD pass and deducts 1 pt for each INT:

The average points your best starting QB would have had is 312 (or 368) over the last six years which is not much of an increase over the 305 (or 360) that the top three QBs drafted average since 2003. The few additional points come from years in which one of the top QBs disappointed and the QB you drafted to be your backup outperformed him. We then did the same thing for the strategy of drafting any two QBs in the 13 to 16 range in each season. There were six possibilities in each season (13 and 14, 13 and 15, 13 and 16 and so on…). We have presented the yearly averages as well as the average over six seasons in the following table:

As you can see the average over six seasons is 285 (or 333) points which is 27 points behind the strategy of drafting a top QB and a below average backup. More importantly, the average points for the 13th to 16th QBs drafted since 2003 is 239 (or 277) which means that you increase the number of points you can expect from your starting QB by 46 (or 56) points simply by drafting a good backup. At this point it may seem that the top QB strategy is better but an important element is that this season Drew Brees, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are likely to be drafted between the middle of the second and middle of the third round while QBs 13 to 16 are being selected in rounds nine and ten. This means that you are only giving up 27 points on average by selecting your QBs in the ninth and tenth round as opposed to the second or third and twelfth or thirteenth round. This seems like an interesting strategy but there are a few more aspects that we need to consider before coming to a conclusion.