Week 11 Quarterback Rankings

I've got good new and bad news from the week 10 games.

The Good News is.....

Tony Romo looks healthy and comfortable returning from the fractured back injury. He should continue to be a mid-QB1 with upside for the rest of season as long as he continues to heavily target Dez Bryant.

Mark Sanchez stepped up in place of Foles and continued to put up similar numbers. With a favorable schedule for the rest of the season, Sanchez could be a season saver for fantasy teams that lost Foles or were struggling to get by at the quarterback position.

Josh McCown has returned to his 2013 form. Tampa decided to open up the offense to be more aggressive and allow for McCown to target his large receivers downfield. He had success with this type of game plan last year in Chicago with Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery, and Martellus Bennett. If this continues, he can continue to have success the rest of this year with Vincent Jackson, Mike Evans, and Austin Seferian-Jenkins.

And the Bad News...

Carson Palmer suffered another devastating knee injury just a few days after being signed to an extension. He was really clicking in this Bruce Arians' downfield offense and was completing a miraculous turnaround to a career that was hampered due to his previous knee injury while with the Bengals.

I sincerely hope that he will be able to return to full strength by next year, but in the mean time, the offense will be turned over to his backup Drew Stanton. We already received a sneak peak of what we will get with Stanton earlier in the season when Palmer sat out with a nerve issue. Stanton is a competent quarterback but will be erratic and inconsistent from week-to-week. I would avoid him, especially this week against the Detroit Lions defense.

Cam Newton is very beat up. Reports have suggested that he is fighting through another foot injury to go along with the ankle injury that forced him to have surgery in the preseason. Ron Rivera has since disputed these reports, but there is obviously something wrong with the Panthers' QB.

Cam does not look comfortable throwing or running the ball. If he is unable to get the rushing yards and touchdowns that are crucial for his fantasy value, he should only be considered as a mid-QB2 due to his lackluster passing numbers.

I said last week that Ryan Tannehill would have a tough outing against the Lions and would likely struggle this week against the Bills but would feel confident riding him as a strong streaming option down the stretch. Unfortunately, that will no longer be the case as the Dolphins will lose starting left tackle, Branden Albert, for the rest of the season.

This might help improve his rushing numbers as he will be running for his life more frequently, but this will be a huge blow to the Miami offense as a whole and should prevent Tannehill from being considered a good fantasy option for the duration of the season.

The Bears are officially entering into full collapse mode and Jay Cutler is leading the way. I am incredibly surprised at the poor play of this team in recent weeks and would expect an eventual return to the norm - or at least any resemblance of the explosive Trestman offense that we saw last year. However, even if Cutler gets back on track in the next couple weeks against the Vikings and Buccaneers, they still have to play Detroit twice - including in fantasy championship week 16.

As we look forward to week 11, hopefully the good news will heavily outweigh the bad. Half of this week's games have an over/under currently set above 46 points. The Patriots vs Colts game opens up at a season-high 57.5 points. The Eagles vs Packers game is just a tad below that at 55. This would suggest that these games have a very good chance of being very high-scoring for both teams and at least half of the other games contain favorable matchups for quarterbacks to potentially have a great fantasy day.

One of those games will be the beginning of the Ryan Mallett era for the Houston Texans. Texan Head Coach, Bill O'Brien, already worked with Mallett when he was the Offensive Coordinator in New England. If the plan is to keep the offense conservative like they were with Ryan Fitzpatrick, I don't see Mallett having much success as a fantasy option. However, if O'Brien chooses to adjust the offense to play to Mallett's elite arm strength, he could surprise with some good fantasy numbers with DeAndre Hopkins and Andre Johnson as his downfield targets.

Week 10 went well for the quarterbacks that were new or returning starters for their teams as Mark Sanchez and Josh McCown both had great games, but as you can see from the rankings below, I do not have much faith that this will continue for Mallett and Drew Stanton as the freshly declared starters this week.

If you are searching for some better options, reference the chart below and target the highest ranked player available to give you the best start for a winning roster this week.

Quarterbacks on bye: Tony Romo, Joe Flacco, Michael Vick, Blake Bortles