There is nothing makes the NFL more fun than fantasy football and few things make fantasy sports more fun than rankings, rankings, and more rankings. QBs are ranked in this post with the ESPN and Yahoo! standard fractional scoring.
Notes:
There is a slight bump for QBs who have already have their bye weeks, as they have seven games remaining to their regular seasons against everyone else's six. These ranks will swing greatly as QBs eat their byes and have more remaining games on their schedules than their counterparts. Ben Roethlisberger is more like QB6 per game in my projections, but has a bye this week and above replacement enough for this to matter.
Tony Romo was very difficult. He is a huge upgrade for the passing game, but I question Dallas' pass-run splits. The schedule is not great for Romo and we should be cautious as Dallas will be.
These rankings generally hold water with six-point passing TDs. Cam Newton is the notable drops in the escalated passing TD bump closer to the bottom of the top-5 and Russell Wilson is a QB3, behind those whom can project for more passing TDs in garbage time. No one else in the top-24 can be expected to rush for TDs, and Wilson is barely startable in a 2QB six-point passing TD league.
For two-QB leagues, INTs are something of which to take more caution because losing one less point can bump a 12-point game in standard scoring by about 8-12%, whereas the effects on QB1s are more in the 5-8% range.
Andy Dalton at QB11 may seem irrational, but there are three weeks where he cannot really be started as a QB1--Week 11 against the Cardinals, Week 12 against the Rams, and may fantasy Super Bowls in Week 16 against the Broncos. The ten above him do not have this problem, despite the reasonable possibility Dalton accumulates more total fantasy points than Brian Hoyer or Blake Bortles. Matt Ryan, on the other hand, has a schedule too juicy to not place him in the top-10.
How does Brees go up with a bad week? Drew Brees is similar to Dalton, except we are never really benching Brees. The gap between Brees' home-road splits is huge and Week 10 threw his one of his two true outdoor games remaining in the trash. Their Week 17 matchup is in Atlanta, so where we don't play Week 17, he can be bumped up as high as QB4 because the Weeks 15 and 16 matches for our playoffs are very juicy and in New Orleans.
The rankings assume that Mark Sanchez is the rest of season starter in Philadelphia. This is just such a great opportunity for Chip Kelly to eat crow without eating it. The possibility of losing the job is the only thing that keeps him from QB15.
Brian Hoyer has an amazing schedule, but the rankings reflect caution with his concussion. If he plays Week 12 and beyond, he gets bumped to QB10. The bye helps, but it also hurts because we can roster those ahead of him right now and safely get him back by Week 13.
As we go down the rankings, there is an increase in the weight of strength of schedule. And the better matchups sooner than later are more valuable because there is little value in stashing QB2s. These are not weekly rankings, but the idea of these rankings is to measure whom we should be owning now over whom. A mediocre QB with a bad schedule until Week 12 is useless to our rosters compared a below average QB with two or three nice matchups in the coming weeks.
Do your research and use rankings cautiously, as they are always a work-in-progress. Rankings are a bad tools to tell us what to do. They are conversation starters, tier setters, value mirrors, and a combination of the scientific explanations of what has happened with the art of predicting what will happen. Feel free to supply contrary evidence to me on Twitter at @AlexSontySBN or in the comments. They will help me help you.
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