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:
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.
Newton has been QB2 in these rankings for a long time, but it should be noted that the gap between him and Tom Brady is closing. The injuries around Brady coupled with the Pats easy path to the playoffs creating the more run-heavy tendencies we should expect has me tempted to rank Newton QB1 because the offense is so heavily on him and he is returning the investment.
But I cannot honestly say that I would trade Brady for Newton. Newton has a much better playoff schedule, so he will be QB1 before season's end. So, Newton is not just the highlight of these rankings because I have been obsessed with this picture all week since seeing it at Deadspin, though Cam is definitely QB1 in photogeniciness, which is saying a ton against Brady.
Is Aaron Rodgers' dip to QB5 worth discussing? He has been great and I do not foresee a massive dip from here so much as I trust the volume of Ben Roethlisberger and Drew Brees much more to fill the box scores and that is all we really care about in fantasy.
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.
QB8 through QB13 are largely interchangeable. Don't overthink the numerical ranking. Volume and schedule are slight tiebreakers, but we can pretty much begin streaming around QB7. QB14 through QB19 were equally difficult as the next tier, but schedule and the pieces around them are larger factors than the tier above them.
How does Brees go up with a bad week then a bye? 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 Sam Bradford is the rest of season starter in Philadelphia, but that his situation is unsafe. He and Mark Sanchez are top-20 from week-to-week, but carrying either is a heavy roster space outside, even in a 2QB league
As we go down the rankings, there is an increase in the weight of strength of schedule. Where we have healthy paths to the playoffs, playoff schedules matter more than the coming weeks; where we are fighting for playoff spots, we need to get to the playoffs to even make the playoffs relevant. Check the schedules.
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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