Jules pointed out earlier that nobody has ever won this league without a top 10 performing quarterback. Even when I miracled a win, Big Ben was a top 10 QB that year.
(I think I have that right. Corrections welcome.)
That sounds right. And I think the general consensus among fantasy gurus now is that you shouldn’t necessarily take a top tier QB early because there’s so many, but once they start going, you’ve got to jump in or your team will underperform.
Considering we’re a 12 team league that stat sorta rings hollow. While there certainly will be teams with no top ten QB (blush) it probably doesn’t argue that highly for drafting them early (since in a perfect world that means you only need to not be last or second to last to pick one). I think a more compelling stat would be comparing how frequently the person with a Tier1 RB, Tier1 WR and Tier1 QB win the league (or many leagues to be more statistically significant). Most people will assume that having the top RB/WRs has a very high correlation to winning for exactly the reason Hamlet describes, but just observationally it seems like the QBs might be difference making more than anyone realizes.
I wasn’t saying Allen is the most critical piece of a team this year, I was talking about career value and where you’d draft him in a startup dynasty draft. I think most dynasty leagues fold after a few years (few run as long as ours), so people aren’t really considering the full career value of a young QB when they make up their relative prices for different positions. But a top young QB can have the longest top tier productivity of any position (aside from the all-important position of kicker).
For example, let’s look at 10 years ago. Aaron Rodgers was the #2 QB by a few points. The top 5 WRs were Calvin Johnson, Wes Welker, Jordy Nelson, Victor Cruz, Percy Harvin. Top 5 RBs were Ray Rice, Lesean McCoy, Darren Sproles, MJD, Arian Foster.
Rodgers has probably finished top 6 every season except his injury season since then and is still relevant. In general, there’s less turnover in the top 5 QBs every year than there is in the top 5 WR or RB. None of those other guys are still playing, and most faded from being on top relatively quickly after that. Josh Allen is 3 years younger than Aaron Rodgers was in 2011 - I just picked that year because 10 years back makes a nice round number for comparison.
At the time, I would imagine you’d have used the logic of demonstrating why Ray Rice or Darren Sproles was more valuable than Rodgers, but then, if you could back to that year, which player would you rather have? Will Johnathan Taylor be a top 5 RB next year? In 4 years? 7? Josh Allen probably will be at his position.
I’m not saying I’m sure I know the answer to this one, just that I think long, long term longevity gets undervalued in dynasty both because the average dynasty player doesn’t expect his league to last 20 years, and because it’s really convince yourself to plan ahead for that long over shorter term concerns.
But, if, hypothetically, you knew you could have Aaron Rodgers in the startup dynasty draft back in 2009, what’s the highest draft position you’d take him?
Zero chance he would have got past me at 1.10 had I not slept through the first couple rounds, or at least preranked. Gah! That was the one thing I saw with crystal clarity.
Instead I ended up with Eli.
I can’t remember what I said, or if I didn’t go back far enough, but it has happened once. Stringer won with the 15th overall QB in scoring. Other than that, nobody has won without a top 8 QB. When you won, Big Ben was #3 overall. It makes sense, since QBs have the highest raw scoring potential outside of a few rare exceptions.
I completely agree that QBs are undervalued in dynasty, which is probably a by-product of how they are treated in redraft. I’m concerned enough by the nature of Allen’s game that he might not have the longevity that Mahomes or Herbert would have, but I’d rank him 3rd at worst. In a startup dynasty league with a guaranteed 10-20 years, I would take any of those three in the first round. There are a few WRs I would consider taking above them, but only because the recent crop of WRs has been so outstanding so soon in their careers which is so rare. But there aren’t many and certainly not a single RB. When this league started up all those years ago, I was surprised Rodgers was not a top 3 pick. I would have taken him 1st overall
I don’t think you got my point. I agree completely that QBs have longer productive careers, and easily surpass all other positions in career points. That is especially true for the elite ones. However, my point was about positional value, not about career points. The difference, even taken year to year, between the best QB and the 8th best QB is much smaller than the difference between the the best RB/WR and the 8th best RB/WR. Because of that replaceability, QBs are rarely “league winners”, whereas guys like L.T., Marshall Faulk, or Priest Holmes are. I did fine in this league with just Phillip Rivers as my main QB.
I’d also add that using Aaron Rodgers, one of the all-time greatest QBs, as your standard-bearer for QB value is pretty cherry-picking. Of course Aaron Rodgers would be a first round pick if you know the kind of career he was going to have.
But these differences of opinion are what make this dynasty league so interesting. This is my favorite league by far.
I think this would make for a very interesting analysis, and probably a difficult one. While your argument in unquestionably correct, I don’t know that this necessarily makes it the best ROI. As a Dynasty manager it certainly would be comforting to know that you have a top-half fantasy QB for 15+ seasons. this frees you up to focus on all those other positions year in and year out. Successful veteran QBs also tend to stay fairly healthy which is nice. But, it’s also always been pretty true that you can replace 70-80% almost any QB’s output on the waver wire or with an incoming rookie. Our league is very unique in the depth of the benches making QBs unusually scarce. Also there’s a lot of variation in any one QBs year-to-year performance. Even a guy as good and consistent as Rodgers has had some pretty pedestrian fantasy seasons mixed in there, never really bad…but not difference making and in some seasons you’d have been a lot better with some garbage-time hero.
So, does having a QB locked in for 15 years really equate to dynasty success? I don’t know. Having Derrick Henry isn’t valuable for more than 5-6 years, but you had a really, really good chance at winning your league if you had him those seasons.
I’m not sold on Allen’s long term value, and I definitely wouldn’t value him over Mahomes right now. He is more dependent on rushing yardage than Mahomes, which makes him more likely to get hurt, and he plays outdoors in some of the league’s worst weather. So however good he is, his numbers will be somewhat depressed versus a sunny/domed stadium, and we’ll see that in his home games during the fantasy playoffs. He’s also getting the benefit of an excellent offensive line right now, but that’s something that can change year-to-year.
It also looks like the league may have figured him out, to some extent. He looked terrible against Jacksonville’s vanilla cover 2 shell - pretty much the same as his rookie year, in fact. I’m sure he’s a top-10 QB, but I’m not at all sure he’s ever an MVP candidate again. Mahomes is having his worst statistical season by far and all apparently his floor is QB6. I don’t see how you can compare Allen to that. I might even value Herbert over him because he’ll never have to worry about the weather. I should also note that if you project Kyler Murray’s stats from 8 games over the 11 games that everyone else has played, he’s QB5 (and Jalen Hurts is only ahead because he’s played 12 games).
I definitely agree that QBs were totally undervalued in this league. I learned my lesson in the hard years after Carson Palmer retired and I was stuck with Matt Schaub for two or three seasons. (I eventually traded for Matt Ryan and it completely turned around my team.)
On an unrelated note, it’s kind of amazing that my team has been rebuilt around Cordarelle Patterson. I have three top-12 WRs and three top-12 RBs - but only because C-Pat counts in both lists. All 17 of my tight ends have fallen off a cliff, so I have been winning and losing on my flex spots many weeks.
Absolutely. Picking up Drew Brees was a big help to my team after being in the QB wilderness for years. It’s why I made sure to move up to grab Kyler when I knew Brees was getting close to retirement. A top tier QB is a necessity in this league and I think all of us forget that when chasing the next big RB.
Last day to make trades is Saturday so take a look and send out some offers.
My loss to Beef was a killer for me. Luckily, I have Ekeler and Mixon tearing it up in my money league.
God dammit. My phone crapped out over the weekend and the store was backordered so I just got it this evening. I couldn’t access the app to put CeeDee Lamb.
I have the worst luck when it comes to yahoo, and I propose, after burning it down, we move anywhere else.
I’d be open to a rule change for next season where there’s a mechanism to allow owners to correct a lineup where we messed up due to our own fuckup.
I feel bad when I fuck up my starting lineup (once so far this season) because I feel like it hurts the integrity of the league. It also looks like apathy, which isn’t healthy for a league in general.
No thoughts on what the mechanism would be. Just that I’d like there to be one.
(I don’t mean guessing wrong. I mean like, if I forgot to (re)start Joe Mixon the week after his bye and he played Thursday night, that’s a clear fuck up. Obvious stuff.)
I’d want to make sure it’s not just at those 50/50 decisions, but in this example I was unable to fix my #1 WR being on the bench.
Again, if you can’t make a change to your lineup that you want to or if you’re not around a computer when a game time decision comes up, just post it in the thread.
Both Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold have a bye this week. I just saw that Daniel Jones was ruled out. (Franchise is probably/hopefully done with him.) So I literally had no quarterback to start.
Fortunately Mike Glennon was a free agent, woohoo! The Mike Glennon era commences.
I want to dedicate this week’s game to Overly. I hope I can do what little I can by beating Ellis to help get you a little closer to the playoffs.
Oh, I didn’t have access to here either. The only way I connect to the SDMB is thru my phone because my only computer is a company-laptop and they have a policy of prohibitting connecting to any social media (including message boards) on their machines.
I’m touched. As it is, I’m pretty much praying for rain. Instead of Rodgers, Adams, and Henderson, I get Bridgewater, Tim Patrick, and the old man Adrian Peterson, in a must-win game. So, see you next year…