2017 Fantasy Football: First QB Rankings

Alright I’m working through my first fantasy ranks of the season and at this point of the off-season it’s just positional ranks, nothing overall yet. I’m sure no one will have any problems with any of these rankings. So,…

Let’s start with the starters at QB…

Player | Team | My Rank | Positional ADP | Difference
Elite Tier	Just Short of Elite Tier
Aaron Rodgers | GB | 1 | 1 | 0	Drew Brees | NO | 3 | 3 | 0
Andrew Luck | IND | 2 | 4 | -2	Tom Brady | NE | 4 | 2 | +2
	Russell Wilson | SEA | 5 | 6 | -1

Great Young Guys	A Little Bit of Everything Tier
Cam Newton | CAR | 6 | 7 | -1	Matt Ryan | ATL | 10 | 5 | +5
Derek Carr | OAK | 7 | 8 | -1	Kirk Cousins | WAS | 11 | 12 | -1
Jameis Winston | TB | 8 | 9 | -1	Tyrod Taylor | BUF | 12 | 19 | -7
Marcus Mariota | TEN | 9 | 14 | -5

Let’s highlight the two big differences between my QB 1s and positional ADP (From FootballGuys.com). Both players are lower in the QB 1s, but both I think keep to their career averages. First is Matt Ryan, who I have five slots lower than the ADP at the moment. Ryan was amazing last season there is no denying that, but he’s been good not great the rest of his career with Shanahan at the helm of the offense and I think he comes back to earth, whilst still being a fantasy starter. The other player here is Tyrod Taylor who has been the epitome of fringe starter/replacement level QB over the past two seasons. I’m not saying there is huge upside, although his running definitely provides some upside. There are a pair of players who missed my top 12 that are in the ADP top 12 and they are Dak Prescott (Pos. ADP 10) and Ben Roethlisberger (Pos. ADP 11). I remain a bit skeptical on Dak because he played so much better last season than anyone expected and that usually means regression. He’s at 17 in my ranks, so a solid QB 2 and finds himself in a tier from 13 to 17 that I find to be interchangeable. Big Ben fall in that range as well at QB14, and he’s just too inconsistent from week to week and from home to road. He’s not bad, but I don’t think you can count on him to be a QB 1 from week to week throughout the season. So that’s my top 12 plus the two in the consensus, and here’s the rest of my top 24 QBs.

This’ll Go Well Tier	Who Are You? Tier
Blake Bortles | JAX | 13 | 20 | -7	Eli Manning | NYG | 18 | 16 | +2
Ben Roethlisberger | PIT | 14 | 10 | +4	Andy Dalton | CIN | 19 | 17 | +2
Matt Stafford | DET | 15 | 14 | +1	Ryan Tannehill | MIA | 20 | 24 | -4
Philip Rivers | LAC | 16 | 15 | +1	Carson Palmer | ARI | 21 | 21 | 0
Dak Prescott | DAL | 17 | 9 | +8	Joe Flacco | BAL | 22 | 26 | -4
	Sam Bradford | MIN | 23 | 25 | -2
	Alex Smith | KC | 24 | 22 | +2

I wasn’t going to write anything here, but I realized that the Bortles rank probably wouldn’t go over all that well. Bortles is not a good NFL QB, he wasn’t a particularly good college QB, but even last season he was a useable fantasy QB, and he still has enough weapons to be useful. It makes me feel dirty doing it, but it’s going to be closer to accurate than anybody will want to acknowledge in June. So, there’s that, not much else to say with just minor differences outside of Dak, which we’ve already covered above.

Interesting QB class to rank this season with a good number of solid and long-time producers getting into the twilight of their careers and some young guns coming into the prime of theirs. It should make for an interesting combination come draft time to see who prefers which ones and where.