Why I Don't Draft A QB Before the Fifth Round

I have preached this philosophy on this blog and via our podcasts. While a QB overall can probably score you more fantasy points than even an elite RB or wide out, I believe QB are a dime a dozen. Now I won't fault you if you draft Tom Brady with your first pick, but as DME likes to state, would your rather have Hanley and Prince Fielder or Pujols and Derek Jeter? If you didn't quite get that reference, let me explain. The depth of the position is extremely important. SS in fantasy baseball is extremely shallow and 1B is extremely deep. So while many people say they would rather have Pujols over Hanley, DME responds by saying that because 1B is so deep and SS is not, he'll take the best of the best of the shallower position and dig deeper into the deep position.

Well QB in fantasy football are like 1B is fantasy baseball. Sure having an elite will help your team on his own, but when you couple that QB with just a mediocre RB, well your team loses.

Yahoo! has actually done something right (for once) and did a little experiment. They put nine QBs into three tiers. Tier 1 has Brady, Manning, and Brees. Tier 2 has Kurt Warner, Aaron Rodgers, and Philip Rivers and Tier 3 has Donovan McNabb, Matt Schaub, and Matt Ryan. They then used Mock Draft Central ADP's to determine where all players went and then did mock drafts to determine nine teams, all with one of the QBs, and obviously drafted the Tier 1 QBs higher than the Tier 3 QBs. They then used their projection system to determine which team would produce the most points.

Their results help back up what I've preached all along. The top team had a Tier 2 QB- Aaron Rodgers, and the 7th and 8th place team had Tier 1 QBs- Manning and Brees. The second place team had Tom Brady which also backs up the belief that if you draft Brady, you'll be fine. Click on the link above to understand this "study" better or to get more in depth analysis and Yahoo!'s help on QBs.

Now obviously this study is extremely faulty. You never know if a 7th round pick will be the second best fantasy player (i.e. DeAngelo Williams) or if the first overall pick will be a bust (ie LT) which is why basing what teams will win on ADP's and projections is extremely faulty. But the study does help back up what I'm saying.

As I've said over and over again, if you build your team around strong RBs and WRs, you can win. Having depth and knowing where to draft players past the eighth round also helps. Again, if you draft a QB late like I will, you need to be pretty knowledgeable about everyone in the draft and know where to take your backs. You can not just blindly draft a QB late and hope it works out for you. BUT, if you draft smart, you can get a QB five rounds after Tom Brady goes, and still have that guy put up similar numbers.