872: How Rookie Quarterbacks Appreciate in Value

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacheris J zacherth what's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight hundred and seventy two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy.

00:00:21
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: I say it all the time, but when it comes to dynasty fantasy football, you're really playing two games. You're playing the production game and you're playing the value game simultaneously. You're trying to achieve two goals. On one hand, you want to win a championship. You need production, you need to play that game. On the other hand, you really need to accumulate value. And by value, I mean the overall worth of your team based on what the market is doing, based on what you could hypothetically get in return in a trade. Production's good and all, but if that production's only coming from old players who are past their peak, you're in trouble. Those things at the same time, it's not just how you win championships, but it's how you build powerhouses. It's how you win year in and year out. When we make selections in our rookie drafts, we're obviously concerned with how that player is going to perform, and that performance has a strong tide to player value. Right, if someone does really well during the rookie season, that player is probably gonna see a nice boost and value. But it's not always that clean. Most of the time, players have okay enough rookie seasons, and those okay enough rookie seasons lead the wildly different evaluations from one fantasy manager to the next. Just look at I don't know Will Levis right now. One person might believe that he's a true franchise quarterback. Another might be thinking that he's going to lose his job in week seven because there were some things that you might have liked from his rookie season and there were some things that you might have not liked. With all that being said, the market generally moves in certain directions when it comes to year two players or players who finish up their rookie season and are head into year two, And as a result of that, we can approach our rookie drafts in a very specific way. Now, I've done an episode like this in the past where I looked at how rookies appreciate in value, just in general, I didn't do that much on the quarterback position, though, and with this year's draft class looking the way that it's looking, I thought focusing on the position might be helpful.

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Speaker 2: So that's what I did.

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Speaker 1: I looked at and analyzed how rookie quarterbacks appreciate in dynasty value from year one to year two of their NFL careers. Now, before digging into the study, don't forget to check out Underdog Fantasy. I've been drafting over there over the last month or so and it's giving me a nice early prep on the fantasy football season. I've got tons of slow best Ball drafts going on at all times, where I've got an eight hour clock with each pick. If you haven't played best Ball before, the idea is simple. You draft a fantasy football team and you can do it in minutes. There are no waivers, there's no trades, there's no lineup setting. Your team is optimized for you in season based on how players perform. Drafts are happening right now over there, and you can use the information that I share on here in my prospect guide to help you draft. If you're new to Underdog and you want to check it out, make sure you use promo code late round when you sign up and you'll get a deposit match up to one hundred dollars. That's promo code late round head to Underdog Fantasy dot Com or download the Underdog Fantasy app to sign up. One of the reasons I'm interested in sharing information on this rookie quarterback topic is because I don't have a quarterback model, so understanding how these guys appreciate in value from one year to the next it's super helpful when trying to tell you who to draft. Another reason I'm kind of interested in this topic though, is because of Jaden Daniels. It seems like his evaluation is all over the place right now. If you look at certain data points, he definitely seems to fall into the wrong buckets. He's not great at avoiding sacks when pressured, and he's an older prospect too. On the flip side, his twenty twenty three was ridiculous, and he can make things happen with his legs. But knowing that it's a relative volatile profile, wouldn't it be nice to know what would happen to his dynasty value if he really tanked in year one?

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Speaker 2: Well, let's look at history.

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Speaker 1: I used Dynasty League Football's rookie draft and startup ADP to help me out with this exercise, their data doesn't go back to twenty eleven like most data that I work with does. Instead, I'm going to be looking at all quarterback draft classes since twenty eighteen. That gives us six classes to work off of. I wish the sample was bigger, but this kind of data isn't everywhere. In order to find out how rookie quarterbacks appreciate in value, I first looked at all rookie quarterbacks who were selected in rookie drafts over this timeframe, and that led to forty passers. That's according to the data. So this data set that spans six years has forty quarterbacks in it, giving us six to seven quarterbacks taken in rookie drafts each year. From there, I associated each of these rookie quarterbacks with their startup ADP and superflex leagues, and that's their startup ADP before their rookie season and the record. I'm looking at superflex leagues here because it's gonna give us more detail about how a player changed in value from year one to year two. Most people care about this kind of thing for super flex leagues anyway, because rookie quarterbacks matter a whole lot less in single quarterback formats. So again, we've got forty rookie quarterbacks in our sample. Those guys were selected in rookie drafts since twenty eighteen, and of those forty, all but Dorian Thompson Robinson had some sort of startup ADP heading into their rookie season. That range from Trevor Lawrence going eleventh overall in startups during May prior to his rookie season all the way to someone like Jarrett Stidham going two hundred and seventeenth overall. There's a very simple question that I'm really asking here what happened to those forty rookie quarterbacks startup ADPs after their rookie seasons were over.

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Speaker 2: And the answer it's kind of shocking.

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Speaker 1: Like I said, thirty nine of the forty had some sort of startup ADP in year one. Of those thirty nine, we saw nineteen lose value in startup drafts from their rookie season to their second season. Only fifty one percent of these rookie quarterbacks saw jumping their super flex startup ADP from year one to year two. That's a relatively binary way of looking at things. And I'm using the word only as a descriptor because we have to remember that young players will generally hold value better than older ones. Knowing that about half of rookie quarterbacks saw drop in ADP from year one to year two, that may not make you feel overly optimistic about drafting one in a rookie draft. Here's the thing, though, twelve of those quarterbacks who dropped in value, they were nearly valueless to begin with.

00:06:38
Speaker 2: We're talking Malik.

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Speaker 1: Willis, Jacob Eeson, Stetson Bennett, those types of players. So of the twelve quarterbacks that dropped in value, their startup ADPs were one hundred and twenty first or later, so they weren't looked at very highly to begin with. The remaining seven rookie quarterbacks who saw their value drop were not in the same boat. We are, in no particular order, Trey Lance, will Levis, Justin Fields, Trevor Lawrence, Josh Rosen, Dwayne Haskins, and Bryce Young and rest in peace, Dwayne Haskins. So just seven of the nineteen quarterbacks who saw a drop in ADP actually had top one hundred startup ADPs as rookies. The other guys were kind of valueless to begin with. And the thing is a lot of those quarterbacks didn't see a dramatic shift in value. And this is really really important. Justin Fields, for example, went from the twenty third overall pick to the thirty second overall one. He didn't just disappear. Trey Lance went from being the twentieth overall pick in super flex startups as a rookie to the twenty fourth overall one as a second year player. If you simply categorize players as maintained value versus didn't maintain value, and you judge maintaining value by staying within one round or twelve picks a year over year, you get totally different results. Like let's consider Justin Fields. After his rookie season, he was still a third round startup pick in superflex drafts. If we consider someone like that in the maintain value bucket, then things look really really good for these rookie quarterbacks.

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Speaker 2: All of a sudden.

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Speaker 1: Of our thirty nine rookie quarterbacks who had startup ADPs as rookies, fifteen were unable to maintain value.

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Speaker 2: But of those fifteen.

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Speaker 1: Only Bryce Young had an average draft position higher than seventy seven in startups. That's as a rookie. The only other players who failed to maintain value while having moderately high ADPs as rookies and I'm talking like seventh round picks were Josh Rosen and Dwayne Haskins. That was back in the day when people weren't roster constructing the way they are today. To put this all another way, you guys, in our sample, which yes it's a bit limited, but in our limited sample, sixteen of the nineteen quarterbacks who had top one hundred super Flex startup ADPs as rookies ended up maintaining value. Those sixteen either improved on their ADP or they saw it drop by less than a round. And this gets even better when the players performed at a high level as rookies. In our sample, nine quarterbacks scored sixteen or more standard Fantasy points per game as first year players. Of those nine, seven played double digit games, so Sam Hawe, Anthony Richardson, they get tossed out of the sample because they didn't play that much. Those seven quarterbacks who performed well as rookies were justin Herbert C. J. Stroud, Kyler, Murray, Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, and Daniel Jones. Herbert went from an ADP of eighty nine as a rookie to seven as a second year player.

00:09:41
Speaker 2: CJ.

00:09:41
Speaker 1: Stroud was at twenty one and now he's at six. Kyler Murray forty two to seven. Josh Allen, he was at one hundred and twenty three. People forget how much the dynasty community hated him, but he went from one hundred and twenty.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: Three to fifty eighth.

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Speaker 1: Baker Mayfield was seventy fifth overall in startup drafts, and that rose to fourteen after his rookie season. Daniel Jones went from one hundred and twenty second to fifty third. Now, I know some of those ADPs seem insane because in today's dynasty landscape, rookie quarterbacks who go in the top ten the top fifteen of the NFL draft, they're bound to have higher startup costs. Managers are sharper, they understand the value of the position in superflex leagues. Even still, I think the general thing that's pretty glaring here is that if a rookie quarterback is a pretty good season in points per game, you can almost guarantee that he's going to see an uptick in value from year one to year two. But the nice part is that year one quarterbacks they can still be bad and maintain value. Trevor Lawrence fell by eleven spots, yes, but he was still the twenty second overall startup pick prior to.

00:10:47
Speaker 2: His second season in the league.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Zach Wilson was Zack Wilson, and he went from sixty first overall and startup cost to forty fourth overall after his rookie season. Kenny Pickett completely maintained his value last year, and he had a bad rookie campaign. What this tells you is that if you get a quarterback, likely one who has decent draft capital, as long as that quarterback doesn't pull ap Bryce Young and have one of the most inefficient rookie seasons ever, you're probably gonna have a cell window entering year two if you really want it. Now, why do you think that is? Why do you think these quarterbacks are able to maintain value this way? I think it's a combination of NFL team investment and fantasy manager desperation. Most of the quarterbacks that I'm talking about today their early first round picks in the NFL draft. Those are the ones that were really caring about most in our rookie drafts. Even in superflex ones, we'll throw darts at non first round quarterbacks, but the majority of our sample consists of players who are looked at as good prospects. When teams get a quarterback in round one, NFL teams, when they snag a quarterback early, they're not gonna just let that guy go in year two. They're gonna at least let that player start his second season before they bench him and move on. And fantasy managers know that. Fantasy managers are desperate just for a starter. They just want someone who's gonna start games, so they'll gladly pay and often overpay, for even a mediocre quarterback. Just think about Kenny Pickett and Dynasty last year. Now, I didn't mind him as a dart throw and redraft, which looks silly in hindsight, but making a strong Dynasty investment was a really tough call given how poor his rookie season was. Same deal with someone like Zach Wilson. You won't always time it right. Sometimes you'll be stuck holding that dead asset.

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Speaker 2: On your bench.

00:12:39
Speaker 1: But it's nice to know that you're gonna have a whole lot of time to still sell the initial investment that you made in a rookie quarterback. That you'll likely have at least a little over a year to get value from that player, and that should make you feel more confident in a player like Jayden Daniels if you have questions about him as a prospect, which is totally valid, it's nice to know that he'll likely have to have a Bryce Young type season in order to lose a lot of his value. But even then, Bryce Young still has fifth to six round startup ADP today according to DLF, and that's almost a worst case scenario. And for a guy like Daniels, with his rushing ability, his lower end comp is probably more like a Justin Fields. Field showed a ton of bad signs as a rookie quarterback. He was inaccurate, he took a ton of sacks, but his rushing ability kept him alive enough, and fantasy managers still bought into that. After year one, Fields went from a twenty third overall cost to a thirty second overall one. Quarterbacks in our limited sample really do seem to maintain value, and that should make you feel more confident taking them in your rookie drafts. That's it for today's show, though, thanks Tolvy for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere. Podcast can be found in up for it to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. It's a Late Round Perspectives week. That episode is going to drop Friday morning. I'll talk to you then