496: A Superior Quarterback Class

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha.

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Speaker 2: J J zacher reson.

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Speaker 3: What's up everyone.

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Speaker 1: It's JJ Zacharyese and the editor in chief at fandel and at Number five dot com in this episode four hundred and ninety six of the Late Round podcast. On many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for tuning in.

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Speaker 1: Back in January, I did an episode of the Late Round podcast on the importance of rushing at quarterback. If you haven't listened to it, it's episode four hundred and seventy two. On that episode, I talked about how the quarterback market in fantasy football is finally properly adjusting for the rushing cheat code that some quarterbacks bring and that probably should drive up prices. Going with an earlier than usual quarterback strategy makes some sense in today's environment, but we're bound to see more dual threat passers enter the league. And once that happens, once we have enough of a supply of quarterbacks who can throw and run the ball at a high level, then the edge you're gaining with a player like Josh Allen that gets smaller. He becomes less valuable. With the supply of usable quarterbacks increasing with the way this year's quarterback class is being touted, that point in time could be sooner rather than later. To see if that's the case, I decided to talk to my colleague, Jim sonis For those of you who don't know Jim, he does it all for FANDUL and Number Fire. He's won a handful of FSWA awards across multiple sports. He's the host of podcasts like The Heat Check, The Solo Shot, and Covering the Spread, and for purposes of today's episode, he prospects the quarterback position. Every year, I bring Jim on to talk about his yearly article on finding statistically superior quarterbacks in each draft class. He has a set of criteria that he works off of in order to spot the best passers in a certain class. I sat down and talked to Jim about the big five quarterbacks in this year's class, how this class compares to other ones in history, and which quarterbacks are going to bring us that extra fantasy football juice.

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Speaker 3: With their legs.

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Speaker 1: It's an episode that you don't want to miss, especially if you've got a superflex draft upcoming. Now, before get into my interview with Jim, I wanted to send a reminder The Masters starts this week and for only fifteen dollars, you can take a shot at competing for a part of a massive one million dollar prize pool, with first place taking home two hundred thousand dollars. All you have to do is head on over to fandle and set your fantasy lineup for this year's Masters Tournament. For more details is at fandle dot com or download the Fandle LAP today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Now let's listen to Jim drops some knowledge on this superior quarterback class. So, Jim, I have you go through this each and every year, but every season you write an article over on number fire dot com on statistically superior quarterback. So what's the process that you go through in order to find out which quarterbacks are best within a certain draft class.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the one thing I can do at the time is draft capital, and that does matter quite a bit. It doesn't matter as much in separating like the elite elite guys from like everyone else. Because we've seen Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Deshaun Watson. I'll tumble a bit in the drafts recently. But if you're looking to avoid busts, you need them to go. Basically the earlier the better, So that's one thing. But outside of that, if we're talking, like when I write it up in February, we're looking at efficiency, experience, and age, and those are the three key components there, And like the gold standard is like a player who is efficient, young, and experienced, so like coming out of their age twenty or age twenty one season, thirty or so games of experience adjusted yards per attempt roughly around nine or higher is generally kind of the cutoff there. And the biggest bust potential I found is guys who are you know, it is guys who are inefficient, but also mainly it's guys who are older and inexperienced. That's a really big red flag if you're an older player not a ton of experience in college. I make the cutoff games at least ten pass attempts. If you fit in that category, the odds you wind up being a buzst is they're pretty high. So basically I want efficiency, youth, and experience. If I had to budge on something, I'm probably most feeling to budge on, like getting to thirty. But like it does depend pretty heavily on the age too.

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Speaker 1: So this year's quarterback draft class is getting lots and lots of love. Now based on the criteria that you're looking at, Is this the best draft class that we've seen in years? Like some people were saying, is there really any comparison? Yeah, I think that if you compare it to other ones that are regarded as being really good. You go back to the twenty eighteen class, which was Baker Mayfield and all those guys, Like you look back and look at the profile of Sam Darnold, he wasn't super experienced coming out. Josh Rosen was experienced but didn't have the best efficiency numbers. Josh Allen had really bad efficiency numbers and wasn't super experienced, So you had a lot of question marks there. Like Baker was the one guy who like really really checked all the boxes there. Lamar to a certain extent too, because he was so young and so experienced, not the same levels of efficiency. But like the number of guys here who check a lot the boxes is great because Trevor Lawrence checks every box, Zach Wilson justin fields do go a long way towards checking the boxes and then ye, you at least have Trey Lance and Mac Jones with really really good efficiency numbers. So I think from a depth perspective it's good. But also like the high upside guys at the top end are great. So I think it blows away the Kyler class, you know, because Kyler was kind of the lone guy there who really fit what you wanted. It blows away the one or the year after that as well. So I think it really does stand out like it's a narrative, but it's a narrative that's well founded because you have five guys who really were good college quarterbacks, which does matter a lot.

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Speaker 3: So you mentioned Trevor Lawrence.

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Speaker 1: He's been looked at as sort of this like flawless prospect at the quarterback position that you know that he's the best quarterback prospects is Andrew Luck.

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Speaker 3: Now do you find that to be the case.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really hard to nitpick with him. Like if you were talking like just based on the statistical profiles, like I think that Marcus Marioto would edge amount and Robert Griffin the third, they would, But like if we're thinking about everything else and going beyond just the stats, Lawrence he does everything you really want because he's coming off his age twenty one season. That's great. Thirty seven games of experience, that's awesome, good efficiency numbers, and I think that what's encouraging for me with Trevor Lawrence is that we've seen guys when they've lost players around them, get really bad, like that was the excuse for Jordan Love talked about that a lot with Josh Allen. We saw them take steps back when they lost key players around them. But Lawrence lost those players but got better from an efficiency perspective because as a freshman he had a Hunter Renfro. I'm not sure what that's worth, but he was there Justin Ross, t Higgins and Mario Rodgers like a really good group of receivers lost reun for after that, still had a better justice yards per attempt as a sophomore, and then this year he lost t Higgins in the draft, but then Justin Ross also got hurt, and this the entire year and it led to Clemson running this like really weird kind of horizontal offense, which was really annoying and really, I don't know, it wasn't fun to watch personally, but he still had good efficiency numbers like his efficiency got better even though the supporting cast got worse. And I think that that is a really big mark in his favor that he was able to play in a different system that what you know, wasn't one that was super explosive because he was good. He still put up good numbers, like his top pass catcher this year, Mike hatt moved to running back in the NFL, like that's what he was working with. So I think that overall the profile of Lawrence is good, but it looks even better once you had in the context of okay, he lost a lot but still had really good numbers.

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Speaker 1: So barring anything crazy happening, Trevor Lawrence is going to be a Jacksonville Jaguar at the one spot. And then things start to get to at least a little bit interesting with the Jets at number two. I think as of today, you know, Zach Wilson seems to be like the guy that's going to the Jets.

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Speaker 3: So does the data back that up?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it does because you go back to last year, like I love two a tongue of my coming out, which maybe doesn't look as good now, but like I think, statistically and from a prospecting perspective, he looked great. And Zach Wilson is kind of almost a clone to Tua from a numbers perspective. They're the same age, the same number of games played. Tua had better efficiency and played a tougher schedule, but like Wilson did a lot with what he had. And we talked a lot about Zach Wilson's soft schedule, which is very true, like he had easily the softest schedule in this class, but when he played tougher teams, he played really well. He had three games against top fifty defenses by sp plus, which is Bill Connelly's number over at ESPN. In those three games, his adjusted yards per ATTENPT was ten point eight. That was second in this class and it's eighth all time, or at least eighth among quarterbacks in twenty ten among quarterbacks drafted in any round, ranks eighth best behind Mac Jones, Baker Kyler, Tua, RG three, Joe Burrow, and Adie Dalton. And Dalton didn't have the same draft capital tied to him that Wilson will have tie to him. So when you add in and what he did against those tough teams, ad in where he'll get drafted ad in how good he was overall in college. I think that boats really well. And if you look back at quarterbacks who had soft schedules coming out, like it's not an actual detriment. Like in fact, like first round quarterbacks since twenty ten who have faced softer schedules their final year actually have a higher rate of top five and top ten finishes in total net expected points than guys who faced tougher schedule. That doesn't mean you should seek out guys who had soft schedules, but like you've got Andrew Luck, Pat mahone or Patrick Mahomes, justin Herbert Kyler, Josh Allen, like they all had softer schedules too, but like who cares, they're all most of them are pretty good.

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Speaker 1: Right right exactly, So San Francisco over the last couple of weeks they traded up to the three spot. Now there's speculation that it's not justin Fields, it's not Trey Lance, but it's Mac Jones. That's just speculation. I personally don't think that's gonna happen, but you know, you never know. There's a lot of ties between you know, Mac Jones and Kyle Shanahan. The people who are talking about mac Jones going to Sam just go. But I'm curious what do the numbers say about Jones in particular? Are their concerns with his profile?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so what you hear about mac Jones is they hear he gets the NFL ready label and stuff like that and a high floor. But statistically he doesn't have a high floor. Like he was really efficient, really efficient, which is great, but he falls in that older, inexperienced bucket, which is again, it's not something that leads to a lot of successes. There have been sixty quarterbacks taken in the first round since two thousand, sixteen. Of those sixty have been older and inexperienced, so age twenty two or older and fewer than thirty four games in experience. Mac Jones had just nineteen, so he misses this cut off by a wide margin. But those sixteen quarterbacks have produced just two top ten seasons in total net expected points. One was Carson Wentz in the near MVP year. Otherwise, Ryan Tannehill and like, are we really gonna prop those guys up as being like the models of what you want for a first round pick? Probably not, especially because when Santannahill are a lot more athletic mac Jones's, so like that's another detriment for him. So he had a ton of yards behind the line of scrimmage, great talent around him. So I think that, like if we're looking for players in similar situations where they were not super young, like he's not. He's twenty two, he's not super old. They were not very experienced, they had a good system around them and got a lot of yardage via yards after the catch. Those are the same archetype boxes that Dwayne Haskins checked coming out. Dwayne Haskins also not super athletic either, So I think that that's where you get the concern of mac Jones, especially because he's not like a consensus top five pick. If he were that maybe you could, like cause Joe Burrow, Joe Burrow also older, also not as experienced, but like because he was a consensus number one pick, you can have more confidence in him, wherea with Jones that's not the case. So he could could succeed in the right situation, Like if he does go to San Francisco, he's probably gonna be a good quarterback because it's such a good situation. But that would be true for anyone else in this class too, and they probably a better ceiling than mac Jones has.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, one of those guys might be Justin Field, who I think is going to be the guy in San Francisco when it's all said and done.

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Speaker 3: But what do the numbers say about Fields?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so you hear people talking about Justin Fields. What they say is that he doesn't read through his progressions and that led to a high sack rate. And I don't know the progression thing, like, that's not my strength. I'm not going to be able to analyze that. I'll let someone else figure that out. But he did have a high sack rate this year. He was sacked on eight point three percent of his dropbacks this year. Nobody else at the top of this class was sacked more than six percent of the time. So once Fields is drafted, he will have the second highest sack rate for a first round of quarterback since twenty ten. So that's why you can point that out as being a red flag. But there's not a big correlation between college sack rates and those in the NFL and Ohio State. Like we talked about some of the bad games that he had this year, But we also remember that, like, they had a lot of COVID issues. I think I can to remember if it was the Michigan State game or the Penn State game, but for one of those games, they down four of their top six offensive linemen. So, yeah, you're gonna get sacked when you're in that situation. They were missing like twenty guys against Northwestern. Chris Olave didn't play in that game. He's a receiver, so that's not gonna tie into the sacks. But like, they had a lot of bad issues with COVID this year, So when I hear the sack criticism, I get it, but I also think it's being a bit overblown given the circumstances he faced. And he also faced like this crazy tough schedule where eighty eight percent of his pass attempts this year, we're against top fifty defenses by sp plus. That's the highest mark among quarterbacks drafted since twenty ten. The average defensive ranking sp plus was twenty four point six, and nobody else in twenty ten has been lower than thirty three. So he clears the field in terms of toughest schedule since twenty ten. And once you account for that, He ranked second in the nation in total QBR, behind us Mac Jones. So I understand some of the red flags about fields, specifically holding onto the ball too long, but I think there are enough reasons to discount that, and he does enough to overcome that where I'd still be totally okay taking him in the top three pigs.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So rounding out this like big five group of quarterbacks, you have Trey Lance.

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Speaker 3: So tell me about Trey Lance.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he's more volatile because you have just the one season, But like, volatility can be okay if it means that you have a good ceiling, and he does, and I think that's why, like we can be pretty high on Trey Lance, because sure he could bust, but so could anyone and the true upside is really fun here. So the big red flag is the experience, but it's less than a red flag when you're younger. He's twenty, whereas Max Jones is twenty two, and Trey Lance is super efficient as a passer. In his one year, he did a lot of open dudes, like if you're watching watching them, like, it's a lot of open guys, and he would sometimes miss those open receivers too, So He's not as complete to me as justin Field, Zach Wilson, Trevor Lawrence. But the reason that I'd still be in on him is the rushing because he's kind of like a truck. He was like, especially in the one game he played this year, like he got huge and it was noticeable, Like when you look at him, he's just thick. So the way that I view Trey Lance's kind of like a thicker version of Michael Vick where they had a small small sample of pass attempts in college, but they're really good runners. They've got these huge arms, which means that he has great upside. Maybe some question marks around the accuracy, but I think that there are enough boxes there where Trey Lance has a lot of things you can bet on, and I think that's pretty enticing for sure.

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Speaker 1: Yes, you're talking about the mobility of Trey Lance. You know, the fantasy football world, they finally seem to realize the importance of quarterback rushing after all these years. So how would you rank these big five quarterbacks in terms of what they'll be able to do with their legs and not just their arms.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think that like part of this is do you have to run to be a good quarterback, and I think with Trey Lance he might need to run a bit more because the accuracy isn't is there, it seems like at least as with Justin Fields, so he might need to be kind of in that Jalen Hurts mold. We saw from Hurt in that small sample last year where he did run a lot because that was the best asset that he had. So I think that probably if we're looking at just rushing, Trey Lance is going to be the number one guy there because he might need to lean on that more than the others. Will Fields might actually hurt himself because he's so I think he could be so good as a passer where he doesn't need to run as much, maybe like they want to protect him, so that might dig him a bit. I'd still put him second on this list because a smart team will use him as a rusher and an eye of faith that if he does go to San Francisco that they will use him in that way, So I put him second. Lawrence is third. People talk about his athleticism a lot, but you know, it's kind of like Burrow last year, where they could probably talk about it a bit more where when he needs to run, he can and he's fast, Like, he's pretty fun to watch as a rusher. Wilson's next not like a huge plus runner, but he definitely adds as a mobile quarterback and move around a bit, can run when he needs to. The reason that he's a bit lower is he's smaller, so like you probably don't want to running that much. And then mac Jones not gonna give you a whole lot there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not.

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Speaker 1: He's not escaping the pocket like Lamar Jackson.

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Speaker 2: He's not Tom Brady like from a oh my goodness, why is he is? He is he actually running perspective? But like you know, it's not not a major plus.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not surprising. We've all seen that.

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Speaker 1: That picture of mac Jones without a show, right, that that goes around the internet.

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Speaker 2: Makes me feel you know, I'm not comparing well to mac Filones, but I do feel a bit better about myself.

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Speaker 1: At least mac Jones is. Everybody is really what that picture shows us. So the last question that I want to ask you, are there any other quarterbacks outside the big five you know that are intriguing in this class?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so Kellen Mond is kind of interesting, and he's been getting a little bit of buzz recently, which I find very interesting because like, the one thing he doesn't really have in like his like the profile I look at is the draft capital. He's not probably not gonna be a first round pick. If he were, that would get my attention because you know, I was talking before how you want quarterbacks to be young and experienced, and Kellen Mond very much is that he has. He was four year starter. He has forty six games with at least ten pass attempts, but last year was his age twenty one season, so he is nine months younger than Mac Jones but has twenty seven more games of experience, which is the same number that Zach Wilson has. So you take mac Jones and add Zach Wilson and that's Kellen Mond from an experienced perspective. Now, Mon wasn't like super efficient. He also didn't throw downfield, which was really annoying. The question is like, did he not throw downfield because he didn't have the guys that throw down field kind of like we saw Trevor Lawrence this year, or is he just not a good enough passer downfield to do that. I don't know that. Again, that's not my strength, but I think that we could see a situation where if a team does buy into Kellen Mond, has faith in him, put him in a good situation, maybe he is able to throw downfield and kind of take advantage of that stuff. He's kind of small like from a build perspective, he's built similar to Zach Wilson six' to TWO i think two fourteen at his pro day way, in but he is. Fast he ran four five seven, forty so there could be some rushing. There probably don't want to run him a lot just because he is a little bit, smaller but if he were to get some draft capital behind him that it'd be kind of. Interesting it's just the the downfield throwing thing put a bit of a lid on the optimism THAT i had from initially looking at his, profile with the youth and experience being really enticing to me for.

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Speaker 3: Sure awesome.

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Speaker 1: Stuff, jim thanks for hopping on and talking about this year's quarterback. Class for those of you who aren't Following jim On, twitter you can find him there at JIM Sonnaz That's jim sa N Nes and while you're, there you can follow me At Late ROUND qb and make sure you subscribe to The Late round, podcast which can be found pretty much anywhere podcasts can be. Found appreciate you all. Listening i'll be back in your ears later this.

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Speaker 3: Week