1110: The Late-Round Quarterback Rebound

**JJ Zachariason** (0:02)
This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.
What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason, and in this episode 1110 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. The very first thing I ever did in the fantasy football space was write an ebook. This was back in the 2011-2012 timeframe, and everyone was drafting quarterbacks early. In 2012, we had five quarterbacks get selected in the first two rounds of drafts as a reaction to a wildly good 2011 quarterback season. And that didn't make any sense to me, so I put together a fantasy football strategy guide and ebook on late round quarterbacking. Now that document today, super cringe worthy. It's really not good at all, but it set the foundation for what I'm now doing. And some of the concepts that I wrote about back then are still the same concepts that I referred to all the time in this podcast, or in The Late Round Draft Guide, Supply and Demand, Opportunity Cost. We know all of this by now. Quarterback and tight end, but we're focused on quarterbacks here, it's a onesie position. You start just one of them in your lineup. Because of that, people don't need them as much. So they get pushed down draft boards and you can often get usable ones in the later rounds as a result. It's why in Superflex leagues that doesn't happen, because in Superflex, the demand is greater at quarterback. That causes the prices to increase. For years and years, late-round quarterbacking, it wasn't just a strategy, it was the strategy. If you weren't drafting quarterbacks late in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 in that time frame, you were doing it wrong. Like, objectively. But that's changed a bit over the last five or six years. Players like Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, they've made it more appealing to actually get quarterbacks early. Maybe not drafting one as early as we were back in 2012, but early enough to make you say, oh wow, drafting quarterbacks late isn't the only way to win fantasy football. And I'll be honest with you guys, I've said this a few times on this show in the past, but I think it's worth repeating, especially because there's new listeners and we're on the topic right now. But I've gotten a lot of stuff right and a lot of stuff wrong over these 15 years of being a fantasy football analyst. Of all of my takes though, the one that I'm most proud of came after Lamar Jackson's first MVP season. It was just before the 2020 season. I wrote an article on Numberfire, a site he used to work for and manage, titled, Did Lamar Jackson Break the Late-Round Quarterback Strategy? Now, he himself was a late round quarterback that year and he broke out. But Jackson also made it so abundantly clear that the rushing side of fantasy quarterbacks was so, so important. And here's what I wrote in the conclusion of that article. I said, quote, You know, the truth is the question about the late round quarterback strategy in fantasy football this year shouldn't really revolve around Lamar Jackson. It shouldn't be about whether or not you're willing to take Jackson in the top 25 or the top 30 Instead, our focus should be on the fact that the fantasy football world has gotten smarter. In the past, a season like Ryan Tannehill's 2019 would have almost assuredly catapulted his cost the following year and to the top 10 at the quarterback position. Yet today, the following year, he's being drafted as a mid-range QB2.
Historically, fantasy managers didn't put a premium on quarterback rushing production. They ignored what's been dubbed the Konami Code of fantasy football. We don't see that anymore. The consensus top seven quarterbacks this year are all players who bring extra juice with their legs. So no, Lamar Jackson isn't what could break the idea of drafting quarterbacks late in fantasy football. You are. As the fantasy football world gets sharper, the late-round quarterback strategy may slowly morph into the middle-round quarterback strategy.
Now, I mentioned this article before. I have pride in what I wrote because it went against everything I had written about and talked through up until that point in time. I sat here for literally eight years saying that the late-round quarterback strategy was the only way to go. And I shifted that stance entering the 2020 season. And the result makes me feel even better about making that decision. Because directly after that 2019 season, things became more stable. The late-round quarterback strategy was not the only one that worked. In fact, there have been seasons here and there over the last six years where it hasn't been optimal. But I'm here to say today that the late-round quarterback might officially be back.