995: The Year of the Sophomore Quarterback

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 995 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. Football season is right around the corner. There's no better way to lock in your fantasy dominance early than with the best ball on DraftKings where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. Right now, DraftKings is giving all customers a can't miss offer. Draft one, get one. Enter a lineup in the $15 million best ball contest for just $20, and you'll score another best ball ticket to play free for a share of that $15 million, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week. Across the whole season, every breakout star, every clutch play, every touchdown will count toward your quest for a share of $15 million. 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So, I've been doing research for the draft guide, and that launches in less than a month, by the way. But I've been doing my research for the draft guide, and recently, I completed the quarterback research for the guide. I analyzed average draft position trends. I looked at the optimal strategy for 2025, all that good stuff. And for any of you who bought the guide in previous seasons, I can assure you that this year's version has a whole new way of breaking things down. A better way, in my opinion. Now, I've got my favorite targets, my favorite avoids at the position this year, but as I was doing my research, I couldn't help but think that it feels like we're on the cusp of the year of the sophomore quarterback. Last season, we saw an unprecedented six quarterbacks get drafted in the top 12 of the NFL draft. It's a number that we just don't see. Expectations for that 2024 draft class, just based on draft capital, were really high. Thus far from a fantasy perspective, Jayden Daniels is looking like he's on his way to be the next elite quarterback in fantasy. He's being ranked there already. Bo Nix had an awesome rookie season in Denver, and then there's plenty of upside with Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, even JJ McCarthy and Michael Penix. I think a lot of people can look at this crop and say that good things are coming. But I want to use today's episode to show you the why. Why I think this 2025 season could really be a year where we see many of them, if not all of them, outperform their average draft position expectation. My plan today is just go second year quarterback by second year quarterback, giving you a historical trend or two that's helped predict future breakouts. And by the end, I hope you're seeing what I'm seeing, that nearly every one of these guys, they seem undervalued right now. Let's just start with Jayden Daniels. The quarterback position has gotten a whole lot more predictive over the last five or six years. I've said it year after year on this show, but I think a big part of that was Lamar Jackson's 2019 season where he just completely broke fantasy football. He was a late-round quarterback that year, but he also showed the fantasy football consensus how absolutely vital rushing is for fantasy purposes. And when you get that combination of good passing numbers with good rushing numbers, amazing things happen. Some people still seem to think that I'm late-round quarterback or bust. That couldn't be further from the truth. I've touted early-round quarterbacking plenty in the draft guide through the three years of doing it. Now about to be four years, because the same dudes are giving you the same edge year over year. There's a predictability angle to the top of the position. You can't find that elsewhere. It's Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jaylen Hurts, and now, potentially, Jayden Daniels. This goes back to the idea of the pocket passer trap, the episode that I did last year that I threw back in the podcast feed recently as a rewind episode. With the pocket passer trap, the guys you should be really afraid of in the early rounds are the ones who aren't giving you a whole lot of upside with their mobility. Because rushing is sticky year over year. Passing isn't. Since 2014, using Fantasy Data's ADP, there have been 57 qualified quarterbacks draft in the top six of fantasy drafts. Qualified means that they played eight or more games in the analyzed season as well as eight in the previous season. Now, I bucketed those quarterbacks by how they scored in rushing fantasy points per game the previous season. So points coming from only rushing. We've got a bucket for two or fewer points per game, another one for two to five, and then one over five points per game. Those buckets include 22, 18 and 17 quarterbacks respectively. The quarterbacks in the most mobile bucket, the ones who scored five or more points per game in the previous season, they give you by far the best hit rates the following season. 82% of them scored 20 or more points per game in that following season. That number is just 41% for the immobile quarterbacks, and it's 50% for the quarterbacks who are somewhere in the middle. And when you look at 21 or more points per game or 22 or more points per game, the same trend exists. If you're curious about all that data, it's going to be in the draft guide this year. Now Jayden Daniels last year, he was comfortably over that five points per game mark with his legs. Judging by history, that gives him an 82% chance to go over the 20 point per game mark this year. That would allow him to exceed expectation. Now I do think that you could argue that Daniels shouldn't be drafted ahead of someone like Jalen Hertz. Hertz has been so stable over the last handful of years because of his rushing touchdown totals. But there's no doubt in my mind that Daniels belongs in the top four this year in fantasy. There's so much upside and there's a floor that we know exists not just because he's good at football, but because history tells us so.