We RANKED Every Fantasy Position... Then Argued About It

**Dave Kluge** (0:11)
Dwayne is recommending Jalen Hurts as an Elite QB1. I'm exercising a little bit more caution. Who's right? We'll let you decide. But today, Dwayne McFarland and I are going to look at some of the most polarizing names in fantasy football, making the upside and downside cases for each of these players. Dwayne, go ahead and make your case for why Jalen Hurts should be drafted as an Elite QB1.

**Dwain McFarland** (0:34)
Well, look, I mean, for me, it's like I'm looking at the archetype. He's still a dual threat archetype. And if we look historically at the league winners, and this information we get from ESPN, but if we look at the guys that have been on 50 to 55 percent plus, right, of rosters on ESPN leagues dating back to 2016, 60 percent of them have been dual threats, hitting that 50 percent mark, and 80 percent of the guys that have gotten to 55 percent of league winners have been dual threats. So when I look at Jalen Hurts, I'm like he still clearly fits that archetype for me.
And more specifically, while like I'm not crazy about AJ Brown leaving, I think that could be problematic for him. At the same time, I really do like the potential we get with Sean Mannion, right? So historically, when you look at Jalen Hurts, and we've seen the stories, right? Of teams have tried to get him under center more, teams have tried to use more motion, they've tried to do some of these different things. And basically, you know, what Hurts has done is like he'll try it for a little bit and then he bells on it. But the Eagles this year have really put him on notice. They've blasted him like publicly as doing these things. So now like you're a quarterback that's not been very successful through the air over the last two years. And part of that really is defenses have changed and we got a lot of, there's a lot of components going on with why passing yards are so far down. But 225 gross passing yards per game last year was the lowest since 2008 So a lot of quarterbacks are battling the same issue. Right. If we look back, Dave, what's funny is we go back to like 2017 and 18 or 15 Like we've got all these quarterbacks. It's like bad quarterbacks through for 250 yards per game. Now we're like, God, I would give anything to have a quarterback that threw for 250 yards per game. But the other thing that does is it really does compress things down to where the dual threat archetype becomes even more valuable, in my opinion. Now, I'm projecting dual threat guys to run less because defenses are also adjusting to this.
It's not so much the scramble rate, but the true dual threats are the guys that get the design rush attempts, right? Josh Allen, Jalen Hertz, Lamar Jackson, Jaden Daniels. I've got all these guys running a little bit less this year because I think we're going to see more under center work. But once I put it all together and look at the compression around passing yards and what that does to the range of outcomes for a lot of the guys that have to depend more just on their arm. I just really like the idea of Hertz playing in an offense that's going to actually force him to use more motion, going to get more condensed formations, free the wide receivers up, and not to get too weird here. But I do think there is a chance that AJ Brown being gone does just kind of, sometimes you do get these scenarios where it just kind of frees you up to it's like, oh, well, we have Devontae Smith, who's really good. I love him this year. McKay Lemon, you know, is a first round pick. You had Dontavian Wicks. You've got Dallas Goddard, still a viable tight end, who's actually been really good when AJ Brown's not been on the field. And then you had Stowers. It's like, could the sum of the parts, right? And the idea of actually being able to drop back and work through your progressions, especially the way these defenses work, does that end up being a plus for Jalen Hurts? So ultimately, I'm in on him. The other thing that I really like about Hurts is even though he really does get trashed for good reason, he's averaged 194 and 200 yards per game passing over the last two years. He's not been good. But an interesting data point that I found this year that really was the most predictive of all passing data points to next year's fantasy points was how that quarterback performed when not under pressure. And all you got to look at is fantasy points per drop back. And Hurts has actually been really good in that category over the last two years, 0.51, that ranks eighth and 0.50, that ranks 12th.