The Quarterback Dead Zone I Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast
Yahoo Sports’ Scott Pianowski and Matt Harmon discuss this year's quarterback play, including what's going on with the Buccaneers' Tom Brady.
Video Transcript
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: You know, we often talk about the running back dead zone, right? Round four, five, six, whatever it is. The tight end dead zone, right? If you don't go early at tight end, maybe you should just go cheap. This year, there's been a quarterback dead zone. Let's revisit your summer draft. This is my preferred strategy in super flex, right? Was that I wasn't going to be the first team to take a quarterback, but I wanted to take two good ones, and even in a standard start one league, I was prepared to go with the boring, reliable vet. Well, this is what the board looked like at quarterback.
Quarterback eight was Tom Brady, who's been disappointing. Quarterback nine, Russell Wilson, he's crushing you. Quarterback 10, Dak Prescott is hurt. Trey Lance is hurt. Aaron Rodgers has really been a brick most of this season. Matthew Stafford, we haven't felt good about. Derek Carr and Kirk Cousins have been, I would say, mild loss players. They're not absolutely torpedoing you, but you're certainly not getting a surplus of value from those guys, and then it goes down to like guys like Kenny Pickett, Taysom Hill, Baker Mayfield, Carson Wentz, Mac Jones, Ryan Tannehill.
I'm just reading in a list-- Tua, Justin Fields, Trevor Lawrence. I mean, Trevor Lawrence, the first guy you could even feel slightly good about. Deshaun Watson is a wait for. Jared Goff's been good. He wasn't good last week, but Jameis Winston. This is ugly, man. If you went-- if you went moderately cheap or full cheap at quarterback and didn't land on Jared Goff or Geno Smith, you hate your quarterback room, and you're just look-- and normally, you know,
I do the Q&A every Sunday during fantasy football live, and a lot of times, people will have two really good quarterbacks, and I say, I know it's hard because nobody wants to trade for a quarterback, but you have to try to trade one. Try to trade one to a bad team in your league, or somebody can't hurt you, whatever. This is a year I actually might trade for a quarterback. If somebody was lucky enough-- maybe they believe in Goff or Geno or whatever, and they would be willing to trade like a Justin Herbert or a Joe Burrow or something like that. Normally, I'd be like, no, don't trade for a quarterback. You can pick one up.
You don't have to do it, and I realize the NFL's snow globe league, maybe two or three weeks later, we'll talk about, oh, these offenses have come around. But the Buccaneers, man, they-- and this is why I'm so worried about these offenses, more of the Packers than the Bucs, but, I mean, the Steelers were supposed to be a get right spot. They just got absolutely pulverized by Buffalo, and granted, Buffalo is going to pulverize a lot of teams. But I thought Pittsburgh dominated this game, and only because the Steelers have such little on offense was this even cosmetically close on the scoreboard.
This felt like a 30 to 10 game, and maybe Tom Brady all of a sudden, I mean, does he look 45? I don't know if I'd go that far, but he looks like 40. He looks like a guy who's playing his final season, and he's got-- he can't complain about the personnel. He's got Evans. He's got Godwin. He's got Leonard Fournette. They're secondary players are pretty good. I think Tom Brady's going to be a fantasy loss player this year, and it's-- I don't take any joy in saying that, but I thought he was a pretty safe guy. I wasn't expecting an MVP year or anything like that, but I thought the pieces around him would give him buoyancy, and I don't see it right now.
MATT HARMON: I could not agree with you more, and I know it because I'll tell you what, Scott, I've got some good teams. I've got some bad teams. This year, there's a through line through all the bad teams, and it's the one where I didn't take a quarterback early, and I was like, oh, Brady's my fallback guy. Brady's my fallback guy because he had that great set-- that great cast of characters around him. You thought that this offense would throw the ball like it did previously.
It's not really doing that from a pass rate over expectation standpoint, and, you know, I'll say the one unit that Brady definitely can complain about and is complaining about is his offensive line. I think-- like you said, Brady doesn't look dust. He doesn't look toast. He still throws the ball really well. He just might be 5% worse. Something like that, and that thin margin for error for a pure pocket passer in fantasy football matters a lot, and the weaponry, obviously, hasn't been at full strength throughout the course of the season, so there is that.