Trent DeGrazia Staff Writer

Fantasy Football quarterbacks, what is their real value? 

In a typical league you start two running backs, three wide receivers, possibly one tight end, one kicker, one defense and only one quarterback. This seems like it makes complete sense, considering that is pretty much what every NFL team does and almost every fantasy football league as well……but does it really make that much sense? 

If you look at the value of players at each of the three key positions (QB, RB, and WR) you will see that the numbers don’t agree. WR is the deepest position.  In the NFL there are about 65 receivers (give or take a few) that you could feel comfortable starting on your fantasy football team. The players range from Randy Moss (ranked 1st) to say Todd Pinkston (ranked 65th). So in a 12-team league, on average, each team has about 5 WRs that could be starting on any given Sunday. Based on this fact it’s understandable that most FF leagues start 3 WRs per team. 

As for Running backs, there’s only about 35 players in the NFL that can start on a FF team. At the low end of the list are players like Anthony Thomas or Correll Buckhalter. Who is really happy if they have to start one of those guys? So given that number, each FF team should have about 3 “quality” starters on their rosters at RB. Again, I understand why most Fantasy Football leagues start two RBs.

Now here is the kicker, applying this same logic to the QB position, you have 32 starting QBs in the NFL and additionally all of their backups. That means there is just under 3 NFL starting QBs per fantasy football team. On top of that, if you “handcuff “your best QB to his NFL backup (i.e. Joey Harrington and Mike McMahon) that number goes to over 4 available QBs per fantasy football team.

As you can see, the number of starting RBs available and the number of starting QBs available is very similar, yet most leagues start 2 RBs, but only 1 QB. This greatly reduces the value of QBs and greatly increases the value or RBs. I’m sure everyone has seen this in person considering the first 8-10 picks in your draft last year were probably all running backs. This doesn’t have to be the case…..Change your league rules so you must start two QBs every week!

Let me give you a personal example from one of my leagues. I play in a 3 player keeper league where one of my keepers last year was Rich Gannon. I then drafted Brad Johnson in the 12th round and my 3rd QB, David Carr, in the last round (18th.) Normally if one of your keepers gets injured your season should be over, that is unless the injured keeper is a QB. When Gannon went down in week 5 I plugged in Brad Johnson as my starter and my QB production didn’t miss a beat. In fact, Johnson's play was even better and he led my team to the league championship. This isn’t right, a keeper (call it a 3rd round pick), Gannon, and a 12th round pick, Johnson, shouldn’t have the same value.

If we were starting two QBs, what would be different? First of all, there would probably have been an equal number of QBs, RBs and WRs taken in the first several rounds making the draft more evenly distributed, thus adding a little more strategy throughout all 18 rounds. Secondly I would have been starting both Gannon and Johnson with David Carr and probably Marques Tuiasosopo (whom I “handcuffed” to Gannon) on my bench. That means when Gannon got hurt, I would have had to start Johnson AND Carr leaving only Tuiasosopo as my last resort if something happened to either of my starters. 

This scenario seems right to me, my starters are still “OK” production wise, but now I have no depth on the bench. This is the same scenario that would happen in 99% of fantasy football leagues if ANY teams starting RBs got hurt, they probably would have an “OK” backup, but few, if any real options after that.

An additional “bonus” of starting two QBs is that if you play in a keeper league it makes deciding whom you should keep that much harder. What if you have Matt Hasselbeck and Fred Taylor and can only keep one? In the past it would have been a no-brainer, you keep the RB, but now that you have to start two QBs the decision isn’t so easy.

One of my leagues did recently change over to the two QB rule and it has never been better, I suggest you do the same.