- The NFL is becoming a passer's league. - Matt Leinart Foundation
When are we gonna learn?
Fantasy football experts, and managers such as myself, trot out pre-draft rankings each year that are loaded with running backs at the top.
And every year, more and more quarterbacks find their way to the top of the scoring heap, beating out the running backs we greedily snatched up with our first-round picks.
It might be time to take another look at our pre-draft strategies.
The NFL is changing. In 2009, a record 10 quarterbacks topped the 4,000-yard threshold. In almost all fantasy football formats, those quarterbacks reigned supreme atop the end-of-season scoring lists.
In my Yahoo! Sports dynasty league, quarterbacks owned the top eight scoring performances of the season. Tennessee's Chris Johnson was ninth, followed by two more quarterbacks.
That's 10 of the top 11 scoring performances of the season, all by 4,000-yard passers. Among those 10? Eli Manning, who was nobody's idea of a first-round pick before the 2009 season. Heading into 2010, Eli is 94th on NFL.com's fantasy football player rankings, 93rd on ESPN.com's, 80th on Yahoo's projections and 81st on mine.
Do we all foresee a dropoff for Little Manning in 2010? I know I do. But those projections are in line with Eli's annual pre-draft spot, and they speak more to the overall pre-draft trend than an expected dropoff this season.
Case in point: all the major fantasy football leagues I've mentioned have 2010 projected player rankings filled at the top with running backs.
The top five players on NFL.com's projections are all running backs, with Aaron Rodgers the first quarterback on the list at No. 6, and only three QBs among the top 21 picks. Seven of ESPN.com's top eight players are running backs, with WR Andre Johnson sprinkled in and Brees the first QB at No. 9. And, again, three quarterbacks in the top 21.
Yahoo's first quarterback doesn't show up until No. 16, where Drew Brees is slated. Sixteen! Rodgers is 17th and Peyton Manning 21, making it three in the top 21 yet again.
I've got four quarterbacks among my top 17 players, but we've still yet to approach the points QBs are actually putting up in fantasy leagues.
There are two main reasons to think the quarterback scoring of 2009 is a trend and not an anomaly. For one thing, the NFL is becoming more and more a passing league; for another, the days of the traditional, one-running-back offense are dwindling, with many teams going to two-back committees. This ball-sharing system means fewer points for a lot of guys who, in the past, might have been high-scoring running backs in the fantasy world.
Does this mean I'm dropping Chris Johnson and Adrian Peterson from the No. 1 and No. 2 slots on my draft board?
Absolutely not. Those two in particular are special players, made rarer than ever by the league's tandem trend.
But perhaps it's time to make sure we're snagging a top-notch quarterback in the first round, or early in the second. The defense in favor of keeping the draft rankings the way they are will go something like this: even a late-round quarterback can put up top-20 scoring numbers, the way Jason Campbell did in 2009 in some league formats. And since even a late-round QB can put up such numbers, there's not much reason to waste a high-round pick on the position.
That's among the reasons that, even though I anticipate making some changes, I won't be making extreme and drastic changes to my pre-draft rankings for 2010. However, there aren't too many running backs who are putting up fantasy football numbers to earn a place among the top 20 quarterbacks, so if you can't snag one of those upper-echelon running backs — and there are fewer of them than ever — it might be time to do what NFL teams are doing: turn to the passing game.
Adam Sparks - Adam Sparks has been a reporter, copy editor and designer during a 14-year newspaper career that has taken him from Oregon to Hawaii and ...
