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| Wednesday, December 30, 2020 |
| There's a long time between now and when we'll be drafting for 2021, but that didn't stop me from updating my trade block in my keeper league with my college buddies. You can never get started too early, and I've got six rookie first-round picks burning a hole in my pocket after initiating a midseason rebuild. |
| The season isn't even done, and there I go thinking about next season already. Toward the end of the week I'll round up all of the Week 17 lineup notes you'll need to know about as teams announce their plans, but you should probably start making alternative plans for your Steelers after Mike Tomlin announced Ben Roethlisberger won't play this week. Mason Rudolph will start in his place, and you should probably expect most of the other starters to be limited if they play; Chase Claypool may not be among that group, and could have a huge Week 17 as a result, FYI. |
| For the rest of this week and into the following, the Fantasy Football Today team will be unveiling our first round of rankings for the 2021 season, and I'll be sending you mine as well, starting with quarterback today. It's been an awesome season for the position with six players already topping 400 Fantasy points with a week left; Lamar Jackson was the only one to do it in 2019. The emergence of breakout stars like Josh Allen, Kyler Murray and Justin Herbert breathed new life into the position, while the re-emergence of vets like Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady meant it was deeper than ever. |
| What will it look like next year? Here's my first draft of 2021 QB rankings, starting with an obvious name at the top. And keep scrolling for some of your best Week 16 champion stories of thrilling victory and crushing defeat. If you want to be featured in the newsletter, shoot me an email at Chris.Towers@CBSInteractive.com. |
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| Too-Early 2021 QB Rankings |
| We're giving you an early look at our 2021 rankings on FFT this week, and we started with QB on Monday. Jamey Eisenberg, Heath Cummings and I unveiled our top 12 for the position and discussed a few notables -- we all disagree on the No. 2 QB, I'm the only one with Taysom Hill in my top 12, to name just two -- and you can watch that discussion right here. |
| We'll have everyone's full rankings for every position on CBSSports.com next week, but I'll be giving you all the first look at my rankings over the next few days right here, beginning with those quarterbacks. A few notes on my general QB philosophy and how I approached it. |
| To build my first set of rankings for 2021, I put together a quick, rough projection for each team, based on an estimate of total play volume, run-pass split, touch share and other pertinent details. It's not perfect; it will be adjusted as the offseason goes on and I can incorporate more data from the 2020 season, but it's a good starting point; if you listen to Fantasy Football Today (and I'm not sure why you would be here if you didn't!), this is a very similar process to how Heath Cummings approaches things, though there's plenty we've disagreed about just in our first rankings. |
| As for my strategy for quarterback, well, it's pretty simple: "Running quarterbacks over everything." It's a simple math question: For every 100 yards a quarterback runs for, another quarterback needs 250 passing yards. That math edge is even greater in 4-point-per-pass-TD leagues, where every TD a QB gets on the ground, another QB needs 1.3 touchdown passes to make up for it. Running doesn't guarantee you'll be a Fantasy stud, but it really helps. |
| With that out of the way, here's my first attempt at ranking the quarterbacks for the 2021 season. I've made some assumptions about playing time that may not work out, and free agency and the draft will cause plenty of shakeups between now and August, so let's all promise not to look back on this and laugh, OK? Disagree with my rankings? Excellent! Let me know by emailing Chris.Towers@CBSinteractive.com with your own top 12 for 2021: |
| 1. Patrick Mahomes -- Goes without saying at this point. Mahomes may not be the No. 1 QB in Fantasy every single season, but he'll always be in the discussion. Nobody has outscored him on a per-game basis twice since he entered the league. Everyone else's best season is just another Mahomes season. 2. Kyler Murray -- I went through a first round of 2021 projections to prepare for this exercise, and it's worth noting that QB2 through QB5 are separated by .686 points. For the whole season. Murray's rushing ability makes up for what he lacks as a passer, but there's also always the possibility the leap in that facet of the game comes in Year 3, and that upside gives him the edge. 3. Aaron Rodgers -- Rodgers is projected for the second-most touchdowns on the 21st-most pass attempts. He's an efficiency monster, and maybe the Packers will actually give him a reliable WR2 this offseason. 4. Josh Allen -- Even baking in some regression for Allen, he's probably going to be an elite Fantasy QB again in 2021. The combination of his red zone dominance in the running game and his improvements as a passer make him a pretty safe bet. He'd have to really regress as a passer -- and he was still QB10 in 2019. 5. Russell Wilson -- Some may be scared off by the second half slide for the second year in a row, and you know what I say to that? Worry about that when the second half gets here. Russ had a bounce-back season as a runner, posting his highest yardage total since 2017 with a game left to go. A pretty much unparalleled model of efficiency, we saw how huge the upside is when the Seahawks are forced to let him pass. 6. DeShaun Watson -- Watson's per-16 pace since Bill O'Brien was fired is 4,896 passing yards, 35 touchdowns, 544 rushing yards and three rush touchdowns. And he's done that without Will Fuller for four of 11 games. Hopefully the next Texans coach leans into Watson's gifts and lets him air it out, because Watson is definitely one of those rare passers who could conceivably challenge Watson for the top spot. 7. Lamar Jackson -- Remember when he was considered arguably the biggest disappointment in the league? He's averaged 28.2 points per game since Week 10 and would have rushed for 1,000 yards for the second season in a row if not for the one game he had to miss. Even if he doesn't improve much as a passer -- no guarantee he won't -- he still rushes like a low-end No. 2 RB, which gives him both a high floor and incredibly high ceiling. I think I just talked myself into this being too low for him. 8. Dak Prescott -- Prescott isn't the runner some of these other players are, but he's as good a passer as anyone not named Patrick or Aaron right now. Assuming he's back in Dallas, he'll have elite weapons in a fast-paced, vertically oriented passing game with a 16-game pace with Kellen Moore as offensive coordinator of 5,149 yards, 30 pass touchdowns and five rushing touchdowns. Let's hope he re-signs quickly and recovers from his ankle injury without trouble. He could end up being a steal if folks are scared off. 9. Jalen Hurts -- Too soon? Maybe, but Hurts was a better rusher in college than Kyler was, and we're seeing that play out in his first three career starts. The Eagles may opt to go back to Carson Wentz as the starting QB, but if Hurts is the starter, he's going to be a top-10 QB, and the best candidate to be 2021's version of the Mahomes/Jackson/Murray second-year breakout superstar. 10. Taysom Hill -- Too soon? Maybe, but Hurts … sorry, Hill … We've got a tiny sample size for both, but what we saw in Hill's four starts was very enticing for Fantasy. Obviously, if Drew Brees opts not to retire or the Saints opt to go with Jameis Winston as the starter in 2021, this is all moot. But Hill was good enough as a passer that he'll be a starting-caliber Fantasy QB if he gets the opportunity, and potentially a very good one. 11. Justin Herbert -- Herbert already has the rookie record for passing touchdowns with 28 -- five more than Andrew Luck's previous record -- and he's 340 yards from the rookie record for passing yards with a game left. He's been much better much sooner than anyone could have reasonably expected, and he's not a nothing with his legs (225 yards, four touchdowns on the ground). Maybe there's a sophomore slump on the way, but we've seen a lot more quarterbacks make a leap in Year 2 lately; it's scary to think what a leap could look like for Herbert. 12. Ryan Tannehill -- There's kind of a drop here, both in the projections and in the excitement level you probably have. This is where the old guys start to trickle in, and Tannehill gets the edge for his incredible efficiency over the past two seasons -- 7.3% TD rate, 8.6 Y/A -- as well as for his relative youth. Having A.J. Brown heading into Year 3 doesn't hurt either. |
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| The rest of my early QB rankings are below, and as you can see, it gets boring pretty quickly. In my eyes, there's a clear top 11 with significant upside, and then it's mostly just older guys hoping to hang on for another year or two. Tom Brady was initially inside the top 12, and I think you can make a pretty good case that he belongs there given how well he's played this season and the weapons he has in Tampa. But he'll be another year older and at some point the wheels have to fall off. |
| Ultimately, the first 11 QBs on my rankings are the only ones I'll really want to reach for, and I'll be happy to be the last one in my league to take one. It will get a bit dicier at the position if Hurts and Hill aren't starting, in which case I'll probably end up streaming quite a bit in 2021. Which I'm always fine doing. Of the streaming options, the ones I'll be most interested in are Joe Burrow (assuming he is healthy), Matthew Stafford (if he finds a new home or the Lions hire a passing-oriented coach) or Daniel Jones, who really just needs to make the leap to consistent as a passer to challenge for a top-12 spot. |
| I'll also add that this year's rookie class could be super intriguing, as I noted in Monday's newsletter, thanks to potentially as many as four first-round QBs with dual-threat potential. (We'll have plenty of in-depth coverage of the NFL draft prospects for you in the spring, so stay tuned for that). That's the direction the league is moving in, and it's where I'll always be looking for my Fantasy team. |
| 13. Matt Ryan 14. Tom Brady 15. Kirk Cousins 16. Joe Burrow 17. Jared Goff 18. Matthew Stafford 19. Ben Roethlisberger 20. Derek Carr 21. Cam Newton 22. Mitchell Trubisky 23. Jimmy Garoppolo 24. Daniel Jones 25. Gardner Minshew 26. Alex Smith 27. Baker Mayfield 28. Tua Tagovailoa 29. Teddy Bridgewater 30. Philip Rivers 31. Drew Lock 32. Sam Darnold |
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| Your Week 16 Stories |
| Here are some emails from readers about their Week 16 and full season glory and heartbreak. I'm having a blast reading your stories, so keep sending them my way! |
| From Dick: Glory and lessons learned in Season 43 |
| We just completed our 43rd season of fantasy football – the last 20 on CBS. I don't know how many older leagues there are, but we don't think there are many. Year One, 1978: Earl Campbell! Fran Tarkenton! James Lofton's rookie year! I've won titles at different times with Dan Fouts, Steve Young, and Lamar Jackson as my QBs. |
| I was fortunate enough to win our league for the second straight season this year. Thank goodness for Davante Adams. I thought I screwed up by starting Sony Michel instead of J.D. McKissic, but it turned out OK. |
| What I learned this year: Don't be afraid of no-names for one or two weeks. This year, JaMycal Hasty and DeeJay Dallas were my starting running backs in Weeks 8-9 after I lost Raheem Mostert, Nick Chubb, Devonta Freeman, and Justin Jackson to injuries. And the no-names scored! And kickers are always under appreciated until you need a good one. Greg Zuerlein was top-notch nearly all year, including the championship game. Cody Parkey, not so much. |
| And finally, talk with your owners about what your emergency plan is. We discussed COVID before the season, and found a way to accommodate things with no real crises. |
| Mike: Can we please -- please? -- make this a Dynasty league? |
| Sadly, you're right … nobody else cares. So bless you, Mr. Towers, for stepping forward to ask about our seasons. |
| Ours is a standard 12-team league that my son started when he got married to help bring the two clans together. Consequently we've learned to love football and despise our family. |
| This year I had 10th position in our snake draft (yes, it was a bad year last year), and came away with: |
| WR: D. Adams, D. Johnson, C. Godwin RB: D. Cook, D. Montgomery, J. Taylor, K. Hunt QB: J. Allen TE, DST, & K: A mishmash of waiver claims throughout the year, but ended with R. Tonyan, R. Blankenship, and Baltimore. |
| And yes, this was a good year. Outscored opponents in the regular season an average of 14 points per week, and outscored opponents in the semis and final by an average of 32 points per game. |
| My team was so strong I've been lobbying for conversion to a Dynasty league, but no one else is buying it. It was nothing but fun, and I truly hate to see the Fantasy season end. Wait, isn't tonight waivers, night? |
| Dave: What fresh horrors await in 2021? |
| Last season I lost in the playoff semifinals after compiling the best regular season record of 12-0, with a five-game winning streak to end. This year I was in the championship game in Week 16 after winning in the semifinals and compiling the best regular season lead record of 10-3-1. Before my first player stepped on the field my opponent, whom I had beaten in both of our earlier meetings amassed a lead of 124 points, thanks largely to Alvin Kamara, Mike Evans and Adam Thielen as well as two others. He still had five players yet to play! I recovered a bit with Myles Gaskin and Josh Allen , but still lost by 62 points. It was hard to keep the faith for a victory, as you might imagine, as the games concluded. I wonder what horror scenario awaits me next season. |
| Anita: Overcoming Kamara for redemption |
| First let me set the stage by saying I am the oldest player in my league (12 team, non-PPR). I am a 65-year-old woman playing with a group of 30-somethings in a league run by my son. I think I finished dead last in 2019 and my draft grade coming into 2020 was a C. But I waivered and traded my way to a second-place regular season finish and limped into the playoffs with Joe Mixon, Myles Gaskin and David Johnson on the bench injured. Somehow I managed to beat my daughter-in-law and then my son with the likes of Peyton Barber and Giovani Bernard as my RBs. I was thrilled to get Johnson and Gaskin back for the championship game and although I was an underdog, I felt like I had a chance. After all I was the number 2 seed against the number 1 seed. He crushed me during the regular season, but any given Sunday, right? |
| Christmas Day we get started and guess who my opponent has? Yup -- Alvin Kamara! So, six touchdowns later my son is congratulating me on second place and the projections say I have maybe an 8% chance of winning. Ha! This guy still has Patrick Mahomes and Darren Waller to play. Way to ruin Christmas! |
| But I fight back. Kyler Murray lets me down but Gaskin and Johnson and Davante Adams actually put me in striking distance. Going into Monday night I have one player to go and my opponent is done. I'm down 20+ points. OK, I basically need two TDs and 100+ yards. Not likely, but possible. |
| Guess who I've got? Diggs! So not one; not two; threeTDs! And I win!!! |
| Needless to say, I feel I have redeemed myself from last year and my expected bad-beat story actually has a happy ending. At least for me. My opponent is enduring endless ribbing from the rest of the league. First place all year; number 1 seed; weekly high scorer five times; Blah, blah blah. And he had Kamara! And he lost to his friend's MOM! It doesn't get any better than this! |
| Anyway, in this strange COVID-19 year, football, and especially Fantasy Football was a godsend for me! Thank you for all your help and here's looking forward to next season! |
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