How Quarterback Draft Strategy Impacts Roster Construction In 2020
Redraft season is on the horizon and roster construction is important to your success in season long leagues. Your roster construction starts during the draft and this series will focus on the “this or that” of selecting a position during the draft and what the ramifications of that selection for your team is.
For this exercise, the position group selected with the first picks will be contrasted by the opposite position in the later pick. For example, if you took a RB in round two vs a WR in round two, the round 10 selection would compare taking a WR to pair with your second round RB and vice versa. All ADP is derived from ffcalculator.com and is based on 12 team PPR. Let’s dive in.
QB EARLY?
Let’s say you wanted to nab Patrick Mahomes early in your draft. Currently, Mahomes has an ADP of 19. Sitting at 20 overall is RB Aaron Jones. Let’s examine these players from a 2019 perspective.
Mahomes – QB10 (339.4 FP) QB6 (24.2 FP/G)
Jones – RB2 (318.8 FP) RB4 (19.9 FP/G)
Mahomes only played in 14 games in 2019, but still finished as a QB1 for the season and was still elite on a PPG basis. Jones blew up last season rushing for 16 TDs while catching three more. This season, the Chiefs selected RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the first round and will have star WR Tyreek Hill healthy. The Packers used a 2nd round selection on RB A.J. Dillon. On paper, it looks like Mahomes should have a monster season again, while Jones’ workload may be eaten into by Dillon. At this point, I have more questions about Jones than I do Mahomes. But in a 1QB league, do you want to spend a high selection on a QB? Let’s look at a later round RB and QB to pair with these two.
QB LATER?
If you selected Mahomes at 19 overall, you could circle back to take RB James White later, currently with an ADP of 74. Conversely, if you decided to wait on QB and took Aaron Jones at 20, you could take Drew Brees later, currently with an ADP of 78. Let’s look at the 2019 numbers.
White – RB19 (198.8 FP) RB23 (13.3 FP/G)
Brees – QB25 (262.6 FP) QB7 (23.9 FP/G)
White, as always, finished as a solid RB2 in 2019 with his extremely high receiving floor. White didn’t replicate his amazing 2018 season, but White was a starter for your team every week in PPR formats. Brees endured an injury in 2019 that limited him to just 11 games, but when he played was only .3 FP/G behind Mahomes, being taken nearly 60 slots higher.
Related | How Streaming Quarterback Is A Sound Draft Strategy In 2020: Read It Here!
White will have a new QB in 2020 for the first time in his pro career with Cam Newton. Newton comes from Carolina where he helped facilitate Christian McCaffrey see over 100 targets in 2017 and 2018 as the starting QB. Sony Michel has already been placed on the PUP with a knee injury and is not a threat to White’s workload in the passing game. Brees and the Saints appear to be the favorite in the NFC and went out and added Emmanuel Sanders to their receiving group. With Alvin Kamara, Michael Thomas and Jared Cook also catching passes, Brees should still see elite usage and efficiency in 2019.
2020 PROJECTIONS
Expecting Aaron Jones to hit 16 TDs again isn’t smart, but he should finish in the top 15 with these numbers. Mahomes and Brees have pretty comparable stats, while I see White seeing a bit of an uptick in his receiving work with Newton at the helm.
VERDICT
This first part of my series was a softball. Even with Mahomes being as great as he is, I can’t come to grips with taking him 19th overall. The RB pool dries up pretty quickly and Aaron Jones is near the back end of RB1’s I would feel comfortable rolling out every week. Even if you added White to Mahomes, I would still take Jones and Brees. Brees puts up similar numbers to Mahomes and if you’re taking a QB early, you need that positional advantage to be much greater than the gap between Brees and Mahomes.
Let me know what you think! What would you do?
