Fantasy Football Daily - 2022 Off-Season Hansen's Hints: Quarterbacks

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

John Hansen (@Fantasy_Guru) goes solo in the newest podcast mini-series: Hansen's Hints. Here, John looks at the initial 2022 QB Projections. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to the Fantasy Points podcast brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. What's up, everyone? Welcome to a new, I guess, little series here on the Fantasy Points podcast stream. We're going to call this thing Hanson's Hints. and I am John Hanson and I'll be the Hanson giving you the hints here and I thought for the first time ever really I'd go out on my own just a little bit. We are trying to individualize the podcast feed just a little.

So I will be starting now. I'm recording this on Thursday, May 5th. I will be popping in at least once a week to record a quick overview of the week that was what's going on to the world of fantasy football. We're starting now because I have just completed the preliminary 2022 season projections over at fantasy points.com. This is probably my at least 26th, seventh year in a row doing projections for the entire season and for every week for what it's worth here for fantasy football. And, you know, been doing it a long time. I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on it. So I'm the man who is behind all the projections that you find at fantasy points.com. Now I do, of course, as I like to say, I'm not a dictator.

I do like to take feedback from our excellent staff. You know, six, seven, eight brains are certainly better than one. But you also want to be a little more decisive than maybe the other people out there, the other analysts. And that is one thing I'm pretty good at. being decisive and making your calls. So when I started the process here, I'll give you a quick look at, you know, what I do. It's not earth shattering. And by the way, these are, you know, baseline projections.

Essentially, I will tweak these as more info comes into focus. But when I'm doing the projections, I'm not looking at the ADP or anything like that. I'm just going in. I certainly have a very. deep base of knowledge on all these players and I have a complete understanding of all the mitigating factors involved. And that's another thing that, you know, has always been a strength of mine accounting for literally at some cases 30, 40 different elements and adding it all up, but still being decisive. And, you know, our guy Adam Kaplan has always said that about me in

terms of what I do in terms of being decisive because that's kind of what you need to be as a scout. You don't want to be wishy-washy. You know, people out there who are all about, you know, there are two sides of every story. Yeah, that's totally true. I'm considering all sides. But at the end of the day, I come to a conclusion and I try to be decisive. So I'm not looking at the ADP and the positional rankings via the ADP, by the way, when I do these. So irrespective of what the markets are, essentially, I'm doing the numbers here. So then, though, I do the projection, which gives me a number, and then simply we sort by the projected number. And that gives us our rankings, if you will, and our projections.

Now, one other small little caveat, we do project the number of games played. So if you're at fantasy points.com, you can get maybe a better feel for the board by sorting by points per game. because there are some players with some injury issues that you certainly don't feel confident giving them all 17 games, but yet, you know, maybe you have the person playing 14 games, but for those 14 games, point per game, they might be QB 7, but on the season, they might only be QB 13. So always a good idea to check out the points per game numbers. And certainly we'll be tweaking the digits here throughout.

out. But the way I kind of look at the, at least my opinion in terms of the success, failure of the rankings and the projections, is I compare them to the ADP. I do it in the preseason. And I like to bump up players I like. You know, I do the projections, again, irrespective of the ADP. And then there are guys who I'm going to be higher on. That's great. But there are some players that maybe I want to make it a point to push. And I do monitor the ADP. And there are some cases even this year where I like a guy, but I'm actually a little lower than ADP.

But we've got a long way to go as the numbers continue to fluctuate, both the projection and the ADP, by the way. But I'll give you a few examples here quickly from last year. I thought last year was a really good year for that in terms of being better than the markets. In other words, if a guy's ADP was 50 and we had him at 30 and he kicked ass, that's a win. A pretty good year for that, especially with the receivers. And I always feel good about that. The running backs are difficult because they're all high. The good ones are going to be taken early. So they all have pretty high ADPs. But for example, Giovante Williams, his ADP last

summer was 50. We had him at 37. I feel like that's a win. If you're using our cheat sheet, you know, pretty good chance you got Gervante. DeAndre Swift, this may not be a big difference, but it could be the difference between a winner or not, a league winner or not. His ADP was 39, a fourth round pick. We had him at 30 squarely in the third round. Other running backs, A.J. Dillon was a guy who was really high on.

His ADP was 92. We slash I had him at 76. But those receivers were great. Here's a couple of good examples from last year. Debo Samuel, ADP was 82. We added it at 68. And by the way, I'm strategically pricing these guys, too. I don't want, I don't want to go too cray-cra with it.

You know what I mean? Like, I was really into Debo. But if his ADP is 82, I mean, do I really need to rank them at 50? Not really. I think if you go 12 to 14 picks above the ADP, you're basically handing your viewers and readers, Debo. And I'm pretty sure we did, in fact, hand debo to a lot of people last year. Michael Pittman, ADP 97, we had him at 72.

Darno Mooney, ADP 103, we had him at 73. You get the picture. You know, it works on the other side, too. Oh, here's a good one. Hollywood Brown, ADP 114, we had him at 92. Juju, ADP 69, we had him at 85. Now certainly, oh, here's a really good one. Amon Ross St. Brown.

I was very high on him. 80819, we had him 155. certainly had some guys that were not great. Leonard Fournette. James Connor, old guys essentially. Justin Herbert, though, not so old. Undersold him. We obviously make mistakes.

I do. I always try to really take stock and all those mistakes. Learn from them and be more accurate. So let's get into today's podcast. We'll be just the quarterbacks. I'm going to do four different ones and go through all the positions. first and foremost, when I finished all the projections for the quarterbacks, I'm like, all right, here we go, let's sort.

And even though it is still top heavy and there is a lack of quality in the middle of the top 30 and obviously in the bottom half of that, I will say overall, I do think this may be the deepest year in the history of fantasy football for viable quarterbacks. Everything's so wide open now. Almost anything is possible. Not like the old days where I can remember ranking maybe 40 for the year. And then once you got past like QB 16, it was really bad. This year, though, we're going in the upper 20s in terms of viable options. Granted, again, a lot of sameness. But let's go throw it quickly. certainly don't want to give every darn ranking away here. And obviously, I'm recording this in May,

so things will change dramatically. And on the other hand, if you're taking the time to listen to this entire podcast, I guess you deserve to hear the damn rankings here that are basically premium at fantasy points.com. And by the way, really not many differences from the market. I like to be ahead of the market or different than the markets, if you will. But, hey, great minds think alike. It is kind of polling data in terms of the ADP and you're polling a bunch of people who are pretty savvy by the way. The ADP we use is really good, really tight and strict, if you will, like tight. Like the ADP over at the NFFC with the high stakes players, not going to change that much in May other than guys who blow up in the summer and injuries and all that. But, you know,

normally by the time we get to August, everyone's kind of up to speed. The people drafting now and where the ADP is based on, these people already know what's up. But Josh Allen checks in here at number one, of course. For the record, we did have Allen at one last year. He was not the consensus one. It was Mahomes. We had Allen at one and actually priced about a round over his ADP. So that was a pretty good call.

However, I personally am out on Allen this year. Number one of the ADP is way up there. It's probably gotten 50% more expensive compared to last year where I think it was about 50. Now it's like late second, early third. And nothing more important and nothing else that needs to be said. We all know he's a stallion, but the loss of Brian Dayball is pretty damn big here for Josh Allen and the bills. Patrick Mahomes comes in next and do like what they've done. at receiver. He's durable. I really like what he did down the stretch, other than the second

half of the AFC title game, of course. But down the stretch, you know, scratching and clawing his way back to respectability. I thought that was really nice. And we do love Sky Moore. But I am probably out on Mahomes as well at 32 overall. Herbert comes in next. And by the way, this is the market. They have the board the same top five as we do. And my projections came up the same. Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, then Herbert. Burrow would be my guy. That's not priced over the markets right now. I do, though, having with 40 touchdowns.

That's quite the number. I think he'll run a little bit more. So if I'm going to pay a premium, that's the first guy I'm going to pay up for in the fourth round. By then, at 45 overall, let's say, we probably will have more running backs than usual available, but the really good ones obviously will be gone. Brady we have at five.

I actually have a pretty bad vibe here. I mean, look, I'm not going to bet against freaking Tom Brady, but I do have a bad vibe on the bucks. And for the record, I had a really, really, really good vibe last year. That did play out with Brady putting up big numbers, but Bruce has gone. They do have some changes up front on the O line. Godwin coming off the ACL. It's weird.

There's some weird stuff there. I do like the addition of, uh, Russell Gates for the offense and I love Rashad White they're running back. So I will probably let Brady pass. By the way, he's a little bit more expensive than last year. Then you've got this weird range. It's not weird, but you've got the cheat code range.

And, you know, these guys dropped a little bit for me this past year on the heels of seasons in which they all had some sort of issue injury-wise. Now, Russell Wilson's not necessarily due to his running, but Lamar Jackson ankle problem and Kyler Murray. Of course, no deep. for the first six games for him. And, you know, Lamar Jackson, they just traded away Hollywood Brown.

And Kyler and Hollywood, they're, you know, going to do some good things, I'm sure, former college teammates. But the cheat code guys are not nearly as appealing to me at this point this year, except for Jalen Hertz, who we do have considerably higher than the ADP. We were also higher on him last year than the ADP. Hertz's ADP last year was 103. We had him at 87. It's a pretty big win.

That's almost handing Jalen Hertz to people on a silver platter who had the balls, I guess, to take him. Dak and Russell, you know, really the whole staff is kind of down on Dak. He did not run very much last year and really struggled mentally. That O-line has been deteriorated. the running game as well. A little thinner receiver. I do like Jalen Tolbert, but Dak is just kind of there,

not really jumping out as like a great discount. Russell Wilson, same deal, great supporting cast. We haven't priced right at his ADP as the QB-9. I personally think he's a declining player, and I'll be curious to see how he does with different coaching and a different staff, and of course, a different offense,

different environment. That'll be interesting. I'll probably let someone else roll with him personally. That brings us to the QB that we do have inside the top 12, who I am all in on, and I will go with him very late as my starter. He is the cheapest of all the quarterbacks that we have ranked in our top 15. And that is Derek Carr. I, you, you, used to be a car guy. There was one year where he was my guy, and he did let me down. But, you know, hey, it's like six years later and a guy's still good. So not like it was a terrible call, me backing a very young Derek car. And obviously, I love the situation there. I do think they need to get one other weapon. But Josh McDaniels, I believe in truly. I think the chemistry with

Devante Adams, his boy, they've worked out pretty much every year, the last, like, damn, there a decade in the offseason. I think that's going to be great. I think he's got three like dudes that he truly trust, which is like, hey, I mean, if Derek Carr played with nothing but receivers, he truly trusted, you might be actually right there with Aaron Rogers in terms of the numbers. We've always got to made that comparison, ironically. By the way, James Jones, former Packer and Rader who play with Derek Carr, I believe

called him Baby A-Rod. So he made that comp, too. Speaking of Arod, actually made a last minute decision, even though I'm very concerned about the overall quality of the receiving core to bump him up over Stafford. He is Aaron Rogers. The guy did make us all look silly a couple of years ago when we were all down on him as an industry and he, well, was insanely good. Not going to put it past him this year. They do have quantity at receiver. I do kind of like that Romeo Dubs there as a sneaky player.

and of course they did drafts Christian Watson. Now, Matt Stafford, I am personally not feeling it. We were high on Stafford last year. Not sure if we ranked them much over the marketplace, but I know I isolated him as it was like him and Hertz and a little burrow action as a very desirable. I don't know where we ranked them. It was above market, maybe not a ton,

but we absolutely did like him. And it was great. Everything worked out wonderfully. I feel like I'm quitting while I'm ahead. What's interesting about Stafford is when I do the projections, you know, I do them by position, you know, quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends. And then what I'll do is go back and add up all the receiving production

that I give to all the receivers, including the running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends, and just make sure it lines up with the production I'm giving the quarterbacks. well, you know, I gave Stafford numbers that I thought, and by the way, 31 of 32 lined up almost perfectly, because I'm very detail oriented with that. I'm always cognizant of there's only so many targets and catches and yards to go around. But with the, in the case of Stafford, you know, I felt comfortable, obviously giving them the numbers that I gave them. But then when I moved on and did all the positions, added up all the production, it was like a thousand yards light.

it was a thousand yards under what I had Stafford throwing for. And I'm like, wow, I thought that was quite interesting. And then you really look at it. And man, now, they're probably going to get Odell Beckham back. Hopefully for them, he's healthy. And I believe he wants to come back. And I believe they want him back and they'll probably make it work financially. But man, Alan Robinson is coming off an underwhelming campaign.

Van Jefferson, I was disappointed in last year. I thought he had some drops. The depth behind these guys is perilously thin, unless you're a Tutu Atwell apologist. So basically, and Tyler Higbee is perennally underwhelmed. So basically, right now, it's like they are absolutely counting on Cooper Cup to go nuts again, which I would be skeptical of his ability to do what he did last year. So that's probably my hottest take right now.

I am not into Stafford at all. in addition to avoiding the very expensive guys. So I don't want to go too far down the list here. We'll be here forever. But there's a couple of players that we came in. I did a little higher than the markets. And we'll see how things play out. But it's a lot about young ascending, hopefully players,

with an enticing ceiling, you know, the sexiness of the unknown, if you will. But Trevor Lawrence and to a tongue, of Loa do have a lot of people to work with here, a lot of weapons. So Lawrence came in at QB 16, actually. I'm not a big Doug Peterson guy overall, but they do produce for fantasy, generally speaking. He likes the forward pass does Doug Peterson. QB21, we've got him at 16.

Tua is QB 18. We've got him at 17. You know, then we have the second year, quote unquote, cheat code guys, in Trey Lance and Justin Fields. Obviously, I don't feel as good about either player as I did last year, but I'm not as down on Fields as supporting cast as others, but clearly it's not great. And I think this will be one where hopefully I'll get a vibe

and watching them in the preseason. Same with Trey Lance. I am going to back Trey Lance right now more than Fields. I know there are, you know, worrisome reports. And Jimmy G, I do believe, could stick around. round for their protection and maybe because they're not sold on Trey Lance totally. But even if Jimmy G's on the roster, I'd probably take a bite here. I do still think, and look, in this case, we certainly are still in the dark a little bit.

But I do always feel that you can tell quickly if a quarterback's going to make it. From what I saw with Trey Lance, I definitely like what I saw. The movement and the arm strength, just the talent is just so evident. but he clearly needs to polish up his game and get his act together, but certainly willing to invest in him as a QB2, but we are a little lower on him than the market. And that goes to the point of I only project for the number of games I project.

So I'm not giving Trey Lance the gig now, so I'm only projecting him for 13 games. So keep that in mind. Let me see if I sorted by team and added up the projection of Jamie G and Trey Lance, now we're talking about some solid production here. Now we're talking 351 fantasy points, which would have been like QB11, QB12.

That's about right. So I am still somewhat interested in Trey Lance down the board. We do have some other interesting options, younger players mainly as we moved down the board. I'm not ruling it out for Mack Jones to throw like 28, 29 touchdowns. We do have at 26. Certainly they're going to still be run heavy, but look at all those receivers they drafted.

They actually have a lot of quantity now. Zach Wilson is, look, we don't want to go overboard. We are a little higher on him than the rest here. QB 26 is the ADP. I've got them at 23, but man, they have done everything possible to surround this kid other than maybe securing an unbelievable right tackle but you know i saw a video of macaa beckton today granted he looked large as hell but man if he's in shape he could be a devastating left tackle and you team that up with the rest of the

players they put up front here including last year's number of pick elijah vera tucker it could be a pretty darn good old line you love the weaponry i'm not saying no excuses because it's still a year two but man shout out to the jets and joe douglas for doing such a great job i don't care what happens they say oh you can't judge a draft until uh three years yeah i don't care i'll do it now it's a good job that they did uh you know they added plenty of talent on both sides to the ball you know we certainly love elijah more garrett wilson's very good a lot of tight ends here now ruckard is an intriguing guy they're loaded dare i say they're loaded the giants aren't as loaded.

So what's like Daniel Jones comes down the board. But he is, I've always been a little bit of a sucker. Now last year, not so much because I'd said throughout the offseason that, you know, it's kind of like fields maybe this summer. Like I'm going to go off the vibes in the summer. Training camp, injuries, performance, while they were bad. So we were like, nope. I predicted Sterling Shepard would lead them and receiving,

which was a pretty good prediction until it wasn't. I will say, though, the Giants have very good tackles now. Very good. I think Andrew Thomas potentially could be, maybe I'm going overboard, but one of the two, three best tackles in the league. I mean, I watched him very closely last year. I thought he was tremendous. Like I said, I'm not studying every single play.

But if he continues to ascend, that that's absolutely a possibility that he's an elite left tackle. And I think Evan Neal is going to be very, very good there on the right side. You know, some people worried about, you know, him handling ultra-athletic edge rushers. More often than not, they come from that left side. And that's critical for Daniel Jones.

They want him to let a rip. Dayball is going to coach him hard. They're going to encourage him to let it rip. And that's what I've said about Daniel Jones for two years. Let it rip, dude. So hopefully he does. I don't love the receiving core. But if Cadar is Tony, you know,

reports in good spirits, if you will, and all that. And Kenny Gowley brings it. It's not bad. Wondell Robinson's intriguing as well. Moving down the board here, your normal cast of characters. I will say there is some intrigue in Pittsburgh. Now, I added up all the projections. We've got Kenny Pickett at QB30, added up all the projections there.

And if you add Ken Pickett and Mitchell Tribeskey, that would be, looks like it's I think it's 302 points which would have been good for QB 14. I do like Kenny Pickett. I think he's got a chance here. I'm projecting him to start, what was that, 13, 14 games.

So pretty strong endorsement there. Obviously, Will Sate didn't really bother adding up the Seattle guys, but for the record, Atlanta, that's not bad either. They would have been good the way I have it now, and this is all because of the running of Marioota.

and Desmond Ritter. QB 15. So keep that in mind on the very, very low end. If you're, I don't know, handcuffing quarterbacks in a deep two quarterback league. And then for the record, the Carolina guys, a tough call there. I combined them 266 points.

It's QB21. They do run a little bit, Darnold and Matt Corral. There it is. I think I laid it out. the landscape at the quarterback position. I think everyone's kind of on the same page this year. And we are as well.

But there are some guys here who stand out to me. Most notably, those in terms of priced by us right with the markets would be Joe Burrow. We are higher than the markets on Jalen Hertz. I personally am much higher on Derek Carr than the markets. and I think the staff agrees. I'm personally lower, and I think the staff agrees,

at least to an extent, on Matt Stafford. Didn't mention Deshawn Watson, by the way. My plan, and more often than not, will be to target Derek Carr late. But my first draft of the year, by the way, I did not get them. Somebody took them as their QB2.

I got a little too greedy. But I did go with Deshaun as my starter there. Not a bad consolation prize. Probably the deepest tight end. tight end. A quarterback group we've ever seen, but again, the quality is a little light. Once you get past the top, I'd say 14 players. That's kind of a drop off after Deshawn. Now you're talking Kirky, Trevor Lawrence, Tuatunga Valoa, and the like. Again, these are just baseline projections. I will tweak as more information becomes available. For example, if Danny Dimes is lighting it up,

and I'm talking to my guy Jordan Renan who covers them for ESPN or another person who goes to practice. And the vibes are good. You know, I'll up his completion percentage. Give him another 10 completions and another 115 yards, things like that. So we will continue to tweak as we get more information as well. So I'll wrap it up here. And I'll be back to do three more of the. podcast here, the Hanson's Hints segment, if you will, of the Fantasy Points

podcast stream. So until then, we'll catch you on the flip side. I'm John Hanson. This is Hanson Hints at FantasyPoints.com. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review on your favorite platform. And come join the roster at FantasyPoints.com.