Rearview QB

For the ninth straight season, I'm advising fantasy football owners about a good starting point for their quarterback projections/rankings. My Rearview QB article analyzes the production of every quarterback from the prior season after adjusting his performance for partial games played and strength of schedule. If you're a first time reader, here's my argument in a nutshell: using last year's regular end-of-year data is the lazy man's method. When analyzing a quarterback, many look at a passer's total fantasy points or fantasy points per game average from the prior season and then tweak the numbers based on off-season changes and personal preferences. But a more accurate starting point for your projections is a normalized version of last year's stats.

The first adjustment is to use adjusted games (and not total games), which provide a more precise picture of how often the quarterback played. Second, you should adjust for strength of schedule, because a quarterback who faced a really hard schedule should get a boost relative to those who played easy opponents most weeks.

To be clear, this should be merely the starting point for your quarterback projections. If you think a particular quarterback carries significant injury risk, or is going to face a hard schedule again, feel free to downgrade him after making these adjustments. (And it should go without saying that if you think a quarterback will improve or decline - or, in the case of Colin Kaepernick or Cam Newton his supporting case will improve or decline - you must factor that in as well.) But those are all subjective questions that everyone answers differently; this analysis is meant to be objective. The point isn't to ignore whether a quarterback is injury prone or projects to have a really hard or easy schedule in 2014; the point is to delay that analysis.

First we see how the player performed on the field last year, controlling for strength of schedule and missed time; then you factor in whatever variables you like when projecting the 2014 season. The important thing to consider is that ignoring partial games and strength of schedule is a surefire way to misjudge a player's actual ability level. There's a big difference between a quarterback who produced 300 fantasy points against an easy schedule while playing every game than a quarterback with 300 FPs against the league's toughest schedule while missing 3.6 games. Here's another way to consider the same idea: Jay Cutler ranked 25th in fantasy points in 2013, but the quarterback position for the Bears (i.e., Cutler and Josh McCown) ranked as the 4th highest team QB last year.

Adjusted games are calculated by taking each quarterback's pass plus rush attempts in a game and dividing them by all of the team's passing and rushing attempts by all quarterbacks in that game. Below is a list of how each quarterback (excluding quarterbacks with 4.0 adjusted games or fewer) ranked in fantasy points per adjusted game. The scoring system used is 4 point per passing TD, 1 point per 20 yards passing, -1 per INT, 1 point for every 10 yards rushing and 6 points for every rushing TD. For reference, the league average QB scored 19.96 FP/G in 2013.

Sure, you knew that Peyton Manning was going to finish #1 no matter how we spliced the data. But Nick Foles jumps to 2nd in Fantasy Points per Adjusted Game, despite ranking only 17th in total fantasy points. He also ranked 3rd in Fantasy Points per Game, but his average in that metric was deflated because of partial games. While Foles officially played in 13 games last year, he only gets credited here with 10.1 Adjusted Games.

Andy Dalton, Philip Rivers, Matthew Stafford, Cam Newton, and Andrew Luck all played nearly 16 full games: as a result, all look slightly worse when measuring them on a per-adjusted game basis.  Players like Robert Griffin III III, Jay Cutler, and even Ryan Fitzpatrick weren't too far behind those players, coming within two fantasy points per adjusted game of them. Ben Roethlisberger finished as a top ten fantasy quarterback last year, but that label is misleading. He actually ranked 18th on a per-adjusted game basis, which reflects the reality that he was more of an average backup than a legitimate starting fantasy quarterback.

But before digging too deep into the analysis, we need to take a look at each quarterback's strength of schedule. A positive number indicates a hard schedule, and no regular starter had a more difficult schedule than Matt Ryan last year.

Meanwhile, the NFC East quarterbacks -- especially those that got to play the Dallas defense twice -- had some of the easiest schedules in the league.

Note that these strength of schedule ratings are themselves adjusted, so Foles's schedule doesn't look easy because the defenses he played allowed a ton of fantasy points in part because they faced Nick Foles. Rather, the adjustments to the defenses and the quarterbacks are both iterated hundreds of times until the results converge, eliminating this issue. Foles had three three full games against the terrible Vikings, Cowboys, and Raiders defenses, and the majority of a fourth game (albeit when Foles was suffering from a concussion and played poorly) against Dallas.  He only had one game against a defense that would be considered tough, and that was in week 16 against the Bears (and by the end of the season, the Chicago defense was lifeless).

The final step is to adjust each quarterback's FP/AdjG average for the SOS numbers above.  So Foles, who averaged 28.8 FP/AdjG against a schedule that was 1.7 FP/G easier than average

So what can we take away from these numbers?

• Fantasy owners are still skeptical of Nick Foles, as he's rarely selected as a top-5 quarterback. Without DeSean Jackson, caution may be the appropriate decision. But Foles did rank as a top-three fantasy quarterback on a per-adjusted game basis last year, even when adjusting for strength of schedule.
• Andy Dalton has an average draft position of QB16 as of late May. Dalton ranked 3rd in total fantasy points last year, but obviously the fantasy community remains down on the Bengals passer. But Dalton wasn't all about gross production: he'd rank 5th in FP/AdjG if we limited the list to quarterbacks with eight starts. So what explains his low ADP? He's not a sexy pick and he isn't a great NFL quarterback, but Dalton has outstanding talent at the skill positions and seems like to finish in the top ten against in 2014.
• Meanwhile, Matthew Stafford ranked 13th in AdjFP/AdjG last year, but currently has an ADP of QB4. Stafford ranked 4th last year in fantasy points, and has a reputation as a high-volume passer who plays with Calvin Johnson. But at least on a per-game basis, Stafford wasn't very impressive in 2013, especially once you adjust for strength of schedule.
• Tom Brady and Robert Griffin III III had rough seasons in 2013 (Brady ranked 21st in AdjFP/AdjG, Griffin 26th), but both are being drafted as top ten quarterbacks in 2014. Of course, both finished in the top four in AdjFP/AdjG in 2012, so it appears as though fantasy drafters are expecting returns to form for both players.

Finally, let's take a look at defenses.  Again, a negative number means an easier schedule (i.e., weaker quarterbacks), but a lower AdjFP/G means a better defense.  To no surprise, Seattle had the stingiest fantasy defense for opposing quarterbacks in 2013, with Carolina and San Francisco rounding out the top three.