We’re in the thick of the NFL offseason and it’s officially time to start fantasy football prep. I’ll be answering the biggest questions heading into the 2021 season. Click here to read the series of questions answered so far.
Fantasy football is a game that attempts to create a scoring system to reflect which NFL players are the best. Of course, this often isn’t an all-encompassing game; the offensive line, defense and kickers don’t get the same sort of due as quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers and tight ends. Still, at its core fantasy football simply attempts to take what we’re watching on the field and turn it into a fun, point-based game.
However, there have been some notable cheat codes of sorts in this great American pastime, most notably players that are able to rack up two different means of production. We see this most frequently with rushing QBs and receiving RBs, although the occasional rushing WR, or whatever the hell Taysom Hill is, can also cause a disruption in fantasy land.
Enter: Jalen Hurts, who looks a lot like one of the NFL’s next great fantasy signal-callers thanks to his penchant for taking off on his own. What follows is a breakdown on why many in the fantasy community expect so much from Hurts ahead of his second season as well as where we should feel comfortable drafting him in 2021.
Hurts was a great (fantasy) QB in 2020
We saw Hurts sporadically through the first 13 weeks of last season, but the Eagles finally had enough of the Carson Wentz experience by the time their final four games rolled around. It’s tough to say Hurts was overly stellar in these performances from a real life perspective; either way, we can’t deny the man showed the ability to put up some high-end fantasy production.
- Week 14: 167 pass yards-1 TD-0 INT, 18 carries-106 rush yards-0 TD, fantasy QB11
- Week 15: 338-3-0 passing, 11-63-1 rushing, fantasy QB1
- Week 16: 342-1-2 passing, 9-69-0 rushing, fantasy QB12
- Week 17: 72-0-1 passing, 8-34-2 rushing, fantasy QB20
The final performance came in just three quarters, as ex-head coach Doug Pederson felt the need to put in Nate Sudfeld for the final 15 minutes of the season. Sheesh.
The moral of the story: We don’t have any real evidence of Hurts doing anything other than functioning as a fantasy QB1. This was largely thanks to the rushing totals: Hurts’ 46 rush attempts in this span would be good for 184 carries when extrapolated over an entire season — the highest single-season mark from a QB in NFL history.
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