Fantasy football rankings: Sorting the dynasty QBs into tiers

As recently as a few seasons ago it was no fun analyzing quarterbacks for fantasy football. In traditional, start-one quarterback leagues the prevailing strategy had become “late-round QB” and most players understood that waiting to draft the position was a sound way of approaching a draft. Thankfully, the rapid growth of superflex and 2QB formats (especially in dynasty) has made the position strategically important again. It’s not that being able to start two quarterbacks means late-round QB isn’t still a valid method for building a team, but it does mean that the signal-callers who are typically afterthoughts become relevant. Understanding volume, game scripts, offensive coordinator and head coaching tendencies, how rushing production solidifies floor – these things can make the difference in having a great second quarterback that can provide a weekly scoring advantage.

Thinking of quarterbacks from a superflex or 2QB perspective makes deeper rankings much more interesting, but rankings can fall short of properly illustrating value gaps between groups of players. One of the most helpful ways to make rankings sets more actionable is to add tiers – so I did it. This was done primarily by using the PFF rankings team group average and looking for natural breaks. I also used standard deviation to help draw in tier breaks when the decision could have gone either way. If a player on the edge of a tier had a wide range of ranks (read: lack of agreement) among our team then I dropped him to the lower tier. I ended up dividing our composite top-34 dynasty quarterback rankings into eight tiers.

(We've already done the dynasty tiers for running backs and tight ends.)

Tier 1

This trio represents the only three quarterbacks to receive top-three rankings from each of our rankers, so there is a very clear top. Rodgers and Wilson are much, much older, so I have no issues with a dynasty squad that’s rebuilding moving either one for Wentz. Touchdown upside due to sheer talent and team game-scripts is key for each of these players – they all paced for mid-30s passing touchdown numbers. In a league that rewards quarterbacks for points per carry, Wilson would get a slight nod over the others.