The one spot in NFL DFS that can really kill you if you miss is quarterback. If everyone else is getting 20-25 points at the position and your QB gives you less than 10…well, it’s probably time to start thinking about next week. We have a lot of great content already at Fantasy Labs about the position in general, but since it’s so important, I want to look at the position on more of an individual level in this article. I will take a general QB trend and then look at who has historically correlated with this trend and which QBs have gone against what we would expect.
First, I’m going to look at Plus/Minus. One of our Pro Trends for QBs is “Projected Plus/Minus Above 4.0.” I’m actually going to lower the Plus/Minus to 2.5 just so we have more data to look at. Going back a few weeks, it looks like this will give us roughly the top 12 QBs in this category each week. Sorting by actual Plus/Minus (remember, this trend is PROJECTED Plus/Minus, so ACTUAL Plus/Minus looks at how they actually performed in the game), we see several cheap QBs at the top.
Cheap QBs have to score fewer points to exceed their projections, so this might seem like a “duh” type of thing at first. But two things on that – firstly, all it takes is one more query to find that there are MANY examples of cheap QBs having terrible games:
And secondly, if I sort for the worst results within the “Projected Plus/Minus is Above 2.5” trend, not many cheap QBs come up:
It makes sense that cheap QBs are less talented and so their path to success is more matchup-dependent than the upper-tier QBs. When a cheap QB is in a good spot, they will have a high Projected Plus/Minus value and most of the time, they will come through for you. Running this sub-trend shows that QBs who cost $6000 or less have smashed value within the Projected Plus/Minus trend:
To me, the most interesting area of the results for this trend is pictured below. These are the QBs who have played the most number of games with a Projected Plus/Minus of 2.5 or more:
Aaron Rodgers
Rodgers has added the most value in this group of QBs and most of the results have come when he is “on sale.” For Rodgers, it really comes down to salary. When he is $9000 or under, he has exceeded his projection in seven of eight games. At over $9000, he only hits 50% of the time. I actually just addressed this in another recent article, and Rodgers is seemingly priced under $9000 more frequently in 2015 than in the past, even in similar scenarios.
Each of the games was also at home, where Rodgers is deadly. The Packers were at least 4.5-point favorites in each game as well, though I think that is more of a function of playing at Lambeau than the presence of an additional predictor.
Andrew Luck
Luck’s Plus/Minus rating is a little misleading. In one game against Dallas late last season, Luck ended up splitting time with Matt Hasselbeck (21 attempts to 22 attempts) because the Colts had essentially already sealed their playoff fate going into that week. Excluding that game, Luck’s number would be much higher. He has two games in the result set in which he exceeded his projected point total by double-digits. Interestingly, Luck’s best and worst games on DraftKings both occurred within this result set, perhaps making it not a great predictor for his success.
Matt Ryan
One last QB I want to highlight is Matt Ryan, who actually has played the most games at +2.5 Projected Plus/Minus. This is probably the most boring result set I have ever looked at – not awful, not great, won’t kill your lineup, won’t carry your team to victory. Classic Matt Ryan.
Conclusion
To me, the most important thing about this trend was the performance of the cheaper QBs. Very few QBs below $6000 had a bad game when their Projected Plus/Minus was above 2.5. As a result, this trend may be best used for picking a GPP QB. Performance of the top QBs in this trend was uneven, so I wouldn’t suggest using it as a standalone way to pick your cash game QB for the week.
