I always wait to do my introduction until after writing the meat of my articles.
Perhaps I’m waiting for a little anecdote or something cute to pop in my head while scouring over spreadsheets of data. Perhaps I’m just pushing off the hardest part until last, because of some lacking cleverness to find a weekly hook to bait you into reading about the conjunction of statistics with analysis.
Or perhaps I’m really just too excited about the #content of the article to waste much space with an unnecessary introduction.
Well I’ve already got you this far and with no typos and a funny Matt Barkley picture under your belt. Hopefully I’ve still got your attention to come to the real reason of this article — Naked Quarterbacks.
For those unaware, what I mean by “Naked Quarterback” is playing a quarterback in a lineup without stacking any of his teammates with him. This is a unique strategy sometimes employed to differentiate your lineup from the masses. It’s often used in cash games for variance reasons, but it also presents a unique twist to GPP lineup construction as it isn’t an overly popular move.
The most common line of thinking is if the quarterback is set to do well in a matchup, it’s because the weapons around him are also in great matchups. This is why stacking is such a popular go-to move in GPPs – as a receiver flourishes, so will the quarterback. However, pivoting off this groupthink by rolling out a more contrarian naked QB could help land you at the top of a GPP leaderboard instead of having just a quality finish.
I looked at the top-six quarterbacks on DraftKings for each week because if we’re looking to chase down GPPs, we’re only really looking for the top performers. Price, value, ownership, etc. are always things to consider, but for purposes of this exercise, we’ll just look at performance.
2015 Quarterbacks in Review
Reviewing each of the top-six quarterbacks from each week of the 2015 season allows us to see just how often a quarterback was able to buoy his way to the top of the quarterback rankings without a ton of outside help. The “help” I’m referring to refers to the ancillary pieces surrounding the quarterback such as either a top-12 wide receiver or top-six tight end. These may be somewhat arbitrary cutoffs, but they offered a sound starting point to determine which quarterbacks were able to perform highly in a given week (top-six), without a stud performance from a teammate elevating their ranking.
If it seems obvious, it’s because it is. Quarterbacks were often elevated to a top-six ranking with the help of a standout wide receiver or a tight end. Together these two duos made up 57.84% of the combinations of top-six quarterback performances. It was rather surprising to see naked QB in third, as 18 of the 102 top-six quarterback performances were done without the help of a significant contributor.
The QB+1WR, 1TE category was led by New England by a large margin. Rob Gronkowski routinely finished as a top-six tight end this season while allowing the Patriots’ PPR magnets in Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola to help facilitate the offense. The QB+2WR category was spearheaded by Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, and Arizona. All three of these teams had receivers that saw sizable market shares of the team’s targets and were able to help propel their quarterback for monster outings with some big time stacking.
There were only two instances when a team’s corp of offensive weapons truly went off – where the quarterback finished in the top six while having two top-12 wide receivers and a top-six tight end. Week 8 allowed Drew Brees to perform this feat as he threw for 500-plus yards and seven touchdowns. The other performance — and it’s rather mind blowing after seeing what it took for Brees to accomplish this feat — was Kellen Moore, who did his best “Matt Flynn Week 17” impression. Moore threw for 435 yards and 3 touchdowns, finishing as the QB2 while Terrance Williams (WR4), Cole Beasley (WR12), and Jason Witten (TE6) all fit into our trifecta of fantasy goodness.
Let’s break down the 18 naked QB’s a bit further to see if there’s any actionable data.
There were three repeat performers in Carson Palmer, Drew Brees, and Joe Flacco that were lucky enough to manage this feat multiple times. This trio is rather interesting, as each offense was either saturated with playmakers (Arizona) or bereft of offensive talent (New Orleans and Baltimore). Both situations led to zero standout playmakers those given weeks, as the quarterbacks soaked up the fantasy points to top-six production.
Another interesting point was the abundance of rushing touchdowns among the group. There were eight rushing touchdowns among the 18 quarterbacks, as they relied on their legs to provide top quarterback performances. This inherently makes sense – as we look for other sources of fantasy production outside throwing to top playmakers, finding quarterbacks capable of capitalizing with their legs is a sound strategy.
Matchup is always something to consider, as there were four repeat guys that yielded top-six fantasy outings to naked QBs last year – Cleveland, Detroit, New England, and Tennessee. The Browns and Titans tied for allowing the third-most passing touchdowns, continuously getting beat through the air for points. Detroit developed a lock-down corner in Darius Slay, who often neutralized top receiving threats, forcing quarterbacks to spread the ball around more to their secondary weapons while piling up fantasy stats. New England’s offense often forced opposing offenses to throw the ball out of necessity to keep pace in the game, and were bottom-five in DVOA against WR3s or lower, as opposing teams were often forced to go to multiple wide receiver formations against them. All four of these defenses had legitimate reasons why they were giving up fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks, and shrewd fantasy players took advantage.
On average the naked QBs scored 27.6 fantasy points per game. Not terrible until you see that their non-naked counterparts averaged 30.9. Only four of the naked QBs were able to surpass this 30.9 point total, as they combined to average four touchdowns a piece. It’s also noteworthy that this subset of 18 quarterbacks mostly ranked towards the bottom of the top six, averaging at QB4.2. It was very challenging for naked QBs to lead the position in a given week, but it was possible.
Looking back at 2015’s numbers, it was difficult finding productive naked QB’s as nearly 82% of the top-six quarterbacks relied on outside help last year. So what have we learned from last year’s quarterbacks who flew solo towards fantasy success and how can we apply it towards the future?
When Should You Go Naked QB?
Last season didn’t give us a ton of optimism when looking for ways to deviate our lineups by going naked QB. It’s very rare to find the perfect storm brewing that sets up for a naked QB performance, but if we want to continue to find a contrarian way to differentiate our lineups at the quarterback position, these are the main ingredients:
1) Concentration of Targets is Spread Out
We aren’t looking for guys like Ryan Fitzpatrick, who last season threw over 50% of his passes to Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker. Instead we’re looking for more of an even distribution of targets from our signal callers. Carson Palmer, Tom Brady, Drew Brees – quarterbacks that have a plethora of targets to utilize in any given week – are the types we’re looking for.
This even distribution of targets relies less on the quarterback funneling most of his attention towards a certain receiver’s way, and allows them to just read the defense finding the best option on a given play. Focusing on this aspect instead of repeatedly throwing to a receiver who’s supposedly in a good matchup lets the offense elevate as a whole – “a rising tide lifts all boats” – types of scenarios.
2) Quarterback Has a High Ceiling
This seems like a given, but it’s an important feature to research with Fantasy Labs’ tools. The Ceiling Projections at Fantasy Labs take a multitude of factors into effect and provides an expected point total the player is likely to surpass with 15% probability.
We’re looking for quarterbacks that enter ideal situations in matchup, expected game flow, Vegas lines, and has the ability to capitalize on all of these to put up an abundance of points. High ceilings are always something to take into account, but especially so when rolling the dice without a quarterback’s favorite weapon.
3) Rushing Touchdown Upside
Finally, we’re looking for the upside of possible rushing touchdowns. Given the nature of the position, we’re looking for touchdowns in any way we can get them — but especially the six-point variety we get from quarterbacks on the ground. As mentioned earlier, finding quarterbacks that are capable of capitalizing on the ground with their legs are another factor to consider when looking at potential quarterbacks to run naked with.
Finding the perfect mix of a healthy distribution of targets within an offense, with a quarterback that has both a high ceiling and a penchant for running the ball in when things break down around him, can help lead us to this perfect storm of when to fly solo with our quarterbacks. Running with a naked quarterback isn’t always the preferred move, but if we come across the right factors, it can be a game-changing move that has the potential to vault you up GPP leaderboards when it hits.
