Fantasy football – Is the top tier at QB worth drafting aggressively?

For several years now, fantasy managers have embraced the mantra to wait on drafting quarterbacks, recognizing that the depth at the position lessened any advantage that having one of the position’s best could provide.

That might well be changing.

Yes, quarterback scoring has reached record-setting levels, with three of the four 400-point fantasy seasons in history coming in the past four years, while the position (as a whole) managed its three best fantasy point totals in those same four years (2020, 2021 and 2018, with 2019 placing fifth). Yes, the bar for what constitutes a “good” fantasy quarterback remains sky-high, as the 11 signal-callers to score 300-plus fantasy points matched 2021’s total for the most in any single year in history.

Still, 2021 signaled a downturn, albeit a slight one, in overall QB fantasy production. Additionally, the recent rise in mobile quarterbacks across the league has directly influenced roster-building strategy. Both factors have restored some of the appeal to having one of the position’s very best. To be clear, I said some.

The 17-game schedule

First and foremost, the fact that the NFL extended its schedule by one game last season provided the position a noticeable advantage, at least from the seasonal-totals perspective cited above. Adjusting 2021’s totals to compare seasons over an equal number of games — in other words, scaling back to 16 — the overall position’s total (its total fantasy points scored) from last year would have been only the fourth-best in history, trailing 2020, 2018 and 2015, and only barely edging out 2019. Additionally, only 14 quarterbacks would have managed as many as 240 fantasy points, fewer than the number that hit that benchmark in seven out of the eight seasons that preceded it.

Perhaps the ideal way of illustrating this effect, however, is to compare the position’s overall…