2023 Fantasy Football – Quarterback Leaders, Recap, and Data

The 2023 NFL season is behind us and the Kansas City Chiefs have been recrowned as Super Bowl Champions. Before becoming fully immersed in the upcoming 2024 fantasy football season, let’s take a moment to reflect on the fantasy season that was. As Winston Churchill said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.” 

This is the quarterback portion of the series. Keep an eye out for the running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends reviews coming soon! 

Before diving in, a word of caution. With any attempt to look back, we will be met with hindsight bias. Once we know Puka Nacua had a phenomenal season, it is difficult not to look back and see the clues while what you were seeing in the moment gets ever more foggy. Sprinkle in a little confirmation bias – “I knew it!  see here are all the ‘definitive’ clues I’m seeing now that I’m looking back.” I will attempt to expose my own biases through this exploration and highly encourage anyone reading to think through their biases as well. 

Fantasy Football Top-15 Quarterbacks

Yes, I know people love their standard 12-team leagues and want an easy QB1 label. However, that’s rarely the case and I enjoy the additional context of total fantasy points in conjunction with mean and median values. More on the QB1 and other labels in the Data Notes section at the end. For now, enjoy the top 15 players with at least 8 games (50% of the season played)!

Overperformers

This section is dedicated to the guys who outproduced their ADP most significantly. 

Dak Prescott – For all of the Cowboys’ recent bungles in the playoffs, Prescott’s year-long fantasy performance was stellar. He was a steal of a pick going in the 7th round range of drafts and returned top-tier level fantasy stats. Prescott’s rate of 11 of 17 games above the QB12 threshold was only bested by Jalen Hurts (14 of 17) and Josh Allen (13 of 17).

Jordan Love – One of only five QBs to top 300 fantasy points in 2023 and snagged in the 14th round of drafts. Love might have been one of the best redraft picks. Perhaps the best part of playing Love was that 75% of his games were at or above 15.3 points. You could start him consistently without the “boom/bust” fear of some other quarterbacks.

CJ Stroud – The rookie changed the Houston Texans’ fortunes by turning last year’s 3-13-1 team into a contender in the AFC divisional playoff game. With a waiver wire pickup ADP (average pick 209), he changed fantasy teams fortunes as well posting seven games above the QB12 threshold good for just shy of 50% of his games played. He also posted a score crossing the QB1 threshold as well. 

Underperformers 

Typically labeled “busts”, these are the players that underproduced their ADP. 

Patrick Mahomes – Not many QBs that finish top-12 in points would end up in the underperforming section. However, when you consider his second-round cost and the fact he only had 6 of his 16 (37.5%) games over the average weekly score for the QB12, it’s apparent he performed well below his ADP. 

Trevor Lawrence – He wasn’t particularly bad but he wasn’t particularly good either. His fifth-round ADP from the summer earns Lawrence a spot in this section. If you started him in Weeks 11-13 only, you would have been thrilled with his three straight QB6-caliber performances. But, for the remainder of the year, he was in the QB12-24 range with three games even below that. 

Joe Burrow – I debated putting Burrow in the Injuries section but instead will use him as the segway. Burrow’s preseason injury likely impacted the ten games he started in 2023. Those games were not the quality we’ve grown accustomed to from the Bengals signal caller. Three of his first four games were under ten fantasy points. He had four of his ten games outside of even Superflex consideration (worse than QB24).

2023 Fantasy Football Injuries

I set this category aside because I feel it’s unfair to label a guy that got injured a “bust”.

Anthony Richardson – Keeping tune with the other rookies making waves in 2023, Richardson, aka AR15, was off to an electric start before his season was cut short by an AC joint sprain. Gardner Minshew earned ProBowl honors in Richardson’s absence but did so with only 13 of his 15 games played with significant snaps going for more than 15 fantasy points. A fully recovered Richardson should take over as the starting quarterback in 2024. Shoulder surgery in the throwing arm of a young talent raises some anxiety. However, the electricity of AR15’s playstyle makes him worth monitoring and trying to grab if the value is right.

Kyler Murray – Murray didn’t make it on the field until Week 10. When he finally suited up, he played eight games – all eight QB24 or better with five QB12 or better performances. It’s easy to overlook the Arizona Cardinals due to their 4-13 record. Doing so could be a mistake in 2024 as the Cardinals look to add 13 new players in the draft – two in the first round. If the Cardinals select a receiver with one of their two first-round picks, Murray could be set up for a big bounce-back year in 2024

Aaron Rodgers – 4 plays … for the sake of Jets fans everywhere, we won’t go any further than this. 

Other notable injuries:

Deshaun Watson

Kirk Cousins

Justin Herbert

Justin Fields

Daniel Jones

2024 Fantasy Football Outlook

Following Churchill’s lead, we will use this look back to help us see into the future. The 2024 season won’t start for a while, many things will change from this writing to your drafts. However, here are a few players to keep an eye on through these long football-less days.

Dak Prescott – The wildcard woes continue and the pick-six will linger causing more distaste for Prescott. However, there’s no reason for him to slip outside of the top 12 QBs taken in 2024. He has the talent to put up numbers (if not win playoff games) and the team around him should remain relatively steady.

CJ Stroud – As long as he can be a late-round QB target, I’m all in favor of drafting Stroud as much as possible. His ascension up the NFL ranks might push him to be drafted in the first ten rounds which would be an overcorrection considering he still had one of the lower floors of most high-end QBs (a 25-percentile score of 13.54).

Most of the Injured QBs – Yes, this is vague but bear with me. There will most likely be significant drops in ADP for most of these injured field generals. And aside from Daniel Jones, I predict they are already expected to be their team’s starter in 2024. Anyone of them, withholding Jones again, should be considered a strong late-round quarterback candidate, Superflex option, or dynasty buy-low. 

In general, we have a very strong quarterback group rolling into 2024 without even considering the incoming rookies headlined by Caleb Willams. There is still a strong tier of elite signal callers at the top, expect Mahomes to get back in this range, and a very wide tier of second options. With this wide second tier, I’m expecting 2024 to have a narrower difference from QB1s to QB2s. Leveraging this now can set you up in your dynasty leagues or provide more flexibility come redraft particularly in your Superflex redraft leagues. 

2023 Fantasy Football Data and Stats

The data is compiled from various free and openly available sources and then used to calculate further data points. For instance, widely available general player stats are compiled and then used to calculate a player’s average or median points per game. For any questions concerning the underlying data, please reach out to me on X, @fftheathomedad. 

When I use terms like QB12 or QB24 thresholds, I am referring to the average points of that particular player across the 2023 season. Using who was the 12th-highest-scoring QB in any particular week creates a misrepresentation of what the score at that level typically is. For example, CJ Stroud scored 14.16 points in both Weeks 5 and 6, in Week 6 he was the QB12 however in Week 5 he was the QB17 more than 4 points less than the QB12 on the week.

The thresholds used along with the median and range of values are below for reference.