Keep Trade Cut QBs – Dynasty Fantasy Football (Week 18)

As we head into the final 2023-2024 season edition of Keep Trade Cut at Faceoff Sports Network, it’s time to take another look at the all-important quarterback position. In this series, we look at three similarly ranked players from dynasty rankings. For this final week of the NFL season, we’ll look at Draft Sharks and discuss the NFC North quarterbacks, Jordan Love, Jared Goff, and Justin Fields.

From these rankings, we’ll discuss whether these three players should currently be our keep, trade, or “cut” of the week. Let’s break down what we’ll be discussing in this article.

Keep Trade Cut

In this exercise, a keeper is a player who can sustain their current value along with a positive outlook heading into 2024. In other words, the player who should be valued most by managers and potential managers this offseason. The player worth trading is a player who may have been buoyed by unsustainable volume this season. That, or they hold a level of value that may be more useful to move along from your team’s future makeup. Finally, the “cut” in this scenario is the player who has been trending down this season, therefore being seen as the least valuable asset currently in the trio.

As said earlier, this week we’ll be looking at rankings from draftsharks.com and discussing their current QB14, QB15, and QB16.

Keep QB16 – Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers

Our keep of the week is Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love. Love has started every game for the Packers this season and has progressed into a back-end QB1 option for fantasy, finishing as a top-12 QB six times over the last eight weeks. This season Love only has four games scoring under 20 fantasy points in leagues where passing touchdowns are worth six points, and leads this trio with an 18.8 points per game average.

Heading into Week 18, Love is 157 yards from 4000 yards passing on the year and has accompanied his yardage with 30 passing touchdowns through Week 17. Over the last seven games, Love has only one in which he wouldn’t throw at least two touchdowns and has multiple three-touchdown games. In that span, he’s only thrown three interceptions, two of which came in a Week 10 matchup at Pittsburgh.

Overall, Love has been a consistent option for most of the season, he’s even provided the most red-zone passing touchdowns of this trio, with 23 on the year. As Love and this young offense continue to grow and hopefully continue to add weapons, managers with Love on their roster will be reaping the benefits of consistent smart football, with a quarterback who takes care of the football.

Trade QB15 – Jared Goff, Detroit Lions

Our trade of the week is the man leading the NFC North’s top team, Jared Goff. Goff is valued as a mid-level QB2 in these rankings, while Goff has provided a QB8 season through 17 games. Goff has 28 passing touchdowns on the season and hasn’t thrown a red zone interception, but also scored the lowest fantasy points per game in the trio, with an average of 16.8 in 2023. This isn’t to say Goff has been poor this season, more that he provides a floor that we as fantasy managers should be well aware of at this stage. His health and talented offensive unit have allowed him to push up into a QB1 fantasy year but he also has seven games in which he wouldn’t score over 16.5 points.

Furthermore, Goff has big games that allow his fantasy and starter status to stay intact. Additionally, he should be expected to start in 2024 for the Lions once again. However, Goff leads this trio in turnovers with 12 interceptions and four fumbles lost on the season. Those who are holding Goff should start to ask questions about how much value he currently has in your league and whether or not he may be worth moving on from.

Goff signing a contract extension this offseason would give his managers some long-term security. In the end, those same managers may be smart to use that value bump and attempt to up-tier into a more consistent fantasy option in 2024 and beyond.

Cut QB14 – Justin Fields, Chicago Bears

Our cut of the week is Justin Fields, a player we discussed as the cut in a previous Keep Trade Cut article. While Fields has gotten healthier and produced more in the past few weeks, there are just too many question marks around his short-term future in the NFL. The Chicago Bears have to decide if Fields’ passing has improved enough in the last half-season to not bring in Caleb Williams for 2024 and beyond. Of course, Field’s largest threat and differentiator is his rushing ability, with an output of over 600 yards on the ground in 2023.

While Fields has personally improved his passing and offers a rushing threat, he still had plenty of matchups that he didn’t provide for fantasy managers. His 14.74 median fantasy points per game is the lowest in the trio and shows that while he has a tremendous ceiling, Fields also has a low floor that’s tough to rely on as a rock-solid fantasy QB1. With questions about his development and his possible future landing spot, the other two quarterbacks listed are much safer options to acquire this offseason, making Fields our cut of the week and a difficult asset to sell heading into next year.

This important position in fantasy football leads to big decisions for fantasy managers, and these three borderline QB1s each offer managers different skill sets. We’ve seen a player like Jordan Love become an efficient option who comfortably delivers the ball to his teammates, and it’ll be interesting to see if his numbers improve more as the talent around him improves.

We also discussed the solid dynasty option in Jared Goff, in which managers know what they’re getting but he also leaves much to be desired when he isn’t at his best. With the talent in Detroit’s offense, Goff should offer a higher upside most weeks but doesn’t deliver that often enough. And finally, we have the talented Fields and his difficult-to-project future. Hopefully, Fields gets another chance to start for his managers. However, with the extensive high capital Chicago has in 2024, it appears less and less likely he is the future of the Bears franchise. That fact should give managers some pause and contemplate whether it’s best to go along for that questionable ride or send Fields off to another team themselves this offseason.

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