The best and worst best ball QBs
We’re in best ball fantasy season right now. Best ball is like regular fantasy football in that you’re putting together the best roster possible, but it’s a unique game (a “very unique” one, you might say) in that you’re hunting for ceiling as often as possible. A player with six huge games and six relative duds is likely to help you more than a player with 12 blah games that ends up with the same total points.
So as you do your prep work for best ball drafts, over the next few days I’m taking a look at the players who were among the most and least helpful for best ball leagues in 2019, and what we can divine from that production in 2020.
To do this, I identified prototypical “elite” weekly thresholds at each position (25 PPR points at QB, 20 at RB/WR, 15 at TE) and figured out how often each player reached those marks. High percentages? Good best ball options! Low percentages? Maybe not!
We start with quarterbacks:
Best ball helpers
Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens
(25-plus points 9 times in 15 games, 60.0%)
This should be a surprise. Jackson was the best fantasy quarterback in the league last year, and arguably the best player at any position. He’s likely to regress a little next year, but as long as rushing quarterbacks have a head start, Jackson’s always going to have a massive floor and ceiling.
Deshaun Watson, Houston Texans (7/15, 46.7%)
Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs (5/14, 35.7%)
Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys (5/16, 31.3%)
No real surprises here. These were three of the top fantasy quarterbacks last year by any measure.
Daniel Jones, New York Giants
(4/13, 30.8%)
Jones’ bad games were really bad, but his highs were excellent. That’s … fantastic for best ball. Now, whether that continues for his career going forward is another question, but considering how predictable he was based on quality of opponent, there’s at least plenty of reason to like his upside for best ball … and far more than you might like it for regular fantasy.
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Best ball hurters
Philip Rivers, Los Angeles Chargers
(0/16, 0.0%)
Rivers had 28.0 points in Week 1 of 2018. In 31 games since, he hasn’t gotten back to 25 yet. He’ll be on a new team in 2020, and you’d have to assume he’ll have a better offensive line, but with Rivers the least mobile quarterback on the planet, he just doesn’t have much of a ceiling, meaning he’s a pretty bad best ball investment.
Baker Mayfield, Cleveland Browns
(0/16, 0.0%)
Mayfield’s 2019 was obviously disappointing, but he’s now played 30 career games and reached 25 points once. Like Rivers, he isn’t much of a runner, and even if you expect him to bounce back in 2020 (and I do), he doesn’t carry huge weekly upside.
Gardner Minshew, Jacksonville Jaguars
(0/14, 0.0%)
Minshew Mania was great, but he actually never reached 25 points in a game despite all of that. To be fair, he topped 20 four times (including 24.5 in Week 17 and 24.0 in Week 8), so he wasn’t exactly a drain, but it’s worth being wary of his upside.
Mitchell Trubisky, Chicago Bears
(1/15, 6.7%)
This illustrates the potential risks of this exercise. In 2018, Trubisky topped 25 points four times, including the single best fantasy day of the season. I’m sure he got plenty of best ball attention for 2019. And he had one massive game (in Week 14), but only reached even 20 points only two other times.