Who should you draft if you plan on drafting a top 5 Quarterback? Many "experts" have Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees as the top 2 quarterbacks. And in 2011 and 2012 they both produced the highest fantasy points for their position based on standard scoring. With that said, who do you draft first in 2013?
Digging into last years data, Brees bested Rodgers by only 2 fantasy points, in 2011 Rodgers bested Brees by only 6 fantasy points. This tells us the 2013 projection difference between the two quarterbacks is marginal and therefore of very little meaning since they should produce very similar numbers.
So this bring us to ADP (average draft position), which tells us the round/pick a player is being drafted on average.
- D. Brees - high ADP is 1.08 / low ADP 4.05
- A. Rodgers - high ADP is 1.04 / low ADP is 3.10
Looks like Brees is being draft after Rodgers in most drafts, at times a full round apart from each other.
We always talk about value in the fantasy football draft, especially when it comes to who to draft and when to draft them. Phil Clark talks about this more in depth in his Quarterback Strategy article. In situations like these, where the production is extremely similar but the ADP of the second highest player is lower you'll want to pick the player allowing similar points with the later pick. In this example the player you want to draft is Drew Brees. He provides predictably the same amount of fantasy points and can be had with a later pick. Perhaps you take a RB with your first pick and grab Brees on your following pick. Which will net you higher fantasy points overall.
I stumbled upon a website called Find The Best (sample data for this comparison below) and it works as a sort of analysis tool for comparing all sorts of things, such as football players and teams. I encourage you to check them out and do some of your own analysis. Of course, we run all the numbers for you and save you a huge amount of time during your draft if you sign up for our Fantasy Football Draft Guide.
