2QB Drafting Strategy

While the majority of fantasy football is still played in the 1QB/2RB/3WR/TE/ format, there are strong indicators that 2QB fantasy leagues are growing in popularity. I won’t wax poetic on the complexities introduced, or say that one format is any more difficult to master than the other. Just imagine someone telling you how difficult it is to draft in their 1QB/1RB/1WR league. Now laugh as you picture the names that would go undrafted in such a silly league.

Drafting in a 2QB league introduces many more options for your early round picks, hinging on how far QBs shoot up your overall list. The first step to developing a 2QB draft strategy is to understand why relative QB value exceeds that of RB and WRs. That reason is scarcity. In standard leagues, RB is the scarcest position. Traditionally, this is why RB value has always been so strong and is the core argument for those in the “RB’s early and often” camp. Recently, as there have been fewer and fewer bellcows, and more and more of the dreaded RB-By-Committees, more RBs have come into play, lowering the positional scarcity and bringing their overall value down slightly. Think of it this way, there are 32 bellcow QBs, no QBBCs and fewer injuries or benchings than any other position.

Let’s take a look at 3 different approaches to drafting in a 2QB league:

# Pos. 5yr Avg VBD Pos. 5yr Avg 2QB VBD 1 RB1 181.8 QB1 203.48 2 RB2 135.16 RB1 181.8 3 RB3 124.46 QB2 181.02 4 QB1 123.68 QB3 161.36 5 WR1 120.02 QB4 151.72 6 RB4 111.12 QB5 145.1 7 WR2 106.22 RB2 135.16 8 QB2 101.22 QB6 127.54 9 WR3 100.42 RB3 124.46 10 RB5 96.02 QB7 120.36 11 WR4 94.06 WR1 120.02 12 TE1 91.62 QB8 111.44 13 WR5 86.66 RB4 111.12 14 RB6 83.8 WR2 106.22 15 WR6 81.74 QB9 104.64 16 QB3 81.56 WR3 100.42 17 WR7 74.94 RB5 96.02 18 RB7 74.2 WR4 94.06 19 WR8 73.36 TE1 91.62 20 QB4 71.92 QB10 91.1 21 WR9 71.42 QB11 89.48 22 RB8 70.7 WR5 86.66 23 TE2 66.74 RB6 83.8 24 WR10 66.7 WR6 81.74 25 QB5 65.3 QB12 79.8 26 RB9 64.56 QB13 75.46 27 RB10 61.18 WR7 74.94 28 WR11 60.56 RB7 74.2 29 RB11 58.12 WR8 73.36 30 WR12 57.86 WR9 71.42

2 QB Drafting Streaming Strategy

Drafting is always about give and take and whatever you draft early, you’ll have to play catchup at the other positions eventually. QB Streaming has been shown to provide an advantage for those willing to trust their week to week ability to pick the right guy going against the “easy” defenses. Strength of schedule becomes your best friend and you’ll find yourself scouring defensive injury reports for midseason cornerback updates. It’s not for the faint of heart, but you will be able to frontload your draft with stellar names. It also works best if you’re the only one in your league doing it. With too many streamers, the waiver wire turns into the fantasy football hunger games.

Streaming CAN work in a 2QB league, but it is very risky. It was possible last year to snag Ben Roethlisberger, Andy Dalton, Jay Cutler and Alex Smith late in drafts. They all had great stretches of games and far outperformed their ADPs. If you wait too long, and all of your league-mates grab 2 (there will be some who grab 3 early), you could be looking at all of your QBs coming from the QB24-30 tier. Ouch, you may end up having to trade away those nice early picks you stocked up on.

2014 Streaming Options: Eli Manning, Ryan Tannehill, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Josh McCown. All of these guys have juicy schedules, capable receivers and should outperform their ADPs.

2 QB High-Low (Stud and Streamer)

This seems to be the most popular in mocks. You don’t really sacrifice too much from a standard draft strategy, but you will need to grab your stud in the first round, possibly early second. For this strategy, you grab one of the top tier QBs and then pair him up with one of the low tier guys who should outperform their ADP, leaving those juicy middle rounds available for you to feast on other positions.

This has the possibility of being the safest 2QB drafting strategy. If you feel really good about one or two of those top RBs and WRs and you just can’t pass them up, this is the strategy for you. Especially for those with an early pick, you can’t really draft Peyton Manning ahead of Jamaal Charles or LeSean McCoy, can you? From that spot, you could get Cam Newton, Matt Ryan, or Tom Brady on the way back and then wait a few rounds for your QB2.

High-Low options: The 4 streamers above should make adequate QB2s to ideally pair with, Peyton, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, or Andrew Luck.

2 QB Studs all the way

This one is my favorite and I’ll try to explain why using “VBD” principles. Value Based Drafting is a way to compare players across positions, rather than just using total fantasy points. One way to do this is to use the worst starter at that position as a player’s reference point and the difference becomes the player’s value. Here are the averages of the last 5 years of VBD.

As you can see, the QB1 has averaged 124 VBD points, good for 4th overall, certainly helped by Peyton’s magical 150+ season last year. This ranking of average VBD is fairly close to our ADP drafting habits as well.

Look what happens when we apply VBD to a 2QB league:

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As 12 more QBs are thrown into the mix and QB performance is now compared to QB24, their value really jumps through the roof. With 2 top 10 QBs, you’d be more than covering any deficiency from waiting on RBs and WRs until rounds 3 and 4. Since turnover for QBs year to year is lower than any other position, it just makes more sense to take the surer bets with your top picks and gamble more on the mid round RBs and WRs. You could also snag one top RB or WR, target a 3rd tier guy with big upside, such as Cutler or Romo, to be your QB2 and if they end up top 10, you’ll be very strong. I doubt they’ll last past round 3, yet I still consider this the “2 stud” approach as you’d have your 2QBs by the end of round 3. The other reason I like this approach is with only 8 non-starting QBs available, anyone who drafts a third reliable starter has such an advantage covering byes. With three weeks this year of 6-teams on bye, in Weeks 4, 9, and 10, I just can’t imagine being without a QB’s numbers in those weeks. This strategy keeps you way ahead of that rush for the QB3s, so that you can really target the sleepers you want, while everyone else is killing each other for Johnny Football. The downside of this approach is that your RBs and WRs will look shaky coming out of the draft and you’ll need some of those sleeper picks to pan out somewhat.

2 Stud Options: After getting one of the top 5, try to get any in that next tier of Nick Foles, RGIII, Ryan, Brady, or Cam Newton.

To summarize, each of these strategies has its strengths and weaknesses. Like any drafting strategy, ANY of these can work if you avoid the early busts and make the right mid round picks.

Hopefully, this gives you a good intro to your first 2QB draft. I’ve been playing in a 2QB league for 17 years and I absolutely love it. If you’ve never tried it, I highly suggest giving it a shot. Unless… you know… you like swimming in the shallow end.