Joe Burrow: Top 10 Fantasy Quarterback 2020
You’ll be hard pressed to find anybody of relevance in the fantasy football industry that does not advocate the late round QB draft strategy for obvious reasons (positional scarcity/roster construction, opportunity cost, and the overall high usage of the QB position) and we, at FU, are no exception to that. Acquiring a QB1 (top 12) without spending significant draft capital is the name of the game and it puts you in a nice spot throughout the season but it’s far from the end game. Afterall, QB1s for any given week can almost always be found on the waiver wire in the right matchup. Being able to land the late round QB that ends up finishing in the top 5 by season's end is what puts you on the fast track to the fantasy playoffs and ultimately winning a fantasy championship.
The rapidly growing popularity of the strategy is due in part to the recent success of guys like Pat Mahomes and Lamar Jackson magnifying the benefits of the strategy. Both finished as the overall QB1 on the back of historic MVP performances in their first full seasons as starters. I’m not saying that this year's MVP is hiding in the bushes of the late rounds, but it’s a safe bet to think that a top 10 guy with upside for that may be there as is the case just about every year. So who’s going to be that guy for us this year? For me it’s clearly Joe Burrow.
As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Joe Burrow is an absolute thoroughbred coming off one of the greatest (in my opinion THE greatest) seasons in college football history at the position. He absolutely dominated his competition on a weekly basis. And these aren’t the Appalachian States of the world that we’re talking about… sorry Darrynton. Burrow and the Tigers faced one of the toughest schedules in the nation including bouts with some of college football’s most talented defenses like Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Clemson. In 4 games against those teams I just mentioned, Burrow threw for 424.5 yards per game, while casually tossing 19 TDs and ZERO interceptions. No, that is not a typo. I checked it 3 times. Performance against top notch collegiate Ds especially in big time, nationally televised games is one of my favorite indicators of success at the next level.
Joe put together the most impressive single season stat line we’ve seen to date, but stats alone aren’t enough to predict a breakout. They paint a picture, but if you really want the whole story you need to look at how that production came to fruition through film study. To me, passing the eye test is much more important than what a player put on paper in college. Let me take a minute to walk you through what the tape told me about Burrow. WARNING: I’m about to get allllll hot n bothered like a schoolboy that just found dad’s playboy stash for the first time.
Accuracy – Joe Burrows accuracy was absolutely devastating, especially on throws downfield where he dismantled defenses week in and week out. He doesn’t miss. When he cocked back to launch a deep ball it wasn’t, at that point, a question of if it would go for a touchdown but rather, which receiver would be catching the touchdown. It wasn’t just on deep balls either. His ability to throw receivers open in all areas of the field was astonishing. He has the most elite ball placement of any quarterback I’ve ever evaluated; a trait that is paramount at the next level.
*Before moving on to the next part of my evaluation, I had to retrieve a cold wet rag and place it on my head in hopes of bringing my body temp back to a level that I could operate on. The Burrow bulge was born.
Poise – The league is chalk full of the best athletes on the face of the earth. The D ends are monstrous men that run 4.5 forties and there's no such thing as a slow linebacker. Blitz packages are exotic and well disguised. This is why poise and pocket presence are among the most important qualities a QB can possess when making the jump from college to the NFL. Spoiler alert: JB checks both boxes. When the pressure was on, he looked like he was playing euchre with his grandmother not fighting for his life. It was like watching somebody play pacman the way he was able to evade pressure, step up in the pocket, and effortlessly side step defenders. It reminded me of Russell Wilson, my vote for best player on the planet and my favorite comp for Burrow. These two are like Jedi Knights that seem to have some sort of internal clock in their head that tells them how long they can hold on to the ball and allows them to always get rid of it just in the knick of time leaving defenders physically exhausted and emotionally destroyed.
What I like the most about JB doesn’t have a formal title. It’s the fact that he's a savage competitor that is gracefully reckless in his pursuit of victory. I don’t know what else you want me to say about this guy. He’s just got it man. I don’t know what IT is but trust me, he’s got IT. He relishes the big stage and does not falter under pressure. I’m very confident that this will carry over to the NFL.
*Upon writing the last paragraph, I decided that “Smokin’ Joe” is undoubtedly the most fitting of Burrow’s potential nicknames.
TALENT: CHECK
For fantasy purposes, a player's talent is only half of what determines his value. The other half is situation. We have seen countless examples of elite talents do nothing for fantasy because they are in a suboptimal situation and vice versa. Situation consists of a bevy of factors. Let's examine some of them in relation to Burrow.
Coaching – Gets offensive-minded head coach in Zac Taylor. Will he try to implement a more fast-paced offense with Burrow?
Offensive line play – Cincinnati will be getting back Jonah Williams who was an absolute mauler at Alabama. He was drafted #11 overall by the Bengals in 2019 before missing the entire season with a torn labrum. They also acquired veteran guard Xavier Su’a-Filo to add some much needed experience to the young group.
Weapons – Burrow is equipped with an arsenal of weapons. He has playmakers everywhere. BIG playmakers. His colossal receiving core is comprised of AJ Green (6’4) Tyler Boyd (6’2) Tee Higgins (6’4) Auden Tate (6’5) and CJ Uzomah (6’6). Having giant receiving options with enormous catch radius’s is huge for a young quarterback's accuracy. AJ Green is a perennial top 10 NFL talent at the position when healthy. The most recent buzz suggests that he is at full strength coming into this season and just signed his franchise tender. Tyler Boyd is coming off back to back 1,000 yard seasons and is quietly becoming one of the best slot receivers in the game. Tee Higgins is a beast of a man that has an uncanny ability to high point the ball and make plays downfield. The Bengals spent significant draft capital selecting him with the first pick of the second round when there were much bigger names available at the position. They liked what they saw on film and so did I. Add the fastest man in the NFL (John Ross) to that trio of wideouts and you’ve got the makings of what I view as a top 5 NFL receiving core. But it doesn’t stop there. Everyone knows that Giovanni Bernard is a pass catching specialist, one of the top receiving threats in the league at RB. But what they don’t know is that Joe Mixon excels in that department as well. He boasted a 78% catch rate in 2019 that ranked 20th across all positions. He is a very underrated pass catcher.
So let's recap: He's playing behind what should be a vastly improved offensive line for a head coach that is prepared to revolve the offense around his skillset and wants to play fast. He has a slew of receivers with a unique combination of size and speed, and will have an elite pass catching option out of the backfield at his disposal at all times.
SITUATION: CHECK
I don’t think I will find many people wanting to argue that Burrow is talented and walking into an ideal situation for a rookie. However, I think that most will question if that’s enough to allow for the type of fantasy finish I’m projecting. We have no prior NFL action to dissect like we did with Patty and the Unicorn heading into there breakout seasons so the best way to project him is to look at some of the most recent prospects of his caliber and how they fared in fantasy as rookies then compare his talent and situation to there’s. I think you know where I'm going with this…This chart depicts a compilation of the best statistical outputs by blue chip prospects like Burrow in their final collegiate season:
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Many people are under the notion that rookie QBs tend to struggle in the NFL which may very well be the case, but it’s not for fantasy. As you can see, all of these guys finished as top ten QBs in their debuts and were extreme values for fantasy based off their ADPs, some even being league winners. I realize that the NFL landscape has changed since some of them were drafted and has certainly evolved into more of a passing league with higher scores across the board at the position that would be reflective of fantasy finish but Joe Cool completely obliterated their college production in EVERY category. There were only a few instances where you could say someone was even a close second to Burrow.
Still not sold? Let me guess, you're thinking “But beaver, these quarterbacks were all dual threats unlike Burrow who can only beat you with his arm.” And to that I say: not true. One of the things I was most impressed with that I failed to mention earlier in Burrow’s film was his underrated rushing ability. He's low key, really athletic and is more than capable of tucking it and taking off for a first down or jamming it into the paint. He rushed for 368 yards in his senior year which was 30 more than Wilson and 218 more than Luck. Each of those guys increased their rushing production by over 100 yards in their first year as pros. I’m not saying he will do the same and push for 500 on the ground but if he does……
The way I look at it is simple: He’s a better prospect than anyone on this list and he enters a better situation. In fact, I’ll take it one step further and say that I think he enters the best situation of any number one overall pick that’s been drafted during the fantasy football era. So why is it such a hot take to think that he’s going to be a top ten guy for fantasy this year when all of these inferior prospects in inferior situations have already done it?
Excuse me while I do my best Cash impersonation and get nerdy on this 2020 projection. The Bengals attempted 616 pass attempts last year. They had an absurd pass to run ratio that I expect to regress back to the mean but I also expect them to run a lot more plays. Even a conservative projection of 600 pass attempts this year applied to the NFL average of 6.7 yards per pass attempt equates to well over 4,000 yards. If you multiply it by the NFL average touchdown rate in ’19 of 4.5% you get 27 tuddys. I expect Burrow to be slightly above average in each of these categories which leads to my 2020 projection of 4,100 yards, 28 tds, 14 ints with another 300 on the ground and 4 tds. This output would have been enough to make him a top 5 fantasy quarterback in 2019. Let’s see what would happen if we opted to take a much more conservative approach to his projection due to the uncertainty: 3,500 yards, 24 tds, 16 ints, and only 3 rushing tds to go with the already conservative 300 yards still would’ve made him a QB1 in 2019. Smokin’ Joe finishing as a top 10 fantasy quarterback in 2020 is not a hot take, it’s a simple combination of basic math and common sense.
