Fantasy Football: 2011 Quarterback By Committee (QBBC)

One of my favorite draft strategies is to wait on a QB until the middle rounds and then draft two QBs whose schedules complement each other. With all the depth at the position, it's a good idea in general to wait for QB value in the 7th-9th rounds, but grabbing a quality backup in the 9th-11th also gives you security at the position that other fantasy owners may not have. Those that draft a QB early tend to wait longer on their backup because they look at their roster during the draft and feel secure with Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning in the QB1 slot, and instead try to shore up inevitable weakness at other positions. But what happens if that stud goes down?

On the flip side, those that wait on a QB are able to load up on quality RBs, WRs and even a stud TE. They can build a great core roster and then add a solid QBBC that is collectively likely to yield quality production.

There are a few QBBC combos that I'd like to discuss. Looking at 4for4's rankings, I started with QB9 (Josh Freeman), figuring that anyone with a QB1-QB8 is probably going to start that player every week. I included all the players through QB23 (Colt McCoy) because that is about where the job security ends. I'm also including Kyle Orton in the study just in case he is traded to Miami.

In terms of strength of schedule, I put each pass defense into one of five categories: elite, good, mediocre, bad, terrible. I've found that, outside of the elite or very bad, pass defenses are very difficult to predict year to year. Here's a look:

Elite: GB, PHI, NYJ, PIT (-2 points)

Good: BAL, NO, SD (-1 point)

Bad: CIN, DEN, OAK, SF (+1 point)

Terrible: SEA, TEN, JAX (+2 points)

I'm predicting that CIN and OAK will take two big steps back after losing Johnathan Joseph and Nnamdi Asomugha, respectively. The 49ers also really struggled down the stretch in 2010 and lost their best corner, Nate Clements (who won't be good enough to fill Joseph's shoes in Cincy). I'm also betting that John Fox can take the Broncos from dreadful against the pass so somewhat less dreadful. His Carolina teams were always bad against the run and decent against the pass. That, or teams had no reason to throw the ball -- but either way, those teams weren't good matchups for fantasy QBs.

Moving on...when looking at QBBC, we're trying to find a combo that has two players that we like while maximizing good matchups and minimizing difficult matchups. Here's what I found:

TOP COMBOS

These four are tied at first with 14 points: Kolb/McCoy, Ryan/Schaub, Schaub/McCoy, Freeman/McCoy

Notice that Colt McCoy checked in with three of the top four QBBCs. But he's not exactly high on our rankings, so unless you are a big believer, you may want to use him as a Plan B on draft day.

Let's look at Matt Ryan and Matt Schaub:

QB	W1	W2	W3	W4	W5	W6	W7	W8	W9	W10	W11	W12	W13	W14	W15	W16	W17
M.Ryan QB-10	12 @CHI	3 PHI	14 @TB	32 @SEA	2 GB	21 CAR	10 @DET	BYE	23 @IND	11 NO	28 TEN	18 MIN	25 @HOU	21 @CAR	31 JAX	11 @NO	14 TB
M.Schaub QB-12	23 IND	24 @MIA	11 @NO	1 PIT	22 OAK	6 @BAL	28 @TEN	31 JAX	15 CLE	14 @TB	BYE	31 @JAX	8 ATL	30 @CIN	21 CAR	23 @IND	28 TEN

Schedule difficulty based on opponent's defensive ranking. Top defense = 1, bottom defense = 32.

My pass SOS differs a little from the site's but you get the drift -- these two compliment each other pretty well. Ryan has SEA the same week Schaub has PIT; Schaub has OAK while Ryan has GB; Schaub has JAX while Ryan is on bye. They have a great playoff schedule with CIN and JAX. But given their ADP (Ryan 75, Schaub 66), this is a very expensive combo. Per the ADP Draft Planner, both players are going in the late 6th in 12-team drafts.

In other words, Ryan/Schaub is probably a 10-team QBBC to target in the 7th/8th. Schaub is expensive in general, so we'll avoid him for the rest of this piece.

Let's take a look at a couple of key players that are good for 12-team QBBC...