QBBC Strategy Thread (1 Viewer)

In theory, the QBBC strategy seems solid...stock up on positional studs early then either draft two high-end QB2s or a number of them with upside and play the odds that one will hit QB1 territory.

But in practice has anyone found consistent, perennial success with this approach?

I tried a few years ago (IRRC it was M.Ryan/C.Palmer who were prolly ranked 13th/14th that year) and spent the whole year frustrated. Seemed either the one with the more favorable matchup underperformed vs. the other that week or by the time one of them had two good games in a row to enable me to trust them he then promptly soiled the bed in the next outing.

Kind of like drafting Deangelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart last year. Both good talents drafted relatively cheaply, but week to week was a crap shoot and even with all the other RBs dropping like flies neither got injured for the other to become a stud.

I know FBG does a QBBC feature article every year but I think it's largely based on strength of schedule. It also uses prior year's stats and there is so much annual change I find it tough to rely on (just one example, JAX finished bottom 5 pass D in 2010 then followed up with top 10 finish in 2011. Huh?)

Please share your war stories on this strategy and maybe some 2012 favorites if you like.

I tried it for a couple years but always found that it was either a coin flip as to who to start each week, or one of them will either get hurt or completely flop. It's not worth it IMO. The stars have to align perfectly for it to work out.

At this point I define "waiting on a QB" to mean grabbing someone in the tier of Mannings/Ryan/Romo at the very worst. I don't want to go beyond that tier without my starting QB.

I would be totally comfortable starting brady, rodgers, brees, cam, stafford, romo, eli, vick, peyton, rivers, or even ryan this year. If I drafted vick, peyton or ryan id probably draft a qb2 earlier, but can you say to a certainty that cam will outscore vick? Or that romo will outscore peyton? Or that stafford will outscore any of them? Im happy to take the last guy available.

In a real 12 person draft, I think you can play chicken pretty late into the draft with the other guys who wait on qb. In a 10 person draft, you can wait until after the first backup has been taken as long as you don't get caught up in a run.

Would I like to have rodgers or brady? Sure. But if I can't get one, im not taking a qb until way, way late. The value you get by taking a qb in the seventh round who is comparable to (not equal to) the qb you can get in the third, is much better than the qb you get in the third, vs. the wr or rb you can get in the 7th. Its a huge opportunity for value this year, even more than most, because the qb1 pool is so deep.

usually I found having to make a choice between 2 equal players is a bad thing. Usually pick the wrong guy.

Not a good strategy IMO

This is a great strategy when the QB market is thin and you want to avoid having to pay a premium for one of the 3-4 top guys.

Right now the QB market is flush with viable options negating the need for a QBBC approach. When you've got solid weekly starters like Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlesburger out there as QB11 and QB13 there's really no need to cobble together some sort of rotation.

'bostonfred said:

I would be totally comfortable starting brady, rodgers, brees, cam, stafford, romo, eli, vick, peyton, rivers, or even ryan this year. If I drafted vick, peyton or ryan id probably draft a qb2 earlier, but can you say to a certainty that cam will outscore vick? Or that romo will outscore peyton? Or that stafford will outscore any of them? Im happy to take the last guy available. In a real 12 person draft, I think you can play chicken pretty late into the draft with the other guys who wait on qb. In a 10 person draft, you can wait until after the first backup has been taken as long as you don't get caught up in a run. Would I like to have rodgers or brady? Sure. But if I can't get one, im not taking a qb until way, way late. The value you get by taking a qb in the seventh round who is comparable to (not equal to) the qb you can get in the third, is much better than the qb you get in the third, vs. the wr or rb you can get in the 7th. Its a huge opportunity for value this year, even more than most, because the qb1 pool is so deep.

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What Fred Sed.... more detailed than I.

'butcher boy said:

I tried it for a couple years but always found that it was either a coin flip as to who to start each week, or one of them will either get hurt or completely flop. It's not worth it IMO. The stars have to align perfectly for it to work out. At this point I define "waiting on a QB" to mean grabbing someone in the tier of Mannings/Ryan/Romo at the very worst. I don't want to go beyond that tier without my starting QB.

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I don't think I have ever drafted a QB early in redraft, probably never before pick 50 or so. I have always tried to identify undervalued QBs or breakout candidates and draft 2-3 of them. I don't know that I would call it a QBBC, I am really looking for someone to step up. QBBC can get annoying, QB performance often does not correlate with quality of pass D... I think that strong QBs are deeper than ever, though, as bostonfred points out.QBs outside of the top 10 (by ADP) that I like:Ryan (QB11) - great WRsBig Ben (12) - Pitt not equipped to run, though the Wallace situation is worrisomeCutler (15) - best receivers he has had in a whilePalmer (17) - got better as he got comfortable last year, interesting youthful talent at WRFitzpatrick (21) - both he and his best WR played injured last yearRGIII (13), Freeman (16), Locker (27), Ponder (28) all offer value due to their rushing potential. Bradford (and Freeman) has very good bounceback potential, but his ceiling is limited this year due to supporting cast, schedule, and possibly offensive philosophy. Dalton might be better than expected as he develops with Green and Gresham. Tebow is a guy to monitor; if he takes over he is a rushing beast. Schaub might be a good guy to get as well, though I think Houston now runs too much for him to have a great ceiling.I think Vick, with an ADP of 40, is the best target. He has almost as good a chance to be the QB1 as the five QBs being drafted ahead of him (in the top 20, no less).

The position is so flush, I don't even worry about it. On paper, things look great if you have Brees over some other guy, but over the past few years, I've seen just as many teams win leagues with Warner, Rivers, Eli, etc, as I have with Rodgers, Brady, Peyton, etc.

If you think of it from strictly a point of view of "I want to win my league", its often better to have a lower tier Qb who is fighting for a playoff spot in Weeks 15 and 16 than it is to have an elite QB who has little to play for.

'Lott said:

I don't think I have ever drafted a QB early in redraft, probably never before pick 50 or so. I have always tried to identify undervalued QBs or breakout candidates and draft 2-3 of them. I don't know that I would call it a QBBC, I am really looking for someone to step up. QBBC can get annoying, QB performance often does not correlate with quality of pass D...

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If you look at some of last year's QBBC favorites, this is how it turned out for three of them...Stafford, Eli and Cam. It wasn't the schedule that made them great FF draft picks. Stafford's value was depressed due to injury risk, Eli had a likely one-off career year with RB injuries and seven 4th quarter comebacks and Cam caught everyone by surprise all the rush TDs.Others in 2011's QBBC 12-18 tier disappointed or plain sucked regardless of schedule (Freeman, Bradford, Flacco, Cutler, Kolb, Cassel).

So it appears that QBBC is more about schedules in theory but in reality it's just picking a portfolio of undervalued players and hope one breaks out?

Here's another "expert" promoting the schedule-based approach.

http://www.4for4.com/fantasy-football/2012/preseason/quarterback-committee-qbbc

Sounds great in theory but...

I had success with this strategy once. If you are going to go with this strategy, here is how you do it.

find some mid to lower tier QB's (at the lower end of the starting tier or just outside the starting Tier) and look at their matchups.

Try to find two QB's where one has favourable matchups on the same week as the other has unfavourable matchups and vice versa.

some years, you can do it, but some years, the schedule makes it difficult to find that combo. Inevitably there is always a couple of weeks where both QB's have tough matchups at the same time and there's nothing you can do about it.

This technique can give you the equivalent of a Lower-mid starting tier player. Sometimes you get lucky and one of the two QB's you pick has a great year.

what you dont do is grab two random QB's just outside the starting tier and hope it works out.

I have had great luck with QBBC. One of the best reasons to have a FBG sub IMHO.

this is easy to check. take rothy and fitzpatrick last year

if you got all of their matchups correct, you get a 17.5 ppg qb

which is the same as romo or matt ryan

chances are, you will get a few matchups wrong, which means romo>rothy+fitzP=riversish

then try an extreme: romo+eli+ryan+crystal ball

=21.6 ppg, which was 1 ppg better than stafford, 1 ppg worse than brady

since you dont have a crystal ball, you will probably finish closer to 19 ppg with those 3 qb's

qbbc is not as good as it seems. of coarse, if rothy is your best qb you should get a a good qb2, but don't assume playing matchups with a few 7-15 ranked qb's will equal stafford's production

'[icon] said:

This is a great strategy when the QB market is thin and you want to avoid having to pay a premium for one of the 3-4 top guys. Right now the QB market is flush with viable options negating the need for a QBBC approach. When you've got solid weekly starters like Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlesburger out there as QB11 and QB13 there's really no need to cobble together some sort of rotation.

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Idk - with both guys 1 hit away from IR (neck/shoulder), I'd like to have a solid backup.

'Lott said:

I don't think I have ever drafted a QB early in redraft, probably never before pick 50 or so. I have always tried to identify undervalued QBs or breakout candidates and draft 2-3 of them. I don't know that I would call it a QBBC, I am really looking for someone to step up. QBBC can get annoying, QB performance often does not correlate with quality of pass D...

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Agreed. This is how I usually do things as well. If you're familiar with Waldman's "upside-down draft" strategy with RBs, this is basically the same concept but with QBs. Grab several that you think are undervalued, and wait for one to have a breakout year due to an un-accounted-for factor.

matt ryan in late 6 or early 7 will outperform his adp easy.

My issue with QBBC is that you have to decide each week which guy to start which I HATE doing with a passion. This year I could see myself doing a "semi-QBBC" by getting someone like Ryan or Manning in the 5th who would start 75-80% of the time, and then maybe grab a good backup later. There's no way I'm waiting until rounds 6 and on and relying on guys like Palmer/Freeman/Flacco and trying to guess which one (if any) is going to have a good week.

'bicycle_seat_sniffer said:

usually I found having to make a choice between 2 equal players is a bad thing. Usually pick the wrong guy.

Not a good strategy IMO

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I got burned so many times on this, even when it appeared obvious with the matchups, usually I picked the wrong one.Much better IMO to draft one of the top QBs in the early rounds and then you won't have to worry about starting decisions every week.

'The Ref said:

I have had great luck with QBBC. One of the best reasons to have a FBG sub IMHO.

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As long as you go with one of the backup options rather than Dodds' first suggestion involving David Garrard

'dollarbill13 said:

'The Ref said:

I have had great luck with QBBC. One of the best reasons to have a FBG sub IMHO.

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As long as you go with one of the backup options rather than Dodds' first suggestion involving David Garrard

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Fair.Whats strange is it seems like many of you have been burned by picking the wrong QB in a particular week. i seem to have had better luck then most with this. But to also be fair I have had a few years where I picked two QB's for a QBBC and one of them just really broke out to an every week starter. Schaub three years ago and Eli last year being two good examples.

I hear ya.

honestly this strategy is more reliable in a best ball format.

You can do it in a normal format, but like mentioned earlier, you need to pick the right QB each week. some weeks it's an easy call, and some weeks not so much.

'Shutout said:

If you think of it from strictly a point of view of "I want to win my league", its often better to have a lower tier Qb who is fighting for a playoff spot in Weeks 15 and 16 than it is to have an elite QB who has little to play for.

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I'm still smarting from my elite QB Peyton Manning sitting out half of my 2009 Fantasy Super Bowl, once the [14-0] Colts had nothing left to play for. OK, I'll admit that was grounds for a emoticon, but it was in direct support of Shutout's argument.

I remember doing QBBC back in 2005 or so. I was the last one to take a QB, and one of the guys in the draft said, "hey, moleculo doesn't have a QB...lets all draft back-ups" (I was pretty dominant back then and everyone was happy to gang up on me). I ended up with Jay Fiedler and some other bum as my QBBC duo, and never recovered. It sucked.

This year, I think the QB crop is deep. No need to draft a QB early. There was a time when Roethlisberger, Vick, and cutler were drafted as starters. Now, they are QBBC material. Crazy.

Rather than create a new thread, I've decided to bump this one so that we could review the season's results of the QBBC approach. My league uses ESPN standard scoring.

I've created a spreadsheet with the top 23 quarterbacks based on my league's scoring. It's your typical schedule grid with color-coded byes, the top 5 defenses, and the bottom 5 defenses. I'd gladly upload it if people wanted to play around with it, but I figured you all have seen enough of these (or probably have some of your own). Plus I'm not sure of a good file hosting site that doesn't require registration and such. Yada yada. If anyone really did want it for S's and G's, then let me know.

Anyways, my league is a ten team league, so for my own purposes, I was looking into the QBBC with quarterbacks in the 6-15 range, but I did use more quarterbacks for the obvious "you never know what could happen" factor of drafts, and also in the event I play in leagues that are more than ten teams. This obviously isn't a revolutionary strategy as you guys are well aware of, but I wanted to see for myself if the math adds up with the theory. So I'm going to share some of my results with you all for hopes of great feedback.

When I read the thread prior to posting this, it seems that most people automatically assume "if you correctly picked all the matchups, here's what you'll get." And it seems most people have also correctly pointed out that we will get some wrong along the way, so the perfect scenario is going to be nearly impossible to achieve. What I did was use the schedule grid with some QBBCs and chose my starter based on my own following criteria:

1. Bottom 5 defenses are must starts, top 5 defenses are must sits.

2. Home matchup takes precedence over road matchup.

3. If the quarterbacks have the same general opponent after the first two criteria, then start the quarterback that has a higher ADP.

By approaching it this way, I found myself achieving more realistic results because I obviously got a few games wrong along the way. Here are the results of some pairings I put together:

Matt Ryan + Sam Bradford = 280

Matt Ryan scored 291 by himself. I would be better off with just Matt Ryan

Matt Ryan + Josh Freeman = 287

Again, 291 > 287, but not to much. I would still be better off with just Matt Ryan. So far QBBC is not looking so hot.

Andrew Luck + Matthew Stafford = 330

Wow! That's a whopping 66 more points than Luck and 67 more than Stafford. This combination would have essentially given you the number two quarterback score in fantasy football, only behind Drew Brees. And this is despite the fact that I did pick the wrong starter in week 14 by choosing Luck over Stafford based on Indy hosting Tennessee.

Andrew Luck + Russell Wilson = 282

This combination also comes out much better than Luck's 264 and Wilson's 259. This is despite the fact that I would have started Luck in week's 15, 16, and 17 due to the formula going for what I perceived as the “safe” play.

So next I decided to up the ante to three quarterbacks to see if I stood any better of a chance than just two. It would make sense for this to be the case, but again, this is all merely to see if the math adds up with the theory. Besides, quarterbacks do get hurt and miss games. If you're riding two quarterbacks and one of them goes down, suddenly it's not a QBBC anymore.

Andy Dalton, Sam Bradford, and Ben Roethlisberger = 280

While choosing the best matchup between three quarterbacks gives you a bigger chance for picking the wrong matchup, it still allowed me to come out on top with this trio by a wide margin. The top scorer here was Andy Dalton, who only scored 239 by himself. Have the option of him and Bradford was most certainly helpful when Big Ben was out dealing with his injury.

Philip Rivers, Christian Ponder, and Jay Cutler = 215

To see for myself just how much better off I would be the lower I got in the final scoring results, I choose the a trio of the last three quarterbacks I had. While the 215 seems pathetic (and it is!), I still made out on top when compared to top scorer Philip Rivers' 200. Is just fifteen points on the year worth eating up so many roster spots? Probably not, but let's face it, if you're riding this trio in a ten team league, then it was over long before you had to choose who to start and sit here.

Eli Manning, Joe Flacco, and Ben Roethlisberger = 313

Likewise, the chances are having this trio may be kind of slim, but whatever. It was just a pairing that came to my mind so I ran with it. Once again, we make out like total champions as this is the largest gap of any pairing I've done by an amazing 86 points (Flacco was the top scorer with 227).

Of just these 7 examples, 5 have come on top. Now, it seems clear (to me anyways) that the quarterback class in redraft leagues is going to be very deep where most the quarterbacks past the big three are going to be nearly in the same tier (Newton, Manning tier 2, Wilson, Kaepernick, Romo, Ryan, Luck, Stafford, etc. tier 3?). But with more of those quarterbacks in the same range, wouldn't that warrant even more of a reason to go QBBC? After all, you would want every advantage you can get.

Any thoughts on this? I post this not to state any facts, but because I am strongly leaning towards QBBC this year and while this post might impress someone out there, rest assured that I'm a total guppy. :(

While I think the numbers are interesting Wilson, to me it's a year to year thing and at a deeper level, a draft to draft thing. Where I take my quarterback is usually predicated on the flow of the draft and what other players are available. This year, QB looks to be as loaded as ever, so I will in all liklihood look to be one of the last teams to take a QB and in the top half at taking a backup. This could change though if I see someone fall that I like or if there are no skill guys I like at a particular pick. In 12 team drafts though, I see a starting QB for every team: (in no particular order) Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Stafford, Luck, Romo, Kap, Griffin, Wilson, Ryan, Peyton, and Cam. After that, I still like guys like Rivers and Vick as potential bouncebacks, and maybe even Weeden (or if they trade for Mallet) as a last round lottery ticket in a Norv Turner offense.