Rodgers in the top 10

One of the biggest questions for fantasy football players entering the 2008 season is to determine when to draft Aaron Rodgers. Favre finished the season as the 7th best ranked quarterback in 2008 and the Packers still have an excellent offensive line and a very deep group of wide receivers. The following article will explain why Aaron Rodgers is ranked at number 10 in Ultimate FF Strategy’s 2008 Quarterback Rankings.

The first thing to look at is historical statistics to see how other quarterbacks performed in their first season as a starter. In order to find only the quarterbacks that were full-time starters for the first time in their career, we will only consider quarterbacks who did not play more than five games in previous seasons and who attempted over 400 passes in the next season. Rodgers is entering his fourth season in the NFL so we will only look at quarterbacks who became full-time starters in years three, four or five. There are 14 quarterbacks that respect these criterions, the latest ones being Derek Anderson in 2007, Philip Rivers and Rex Grossman in 2006 and Jake Delhomme in 2003. Those 14 quarterbacks averaged 233 fantasy points based on their passing statistics alone and three of them had over 280 fantasy points. It is a little difficult to compare Rodgers to those quarterbacks but we know that Green Bay is a very solid offense and Rodgers is in a very good situation. Those numbers show us that quarterbacks who have some backup experience and become starters generally have some pretty good success in their first year.

The Packers offensive line is one of the best in the league and you can find my in depth analysis on their situation here. In short, the line improved in run blocking as the season progressed, is pretty young and has good depth. The downside of this line is that the guards are not very strong and will get pushed into the backfield which was not much of an issue with Favre because he gets rid of the ball so quickly but it could be more difficult for Rodgers. They gave up 19 sacks last season and we can probably expect Rodgers to be sacked about 25-30 times this year but he will get better as the season progresses.

It is difficult to evaluate Rodgers because he only had 28 pass attempts last season but he was very impressive in the game against the Cowboys when he completed 18 of his 26 passes for 201 yards and a touchdown. It would be too much to expect from Rodgers to have that kind of performance every week but it gives us an idea of how good he can be. The Packers had 4,400 passing yards, 30 touchdowns and 15 interceptions last season so we will use very conservative projections that the passing yards will decrease by 20%, the touchdowns by 25% and interceptions will increase by 25%. Those numbers would give Rodgers 3,600 passing yards with 22 touchdowns and 19 interceptions for 249 fantasy points, slightly above the average of 233 that we found earlier. However, one aspect that we did not account for in any projections thus far is the running game and Rodgers is much more mobile than Brett Favre. So far Rodgers has attempted 59 passes in his NFL career and has rushed eight times (excluding the three kneel downs) or about one time for every seven pass attempts. We will once again use very conservative numbers and project that he will rush one time for every ten pass attempts which means he would carry the ball about 50 times. The NFL average for quarterbacks is about 3.0 yards per carry and one touchdown per 32 rushing attempts. This would mean that Rodgers would have about 150 rushing yards and one touchdown for a total of 270 fantasy points. Those numbers would have made Rodgers the 10th best fantasy quarterback last season.

The projections used to obtain those numbers were very conservative and last season the Packers quarterbacks had 333 fantasy points so there is potential for Rodgers to have a lot more than 270. There is some risk because it is his first season as starter but he is still a pretty safe pick because there is good depth on the offensive line and at wide receiver so they should be able to deal with injuries. In conclusion, Rodgers is a safer pick than many people think with much more potential than quarterbacks selected around him in fantasy drafts so he should be a very good pick.

Find out where we rank all the other quarterbacks:
Full Quarterback Rankings and Projections