One of the keys to dominating your fantasy football draft is deciding how to how to pick/avoid some of the players with the most hype entering the year. Today, we are going to look at when to draft Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady in your fantasy football league.
For the purpose of this article, we will be looking at the fantasy football average draft positions (ADP) listed below are from standard 12-team PPR leagues via MyFantasyLeague.com. If you are playing in a 2-QB league or a Superflex league, obviously, Brady will be selected much higher than a traditional 12-team standard league.
First and foremost, Brady is currently being selected at pick No. 88, or as QB15 in MFL leagues. That means Brady is often coming off the board in the eighth round, behind players like Carson Wentz, Daniel Jones and even Baker Mayfield in some cases. Is that too low for arguably the greatest quarterback in NFL history? Not really.
In 2019, Brady finished as QB12 in standard-scoring leagues, averaging 16.5 fantasy points per contest. He had just six weeks when he scored more than 20 points in a game and seven weeks in which he scored fewer than 14 fantasy points. But what is fascinating is that the quarterback Brady is replacing (Jameis Winston) finished fifth in fantasy points last season, averaging over 19 points per contest.
So isn’t it as simple as replacing Brady’s 2019 stats with Winston’s given the change in offense and talent around him? Not exactly.
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By nature, Winston is a quarterback who is willing to take chances and throw the ball down the field. The result is a ton of passing yards (5,109) and 33 passing touchdowns, which was the second-most in the NFL. It also meant a ton of interceptions (30) and not a lot of wins for the Buccaneers… in comparison, Brady has thrown just 27 interceptions in the past three seasons combined.
Over the last few seasons, we’ve seen Brady morph into a different style of quarterback. He tries to eliminate risky throws and will take sacks instead of moving around in the pocket. Brady doesn’t have the same arm strength at this point in his career, so he doesn’t throw the ball down the field very often.
Simply put, it’s very unlikely that we will see Brady attempt a ton of aggressive throws that typically lead to fantasy points. Instead, you will see more of a game-manager quarterback who tries to keep his interception total under 10. Unfortunately for fantasy players, this won’t lead to a ton of points and it limits his ceiling.
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It’s also noteworthy that Brady doesn’t possess the rushing upside either, which can help raise a quarterback’s ceiling. For the most part, Brady is a low-upside quarterback who won’t win your league for you in the ways that a Lamar Jackson or Dak Prescott can in any given week.
However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t draft Brady. At QB15, Brady’s lack of a ceiling is priced in. If you want to pair Brady with a high-upside quarterback, such as Daniel Jones or Cam Newton, he suddenly becomes a value. And with Brady expected to play in several high-scoring games in the NFC South, he becomes an interesting quarterback to play the matchups with.
The biggest problem with Brady isn’t that he is being drafted as QB15. Instead, where QB15 is coming off the board. The eighth round is just too high for a low-upside quarterback like Brady, especially with all of the players going behind him like Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins and Jimmy Garoppolo. All three of those quarterbacks possess the same type of floor and ceiling as Brady, but they are all significantly cheaper.
If you are convinced that Brady could have a big season in 2020 with Tampa Bay, wait and see if he falls into the double-digit rounds before selecting him. Otherwise, you are over-drafting a quarterback who is unlikely to outproduce his ADP. But given Brady’s name and excitement around him, expect the new Buccaneers’ quarterback to go much earlier in drafts than he should.
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