Fantasy Football: 6 Must-Have Players for 2017
Tom Brady, QB, New England Patriots
I know, I know. At numberFire, we should all be 100 percent Team Late Round Quarterback, and to be clear, I'm not recommending that you take Tom Brady in the first or second round.
Sure, a late-round quarterback is fantastic when you nail your Matt Ryan or Kirk Cousins pick. But for those of us who took Eli Manning, Andy Dalton, Tyrod Taylor, or Carson Palmer last year, we were getting six-plus fantasy points less per week than the guy who had Aaron Rodgers.
When the majority of the fantasy football playing public was taking any and every starting quarterback in the first three-to-five rounds, waiting made a ton of strategic sense. But now it seems like the market has overcorrected, undervaluing the strategic benefit of landing one of the top assets at a starting position. While grabbing a mid-level starting quarterback in round five still doesn’t make sense given the depth at the position, taking the guy you are convinced will lead the league in touchdowns in the early rounds is certainly a defensible position.
So when I'm taking Brady in the third round of my redraft league, it's because I'm projecting he will not only end the 2017 season as the top quarterback in fantasy, but that he has the potential to have a truly historic season. That's how much I believe in the Brady Diet!
In 2007, Tom Brady's best season, he led all fantasy players in scoring with 462 points. For context, Cousins was the fifth-best quarterback in 2016 with 379 points, so that gap would have been over 5 points per game. In 2011, Drew Brees broke the passing yards record and finished with 472 fantasy points. And in 2013, Peyton Manning finished with 55 touchdown passes and an unreal 496 fantasy point season.
During Brady's undefeated, 52-touchdown 2007 season, his top targets were Wes Welker, Randy Moss, Donte Stallworth, and Kevin Faulk. This season, the New England Patriots will boast a lineup that, even without Julian Edelman, is perhaps the best collection of weapons that Brady has ever had.
Brandin Cooks and Rob Gronkowski are the headliners, but don’t forget about Danny Amendola, Chris Hogan and Malcolm Mitchell on the outside. In addition, the Patriots have James White, Rex Burkhead and Dion Lewis as runners who have proven their ability to be effective out of the backfield.
Brady's 16-game pace in 2016 was 4,736 yards and 37 touchdowns, but that was with LeGarrette Blount scoring 18 touchdowns on the ground. Depending on your league's scoring system, that could have placed him just below Aaron Rodgers in total points in 2016. And in terms of efficiency, only Matt Ryan had a better Passing NEP per drop back (0.37 to 0.35).
If you want to be pessimistic, I guess you could point out that Edelman has been Brady's favorite target, or that at 40 years old, he could break at any moment, or that Gronk just can't stay healthy. And you wouldn’t be wrong about any of that.
But I also know that in terms of Passing NEP per drop back, Brady is coming off the most effective season of his career, he won the Super Bowl without Gronk (who played only five games at full strength), and the franchise added a plethora of additional weapons that can mitigate the loss of Edelman and add elements the team hasn't had in years.
There will always be exceptions to rules, and when it comes to drafting Tom Brady for the 2017 season, he will be one of those exceptions.
