10 Players You Should Be Avoiding in Fantasy Football Drafts

Carson Wentz, QB, Philadelphia Eagles

I don't want Eagles fans jumping into my mentions after reading this, so, yo, Philadelphia, know that I think Carson Wentz is a good football player. It's just that fantasy football isn't real football. Like, at all.

In case you missed it, quarterbacks don't really matter in our game about a game. Yours truly has written and said far too many words on the topic of quarterback value in fantasy football but, these days, the late-round quarterback strategy is generally accepted. Your brother, sister, aunt, and uncle know to wait when drafting a quarterback.

That's the first big knock on Wentz. He plays a replaceable position, so he's inherently not very valuable.

There are some other issues going on, too.

As almost all of you know, Wentz is recovering from an ACL tear, which upgrades his risk profile. But, statistically, we're probably not going to see the Carson Wentz of 2017 here in 2018 anyway.

A big reason for that is his touchdown rate, or the percentage of attempts that go for touchdowns. Wentz had a 7.50% touchdown rate on 440 passes a season ago, which was significantly higher than the league's average of 4.23%.

Wentz, of course, isn't some league average passer, but a 7.50% touchdown rate is still unsustainable. Since the turn of the century, there've been 19 instances where a quarterback had 200 or more attempts while hitting a 7.00% touchdown rate. Of those 19 occurrences, 16 quarterbacks have next-season data. And among those 16 passers, none saw an increase in touchdown rate the following year, with the average decrease in rate being 2.69%.

This doesn't mean Wentz will be some average fantasy football asset in 2018, it's just that the incoming negative regression alongside his iffy health make him a not-very-useful selection at QB6, especially when there are so many viable quarterbacks being drafted after him.