Fantasy Football – Konami Code Fallacy

Over the last few years, all the rage in fantasy football has been the mobile quarterback, or ‘Konami Code QB’. Drafting these QB’s in a redraft league can give you a huge advantage over your league mates, but I’m not convinced it holds the same weight in dynasty leagues. I know what you’re thinking, but just hear me out before you call me crazy.

The Study

First we will start with the parameters for my case study. My study included any quarterback who finished in the top 30 in fantasy points at any points over the past 10 years (2012-2022). This proved to be a larger sample of players than I expected. In the end it included 93 players; some of which were rookies who will hold no weight in this study as we don’t have enough data to properly evaluate them.

From here I broke down each of those 93 quarterbacks yearly finish in fantasy football, and classified them as either QB1, QB2 or Non Ranked for that season. To further this, I then broke their fantasy points for each year into three categories; passing points, rushing points and total points.

My goal here was to determine what ages produced the highest number of QB1 and QB2 finishes; as well as which category of passer produced the most QB1 and QB2 finishes. These passing categories QB’s were broken down into two further sub sections.

They were either classified as a pocket passer; which was any season where 75% or more of their total fantasy points came from passing. Or, they were classified as hybrid rusher; where their rushing totals accounted for 25% or more of their total fantasy points. After breaking down all these sections here is some of the data I uncovered.

The QB1 Numbers

First I will start with a breakdown of QB1 seasons. This chart includes the players age on the left and the number of QB1 seasons by both Pocket Passers and Hybrid QB’s.

The important thing to take from this chart is the dramatic difference in age apex. You can see the pocket passers hold onto their value into their mid 30’s, while the hybrid/rushing style QB’s quickly fall of a cliff around age 26.

I believe that when drafting the Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson style of QB in dynasty you need to quickly evaluate their skillset.

If they are able to transition their game from a QB who relies mostly on rushing upside, to one that is more of a traditional pocket passer with rushing upside, they tend to add 10 years to their viability in dynasty; much like we’ve seen with Russell Wilson.

Conversely, the QB’s that are never able to make that transition and spend their entirely career relying on rushing tend to fade out as injuries and age eventually put a huge cap on that rushing ability.

What I found in the QB1 portion of my study is that with players like Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts, now is the time in their career where we need to evaluate if they are capable of showing signs of transitioning to a more traditional pocket passer, if they are not making improvements as a pocket passer we need to treat them like running backs; draft them young and ride the high and then sell high before they hit the 25-26 year age apex for rushing QB.

The QB2 Numbers

The fantasy football QB2 data is a bit different from the QB1 data. Obviously there are less hybrid QB’s to study, so they appear at a lower rate. But you will notice that the hybrid QB’s tend to hold onto QB2 value for an extra few years as their rushing begins to fade.

This is your time to sell! They still hold value as a name, just as Cam Newton did. But at this point the writing is on the wall and the end is clearly near, sell them for a younger pocket passer before the bottom falls out.

Final Conclusion

This is an easy conclusion for me. While the mobile QB’s may be a Konami Code for a few seasons, the ones that can’t transition to a pocket passer need to be treated as running backs. Once the age apex approaches and the signs of their rushing skills declining appears it is time to sell at their peak value. If they are unable to make a Russ-like transition they will quickly be a backup or out of the league.