The Quar­ter­back Whis­perer

In a world where fan­tasy sports have never been more pop­u­lar, peo­ple are be­gin­ning to think that they know what they are talk­ing about. How­ever, a suc­cess­ful Quar­ter­back in fan­tasy foot­ball and a suc­cess­ful Quar­ter­back in the NFL are com­pletely dif­fer­ent things. Play­ers like Patrick Ma­homes may be suc­cess­ful in both fan­tasy and re­al­ity, but there are many Quar­ter­backs who are not great Fan­tasy op­tions while re­main­ing win­ners where it mat­ters most.

Aaron Rodgers

Aaron Rodgers is one of the great­est Quar­ter­backs in NFL His­tory. This has been his worst sta­tis­ti­cal sea­son, but box scores are not every­thing. Ac­cord­ing to @nflnet­work on Twit­ter, Rodgers of­fi­cially threw for his 350th ca­reer Touch­down, the fastest player in NFL His­tory to reach 350.

Al­though Rodgers is com­ing off of his best Fan­tasy week of the year, I would ar­gue it was not his best game of the year. Com­ing into this week Aaron Rodgers was av­er­ag­ing 15.63 fan­tasy points per week. This would rank as the 17th best Quar­ter­back in fan­tasy rank­ings ac­cord­ing to the ESPN fan­tasy foot­ball rank­ings, which any­one who watches foot­ball would know that Aaron Rodgers is a top 10 Quar­ter­back at the very least. Aaron Rodgers for the first time in his ca­reer has a de­fense that he can rely on. Rodgers has not had to carry the team on his back and is man­ag­ing the clock, even steal­ing wins in Chicago and Dal­las due to a strong de­fen­sive per­for­mance and Rodgers con­trol­ling the clock and keep­ing the op­po­nents of­fenses off of the field.

Jimmy Garop­polo

Jimmy Garop­polo is a very in­ter­est­ing ex­am­ple of Re­al­ity v. Fan­tasy. In the world of Fan­tasy, Jimmy has been ter­ri­ble. Ranked as the 24th best Quar­ter­back in fan­tasy foot­ball ac­cord­ing to ESPN, Jimmy av­er­ages 12.57 points per game. This makes him an un­us­able fan­tasy op­tion, yet the 49ers are one of two un­de­feated teams re­main­ing in the NFL. This is due to Jimmy Garop­polo con­trol­ling the clock, run­ning the of­fense ef­fi­ciently, and mak­ing the big throws when it mat­ters the most. Ac­cord­ing to @Bleacher­Re­port on Twit­ter, “Jimmy G moved to 14-2 as an NFL starter to­day…” This would be one of the bet­ter sea­sons in NFL his­tory, and win­ning can’t hap­pen with­out some suc­cess from the Quar­ter­back Po­si­tion. 

Teddy Bridge­wa­ter

Typ­i­cally in a sea­son where your team’s start­ing Quar­ter­back goes down with an in­jury, fans be­gin to worry and hope for a good draft pick. This is not the case for the Saints, how­ever, as fol­low­ing the Drew Brees thumb in­jury, Teddy Bridge­wa­ter has come in and won every game that he’s started. Teddy has av­er­aged 14.2 fan­tasy points per start, which brings him in as the 21st best fan­tasy Quar­ter­back, yet he came in and found suc­cess. Teddy is now 5-0 as a mem­ber of the New Or­leans Saints, and proves why you should pay for a good backup quar­ter­back, rather than just be sat­is­fied with who­ever fills out the ros­ter. There are many ex­am­ples of bad backup Quar­ter­backs, that make Teddy look even bet­ter.