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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
David Dorey

Better than average: Quarterbacks

Each NFL team uses just one quarterback per game (ideally) and the incidence of producing one of the best eight games allowed by a defense is an elite performance considering that defense, but less difficult than the other fantasy positions that employ several players in the same position per game.

Below shows how often a player logged the best game allowed by a secondary (Top-1), one of the four best performances allowed (Top-4), and one of the best eight performances (Top-8). With 17 games played, a Top-8 game is “above average” among the best quarterbacks from each opponent. Notable too is that players only face 14 teams per year, three division mates are played twice and cannot give them more than one “Top-1.”

The “Better than Average” (BTA) score is a weighting of those games.

See Also: Better than average  QB | RB | WR | TE 

Bottom line: This is a true measurement of how productive a quarterback once the schedule influences are  removed. It compares them to other quarterbacks that faced that same defense. If a player rates higher here than they did with 2022 fantasy points, it means they were limited by a schedule and are better than their last year’s stats suggest.

TM Quarterback BTA Score Top-1 Top-4 Top-8
KC Patrick Mahomes 36 7 14 15
PHI Jalen Hurts 29 5 11 13
BUF Josh Allen 28 3 10 15
CIN Joe Burrow 24 3 8 13
SEA Geno Smith 19 0 6 13
CHI Justin Fields 17 1 7 9
BAL Lamar Jackson 16 2 5 9
JAC Trevor Lawrence 16 1 5 10
MIA Tua Tagovailoa 15 1 5 9
MIN Kirk Cousins 15 1 4 10
DET Jared Goff 14 1 4 9
TB Tom Brady 14 2 4 8
DAL Dak Prescott 12 1 3 8
LAC Justin Herbert 12 0 3 9
NYG Daniel Jones 11 0 3 8
ARI Kyler Murray 10 0 3 7
ATL Marcus Mariota 9 0 3 6
DEN Russell Wilson 8 0 3 5
LVR Derek Carr 8 0 2 6
CLE Jacoby Brissett 7 1 2 4
IND Matt Ryan 7 0 2 5
TEN Ryan Tannehill 7 0 2 5
NE Mac Jones 6 0 2 4
CLE Deshaun Watson 5 0 2 3
HOU Davis Mills 5 0 1 4

A high number of Top-8 performances indicate the consistency of their big games. Only seven quarterbacks managed to have more than nine Top-8 games and Geno Smith (13) and Trevor Lawrence (10) fared very well. Lawrence in particular since he lacked the elite wideouts that the others enjoyed. There were only a dozen that managed at least nine which meant they offer solid production week-to-week.

Quarterbacks that managed a Top-4 were naturally far less common. Patrick Mahomes‘ incredible production dominated in this metric while Josh Allen had fewer big games. Only four quarterbacks logged a Top-4 game more than half of the time and each are being drafted before any other quarterbacks this summer.

This is the list of quarterbacks that posted the best fantasy game allowed by an opposing defense all year for 2022.

Top Performances Scored Top-1
Patrick  Mahomes 7
Jalen Hurts 5
Josh Allen 3
Joe Burrow 3
Lamar Jackson 2
Tom Brady 2

Only six quarterbacks scored the most allowed by a defense more than once all season. These quarterbacks didn’t just have a big game, they enjoyed the biggest game.

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