Quarterback By Waiver Wire (QBBWW): Week 4

Sep 24, 2013

The waiver wire was chock full of excellent quarterback options in Week 3, and even though I didn’t highlight those guys in last week’s column, I think there are valuable lessons to be learned.

Jake Locker, Geno Smith, Brian Hoyer and Christian Ponder were all among fantasy’s top-10 Week 3 quarterbacks. It feels weird to say that, much less write it.

The lesson I learned in Week 3 can be boiled down to this: It’s time to exploit the Chargers and Vikings secondaries, which are allowing 358 and 317 passing yards per contest, respectively.

Both coverage units are absolute sieves, along with the secondaries in Washington, Philadelphia, Denver, and Green Bay (all of which allow more than 300 passing yards per week).

Probably Jacksonville would be lumped in with those teams if opponents hadn’t had such an easy time shredding the Jaguars’ defense on the ground. The same goes for Buffalo.

We have a nice set of data that can help better identify the matchups that serve as the foundation of a successful QBBWW strategy. Trusting the matchups is the key to our QBBWW system, and now, after three weeks, I’m confident we can take full advantage of generous defenses with more regularity.

Week 3: Waiver Wire QBs vs. top QBs

Player	Fantasy points	Week 3 rank
Drew Brees	32.8	QB1
Jake Locker	29.1	QB3
Peyton Manning	26.8	QB4
Geno Smith	26.6	QB5
Christian Ponder	24.7	QB6
Matthew Stafford	22.6	QB9
Brian Hoyer	21.6	QB10
Matt Ryan	16.2	QB18
Aaron Rodgers	14.2	QB20
Colin Kaepernick	7.0	QB27

My Week 3 QBBWW options – Sam Bradford, Philp Rivers, Alex Smith, and Carson Palmer – didn’t exactly light the world aflame. They averaged a meager 10.4 fantasy points, thanks in large part to Palmer’s absolute dud against a New Orleans defense that we can no longer exploit as a giver of fantasy goodness.

After three weeks, my 10 QBBWW selections are averaging 14.4 fantasy points per game. The optimal QBBWW options from each of the first three weeks averaged 18.8 fantasy points.

And now on to this week's recommendations...