Dynasty Debate: Russell Wilson vs. Matt Ryan

Jeff Beran

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Before we get too far into comparing Matt Ryan (who had a March ADP of 73.5, eighth among quarterbacks) and Russell Wilson (78, ninth) and debating which the better option is for dynasty owners to invest in we should make one thing clear – they are completely different from one another.  Ryan is a traditional drop back pocket passer who excels at making reads and delivering a well-timed, accurate pass while Wilson is at his best when using his feet to get outside the pocket and forcing defenses to respect his athleticism.

That said, most dynasty owners could care less about how much their styles differ on the field and are more concerned with which can lead them to glory on the fantasy gridiron.  To try to decide just that, let’s kick-off DLF’s latest Dynasty Debate.

Dan’s Argument for Russell Wilson

When comparing two players, there are typically three things I like to look at – age, past performance and projected upside.

In this case, age really isn’t much of a factor.  Ryan turns 29 next month and should be in the prime of his career over the next three years at the least.  While it’s true that Wilson, who’s 25, is younger and will likely provide his fantasy owners with more years of production, quarterbacks routinely play into their mid-30s at a high level, so both have the potential to give their dynasty owners many years of excellent fantasy numbers.

When looking at past performance, it’s difficult (but certainly not impossible) to compare the two signal callers considering Ryan is a six-year veteran and Wilson just finished only his second NFL season, but let’s try.  Since I’m making the case that Wilson is a better dynasty asset than Ryan, let’s cut directly to 2012, which most would consider to be Ryan’s best fantasy season.

Matt Ryan

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Russell Wilson

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Although it’s not a fair comparison since Ryan had logged 62 NFL starts and Wilson was a newly drafted rookie when 2012 kicked off, it’s very telling.  As I said earlier, 2012 is Ryan’s best fantasy season to date.  He set career highs in yards and touchdowns on his way to accumulating 322.6 fantasy points in four-point per touchdown leagues.  Meanwhile Wilson, in only his rookie season, posted 291.6 fantasy points – that’s a difference of fewer than two points per week.

When you consider Ryan was throwing to Julio Jones, Roddy White and Tony Gonzalez while the offense Wilson was playing in featured Sidney Rice, Golden Tate and Zach Miller (none of which were good enough to tally more than 50 receptions) in the passing game, it’s relatively easy to conclude who the more impressive player was in 2012.  Remember, we just compared Ryan’s absolute best season to Wilson’s rookie season.

Now, let’s compare the two players’ 2013 campaigns.

Matt Ryan

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Russell Wilson

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Wilson’s numbers stayed relatively consistent with those he posted in 2012 despite Percy Harvin playing only 20 snaps during the entire regular season.  Tate, Doug Baldwin and Miller (along with Marshawn Lynch) were the leading receivers for the Seahawks in 2013, but nobody reached 900 receiving yards or scored more than five touchdowns.

Meanwhile in Atlanta, Ryan lost Julio Jones to injury and the Falcons had one of league’s worst offensive lines.  Most would expect his numbers to drop slightly due to those factors, but they actually dipped dramatically despite still having Tony Gonzalez and Roddy White for a majority of the season and an adequate replacement for Jones in Harry Douglas.  Because of the injuries and poor play up front, many dynasty owners are writing off Ryan’s season as bad luck.  That may be the case to an extent, but his struggles last year should prove one thing – Matt Ryan isn’t the type of quarterback who can make those around him better than they actually are.  Elite quarterbacks do.

That brings me to the third (and most important) thing I like to consider when comparing two players.  Projecting each players’ upside.

While Ryan is a good quarterback who is very accurate, makes good decisions for the most part and certainly can be a QB1 for fantasy owners, he needs elite talent around him to post top-end numbers at his position, which limits his fantasy upside.  Despite having one of the premier receivers in the league, he lost Gonzalez to retirement and White is now 32 years old.  There’s a very good chance Ryan had the best fantasy season of his career in 2012, which doesn’t excite me about his prospects going forward.

Wilson, on the other hand, has finished both of his first two seasons in the league as a QB1, is sure to lead one of the best teams in the league over the next few seasons and should get Harvin back at 100% in 2014.  If you factor in his well-documented work ethic as well as his potential to grow in Pete Carroll’s offense, you have a perennial top ten quarterback with the potential to become one of the elite fantasy options at his position.

Jeff’s Argument for Matt Ryan

Ranking quarterbacks properly in a dynasty setting is very difficult.  Firstly, there is a huge range in ages to take into consideration due to the relatively long shelf life of a good NFL quarterback and that inherently lends itself to a wide variety of ranking methods.  Secondly, and we’ll touch more on this in the conclusion, there is great diversity when it comes to league scoring options, some of which enhance the quarterback position (six points per passing touchdown, one point per 20 yards passing) and some of which neutralize it (four points per passing touchdown, one point per 30 yards passing).  Lastly, there are nearly 20 different players at the position currently in the league which can be considered “startable” for fantasy purposes depending on their matchup.  Very few quarterbacks are “matchup proof,” so the fact most fantasy leagues only have 12 or 14 teams creates a very unique economic environment in which exists a surplus.  This surplus certainly affects the overall value of the position but more importantly, it puts a premium on quarterbacks who are “matchup proof” as those players allow dynasty owners to commit resources (roster spots, draft picks, salary, contract years, etc.) to other areas of their roster.

In the debate between Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson, as Dan previously stated, the age discrepancy is not a major source of contention. However, I will take issue with the assumption postulation that 2012 can (or should) be considered anything close to the best that Matt Ryan has to offer.  On the contrary, as the following graph will show, Ryan was well on his way to following up his excellent 2012 season with an even better 2013 season.

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The graph above represents Matt Ryan’s six year career in terms of total fantasy points scored.  The red trend line shows the overall improvement over the course of his career with consideration to all six hard data points, including his disappointing 2013 season (273.1 points).  The dotted green trend line shows where Ryan was reasonably expected to finish the season based solely on the first five seasons and without regard to 2013 and the yellow star represents his expected point total from last season.  As you can see, there is an 80 point differential between his expected production and his actual production, but we’ll discuss that later.

The red star on the on the graph was added as a point of reference to show where Matt Ryan’s 2013 was headed before Julio Jones went down with a season-ending foot injury.  Here is a quick table to show Ryan’s production before and after Jones’ injury.  The purpose of this table is simply to prove he was on pace (20.8 points per game) to come very close to his expected 2013 production (352 points) and while this isn’t a perfect method by any means, it’s at least validating of the above data to some extent.

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The ultimate conclusion which can be drawn from the above data is that 2013 was in very likely an anomaly in Matt Ryan’s career.  On top of the Julio Jones injury, a barrage of injuries left him playing behind the third worst offensive line in the NFL according to Pro Football Focus.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, Steven Jackson, who was brought in by the Falcons to be a workhorse dual-threat back, was also injured for much of the season.  Most quarterbacks would not have survived the avalanche of things working against them but somehow Ryan was still able to throw for over 4,500 yards and stay healthy.  Some may look at the raw data and view his 2013 season as a regression, but if you dig deeper and take all factors into account, it was really quite impressive.

Based on the above data and the fact most pocket quarterbacks stay in their prime until their mid-30s, it’s reasonable to assume Matt Ryan is capable of reaching 5,000 passing yards for a half dozen more seasons.  That should be prolific enough to keep him squarely in the top five at the position on a yearly basis, a player who is virtually impervious to whatever defense he faces on a weekly basis.

On the contrary, Russell Wilson has only thrown for 3,118 and 3,357 yards in his first two seasons, respectively.  The Seahawks have obviously been very successful with their current model of run-first, ground control offense.  In a very strong defensive division, this type of offense is pretty much a necessity.  Thus, there’s really no reason to assume Wilson’s numbers are going to improve appreciably in the near future.  That’s not to say he won’t continue becoming a better real life quarterback, but for fantasy purposes, statistics are really all that matter.

I think the symbiotic success of both Wilson and the Seahawks in the past two years is predicated upon a certain style of football and I simply don’t see that changing until it stops working.  To further emphasize that point, we need look no further than the team’s recent results.  In the past two years (including the playoffs), the Seahawks are 24-5 when Wilson throws fewer than 30 passes in a game.  When he throws 30 or more passes, the Seahawks are just 4-4 (including two overtime wins) in that time span. For this reason, I view Wilson’s ceiling as a fantasy quarterback as nothing more than a very strong starter, but one who probably needs a strong backup in order to supplement him for his weak matchups.

Conclusion

As we began writing this debate piece, a fundamental difference in the scoring systems (one point per 30 passing yards vs. one point per 20 passing yards) immediately became clear and caused the data to be skewed very heavily in favor of our respective arguments.  After realizing just how much of an impact the scoring settings made in this case (by the way, both used four rather than six points per passing touchdown), we concluded it would be impossible to form a compelling argument for either side using those extremes as a basis. Thus, a compromise was reached (one point per 25 passing yards) in order to make a valid comparison between the two players.  The result was not only an apples-to-apples comparison, but also a more even debate that came down to philosophical differences rather than being swayed too heavily by a single variable.

Who would you take if given the choice? Follow us on Twitter @dmeylor22 and @jefeberan and let us know!