A Superflex Life, Volume I: Why Superflex?

John Hogue

Close your eyes.

Think back to your childhood.

You’re going to your first NFL game, to watch your favorite team. Maybe you’re carrying a football, in hopes of getting it autographed. Maybe you have one of those gigantic foam hands. Or maybe a team-specific prop, like the Terrible Towel or a foam hatchet. Your hat is way too big for your head, the adjustment strap on the back is maxed out and the hat still covers your ears. The bill of the hat is still perfectly flat and tilted slightly to one side; not because of the fashion statement, but because you wouldn’t be able to see beyond it otherwise.

And you’re wearing a jersey that you received specifically for this occasion… and it’s too big, too. It nearly reaches your knees, the short sleeves look like long sleeves on you, and the screened-on jersey number feels as heavy as the chest plate of a Spartan soldier preparing for battle.

What number is on the jersey? What name is screened on the back, reaching all the way across your shoulders and beyond?

Obviously, this could blow up in my face if you say “Sanders,” or “Rice,” or “Taylor,” or “White.” But my bet is it was a single- or low double-digit number, with the name of a quarterback. Maybe it was a legend like Marino or Young. Maybe it was the next great hope for your favorite franchise, on their long and winding path to greatness, like George or Mirer. That was the beauty of the quarterback position – they were ALL legends until they weren’t. They didn’t have to be future Hall of Famers, they cemented their legacy and their starring role in the theater of our minds by simply beating out two small school video game templates for the starting job.

You wore the jersey to the game, you watched the real-life demigod wearing the same shirt as you lead your team to victory, and you didn’t take the jersey off for a week. You wore it to play catch in the park, emulating the drop back and the delivery, with the play-by-play running through your head, dampened only by the sound of the crowd cheer.

Now open your eyes (and explain to me how you just read six paragraphs with your eyes closed). Return to the modern day. Maybe you are still wearing a jersey, but this time it’s like a rock band t-shirt: you wear it because you were the first to hear about them, the first to plant your flag. Certainly not because you want to live their life. That would take way too much running, not to mention the nutrition… you wouldn’t be able to eat from the Traeger anymore!

You wear your JuJu Smith-Schuster USC jersey to your live fantasy football draft. The hat fits your head these days, but you still keep the bill flat and slightly tilted. The foam finger is replaced by a stack of cheat sheets and fantasy football magazines. You’ve done mock drafts, you know that your only shot at Christian McCaffrey or Saquon Barkley is if you draw one of the top two picks, but maybe – just maybe – these guys haven’t done their homework and will let Alvin Kamara fall to you, even if you have a later pick.

I might take Josh Jacobs in the second round, but George Kittle would be hard to pass up! The tier of wide receivers in the third round is crazy deep, so I might double-tap JuJu and Chris Godwin!

Cool. What is your plan at quarterback?

I want to be the last one in my league to take a QB! I might reach for one around the 10th round if there is a run, but if this league is smart, everyone will fade QB. I might not take one at all!

So let me get this straight: in less than 30 years, you went from thinking that Stan Humphries is the greatest PERSON on the face of the earth… to thinking Patrick Mahomes isn’t even worth drafting!?

The worst part is, you’re right. There isn’t any reason to draft a quarterback in that 1QB league. And if you do, you certainly don’t want to do it early.

Right! I don’t want to give up the draft equity for Lamar Jackson when he will only outscore the guys on waivers by a few points per game. I’ll make that up with my stud “Arr Bees!”

Please don’t say “draft equity,” it’s diminishing the irony of your JuJu jersey.

Don’t be a hater lol!

You just SAID L-O-L instead of actually laughing? Okay, we’re done here. Bring back the child version. The one who didn’t call people “haters,” didn’t lick the Dorito powder off of your fingers to triumphantly tweet “agree to disagree” and then smile with a sense of accomplishment. The one who LOVED quarterbacks.

It’s the most glorious and glorified position in all of pro sports, and outside of fantasy football, it is widely regarded as the most important position in all of pro sports. They make the commercials, they win the awards, they date the supermodels, and they get the monster lifetime contracts. But in fantasy football, they’re an afterthought. Bring your childhood admiration back, and return the glory to the quarterbacks that they so rightly deserve!

The superflex position does just that; it is technically a “flex” position that allows for the usual RB/WR/TE, but it also allows for a QB. And people will say “I’ll just start another RB at superflex so I don’t have to worry about carrying two QBs,” but they are misguided. You start a quarterback at superflex. I’ll get into the strategy in a future edition of “A SuperFlex Life,” but for now let’s skip ahead to the conclusion: keep a QB at superflex at all times.

Suddenly they are powerful again! They have that starlight gleam again! You can wear their jersey again, as you pick them in the early rounds of your draft as if they are actually important again… because they are!!

And they have trade value, too. Just in case the nostalgia angle doesn’t do anything for you, let’s talk about the practical matter. In your 1QB league, just as there is no reason to draft a QB, there is also no reason to trade for one. Why give up anything of value for a player who will score 20 points per game (PPG), when you can just pick up a player off of waivers who will score 16 PPG?

In superflex, there are two bunker busters:

  1. Now you can start TWO quarterbacks who both score 20 points per week. 40 points from two starting spots? That’s an actual advantage. And it’s the only position that accomplishes this regularly.
  2. Those 16-PPG players aren’t on waivers anymore. You have a 12-team league where everyone is trying to start two QBs, that’s 24 of the 32 starting NFL QBs not only on rosters, but in lineups! And what about bye weeks? Now everyone needs a third QB as a bye week replacement. That’s 36 QBs in order for every team to have three on roster. There are only 32 teams in the NFL, and they don’t run 2QB sets, so there are legitimately only 32 QBs available. Not everyone is going to be able to roster three starting QBs.

Again, I’ll save the strategy for a future article, but just focusing on the numbers, we know that the position is scarce. If you only have two quarterbacks, one of them gets hurt and you don’t get his backup from waivers, how are you going to replace him? You’re trading for another one.

Between the scoring power and the scarcity of the position, the QBs gain a TON of value in superflex. Some will argue that they get too much value, in fact. But what it means for your league is another form of currency, which means more opportunities to trade. In a 1QB league, if you have WR depth and want to trade for an RB, your only option is to find someone with RBs to spare (which narrows your options) and need WR help (which narrows it even further), and pay whatever price they ask for the player you covet.

Wide receivers and running backs change hands, current and future draft picks change hands, and quarterbacks are thrown in to close the gap on a trade calculator. In superflex, there are more trading chips; you can trade a quarterback for whatever you need, you can package a quarterback with another player, and the QBs have enough value to make an actual purchase, not just pay the sales tax.

The economy of your league is fully healthy when every player at every position has trade value, which gives every team in the league the currency needed to trade with any other team. Trade partners are more abundant, which makes trading more beneficial to everyone. Before, Player A could only trade with Player B because no one else had enough roster contrast to complete a trade, meaning Player A had to pay whatever Player B’s asking price was, due to a lack of demand for Player A’s assets. Now, every roster has needs that Player A is able to address, so Player A can simply move on to the next trade partner rather than accept an overpay.

Besides the pragmatic rationale (the value infusion), there is still the emotional, intrinsic value to quarterbacks that superflex promotes. It puts the quarterbacks back on the pedestal where we once had them, and it allows us to relive those magical times, when the heroes of our youth were the quarterbacks. With a superflex position, we can go back to the glory days of the QB.

And you don’t even have to close your eyes.

john hogue