A Superflex Life, Volume IV: QBX
Ladies and gentlemen… it is now time… for the MAIN EVENT!
This won’t be the end of the “Superflex Life” series, and it is far from the end of the overall superflex discussion. We still have way too much ground to cover. But anyone who follows my superflex strategy (whether with intrigue or contempt) knows that “ QB-Xtreme” (QBX) is a tentpole strategy for me. In fact, “tentpole” doesn’t do it justice. It’s a load-bearing pillar.
In the previous installment of ASL, we talked about the Tao of Superflex. The way things are. We discussed the relationship between value and production, both short-term and long-term. Well, QB is the one position that provides short and long-term value AND production. And as a bonus, they’re incredibly scarce, which adds to their value even further.
So let’s put all the cards on the table, right up front, and define the QBX strategy.
We’re talking about several top-end QB options, all on one roster. Your startup draft focuses on the QB position from the beginning and doesn’t let up until your league hates/fears you. Three QBs in your first four picks is a good guideline, and a minimum of five starting NFL QBs total; THAT is the extreme. Many don’t have the stomach for it, and many question its validity.
Those who question the strategy also consider “QBs early” and “QBs often” to be mutually exclusive philosophies. Either you get your elite QBs early in the startup so that you don’t need depth, or you wait on QB and then take several non-elite (but perfectly acceptable) options later. That’s where QBX upsets the apple cart, by reaping the benefits of both “QBs early” and “QBs often” at the same time.
We will discuss the “QBs early” half of the QBX strategy in Volume V, but right now let’s focus on the logic behind drafting five or more QBs…
Why QB Often?
If we go back to Volume II of ASL – “Mythbusters,” where we outlined the many reasons that rostering just two QBs in any superflex league is a bad idea – we get back to the dynasty perspective.
Two QBs ensures that – if they both stay healthy and have different bye weeks in year one – you will have a starting QB at all times, and a QB at superflex in 14 of 16 weeks. But what happens if one gets hurt? Or if they have the same bye week next year? Keep in mind that all of the NFL starting QBs and most of the viable backups are on rosters in a dynasty league. So where do you find a QB to fill in for your one injured QB and your one healthy QB on his bye week? Never mind the fact that you’re struggling to keep up each week by starting a WR/RB/TE at superflex while others are starting a QB.
So we bump it up to three QBs. That means you have a replacement for bye weeks and injuries; maybe they even have different bye weeks this season, so you will have a QB at superflex at all times. But what happens if, next year, one of them is injured and the other two have the same bye week? You are still submitting an invalid lineup and losing a game that you can’t afford to lose.
Or what if a team with just two QBs wants to trade for a backup QB, and they are willing to pay any price for one? You could sure use the upgrade at RB, but you just can’t afford to trade away one of your three QBs, because you don’t know when/how you will be able to replace him.
So we bump it up to four QBs. Now you have a starting QB at all times, plus one at superflex at all times… with the possible exception of the unlikely event that multiple QBs are injured and/or more than two QBs have the same bye week in a given season. With four QBs, we are safe enough to take the chance that neither of those flukey events happen.
This is where the focus shifts from internal to external, as we just took four of the 32 starting NFL QBs out of the pool available to the other 11 teams in the league. That leaves them with 28 QBs to fight over, leaving each team with two QBs and just six other teams with a third QB. Now, five teams in your league are in the horrible position we mentioned above, with just two starting QBs. The other six teams are okay(ish) with three starting QBs, but they won’t be in a position to trade away a QB without getting one in return.
There’s blood in the water! Can you smell it?
The one problem with rostering four QBs is that we need all four to ensure that both our starting QB and superflex spots are filled with a QB at all times. So if someone wants to trade for a QB, we really need to get a QB in return. So let’s give ourselves some breathing room internally, while we turn up the heat externally.
We take our fifth QB. Now half the league is going to be left with just two QBs, without a way to acquire one other than through a trade. And again, this is dynasty; no do-overs, no yearly startup drafts. We draft once, and it’s done. Six teams in the league have just two QBs, meaning an injury to one of them guarantees a zero at the highest-scoring position when the healthy QB is on bye. And the rest of the season, it’s either a WR5 or RB5 at the superflex position, scoring single-digit points per week, while your superflex position yields 15-25 points every week.
In this scenario, the team that is now down to one starting QB can either spend their entire Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB) on a replacement (forgoing late-season hero RBs or breakout WRs), or they can try to acquire a QB through a trade. Five other teams only have two QBs on the roster and can’t afford to trade one away. The other five have three QBs, but would be a trade and an injury away from the exact same situation, keeping them from trading away a QB as well.
One team is in a position to trade away a QB without getting one in return, because we can afford to give up one of our five QBs, and still have enough depth to weather any storm that comes our way. We have become “The QB Store.” And now simple Economics 101 kick in, as supply doesn’t match demand. We have no competition in the market; we have a monopoly on QBs, allowing us to set their price. And it’s going to be expensive. More on that later.
If you have six QBs, you can do that twice. If you have seven QBs, you can do that three times. And with each QB you draft in the startup, you take them out of circulation, creating greater scarcity, raising the demand and lowering the supply.
Now, to be fair, it isn’t as easy as drafting QBs and cashing checks. There can be turbulence along the way. People always ask me, “what if you can’t ‘sell’ all of those ‘extra’ QBs between the startup and the start of the fantasy season?” And the answer is, you probably CAN’T sell them all by then. We need injuries, and we need benchings. We need the other teams in our league to lose one of their two or three QBs, so that they need to buy another one.
But that doesn’t change our leverage, and it doesn’t change our position of power. We aren’t doing this solely for the trade value. We’re doing this to solidify the foundation of our roster.
First of all, the entire late-round QB strategy is predicated on the idea that you can “stream” the position (pick up a QB with a great matchup off of waivers one week, then drop him back to waivers for another QB with a great matchup the following week). Obviously we can’t stream QB via waivers in superflex, because the starting QBs are all on rosters. But what we CAN do is stream within our roster.
Jared Goff is playing at San Francisco with that vaunted defense, while Teddy Bridgewater gets a cake matchup at home against the awful Cardinals defense? Make the switch and gain an extra ten points from your starting lineup, which is the equivalent of a high-end flex starter for the week… and that’s on top of the starting QB level production you already got at both QB and superflex. Suddenly, the lack of depth at RB and WR doesn’t matter quite as much, because you have two positions (QB and superflex) scoring as much as other teams are getting from four starting positions. And those other teams lose points as they succumb to bad matchups, without options to get their bad matchups out of their lineups.
So we don’t HAVE to trade away the QB depth; it’s still a potent weapon. And next season, we still have all of the value that we had a year earlier, as all of our QBs return as starters. Meanwhile, several of the other teams just lost a ton of value as their first-round RBs leave as free agents and find themselves in RB-by-committees on their new respective teams. And their win-now approach to the startup left them with a late rookie pick and no shot at replacing the lost value with high-end rookies. They will never be able to stabilize their dynasty superflex roster until they take QB seriously.
I’ll say that again, because that is the superflex mantra, the most powerful sentence in all of superflex… and also the truest:
You cannot stabilize your dynasty superflex roster without taking QB seriously!
If your dynasty superflex roster is a car, QBs are the engine. If the engine has 200k miles on it, it doesn’t matter what you do to the rest of the car. You can give it a new paint job to make it look nice, change the oil every 1,500 miles to help baby it along, flush the radiator, balance and rotate the tires, change the spark plugs… and you might win a race or two, but at the end of the day, none of it can keep the engine running forever. And when the engine goes out, all of the spoilers and racing stripes in the world aren’t going to move this car. Start with a brand new, 8-cylinder, twin-turboed engine and the car will take you wherever you want to go… and fast! THEN you can make the improvements and keep up with the maintenance… but you won’t have to do (or spend!) as much to keep it running because that healthy engine makes up for imperfections like a chip in the windshield or a late oil change.
Again, rostering five or more QBs isn’t a requirement. We’re stable with four QBs, particularly if they’re relatively young and have established themselves as starters. More QBs just give us more horsepower, and more resale value. Stability is crucial, which means four QBs is non-negotiable. But the ability to trade away a QB – the engine, the lifeblood of a superflex dynasty roster – without getting one in return comes with remarkable value. The return on investment is off the charts, especially once you corner the market.
The QB depth helps you to maximize your scoring as you embark on the perennial search for RB and WR production, keeping you in contention with lower-tier starters at the other positions. But their greatest virtue comes when the rest of your league realizes they’re trying to drive cross-country with a 250k mile engine. They want to repair it and upgrade it, and you are the only one with the parts they need. You are AutoZone. You are The QB Store.
Taking more than four QBs puts you in a position to trade them away. Stay tuned for Volume V, where we will discuss drafting QBs early, what it means to be The QB Store, the return you can expect when you trade away a QB… and the “SuperFlex Theorem.”
