The Late Round QB Strategy Still Works. Here's the Proof.

Waiting on QB can pay off

LAB REPORTS

By: The Lab

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Every draft I've ever sat in, someone takes a quarterback way too early and someone else waits and wins their league anyway. I used to think that was just luck. It isn't. There's real history behind it and real math behind it, and once you see both, waiting at the position stops feeling like a gamble and starts feeling like the obvious move.

The History That Built This Strategy

The whole philosophy traces back to JJ Zachariason, who built his entire Late-Round Quarterback strategy and eventually his own career around this exact concept. Going back to the early days of fantasy football, the sharpest managers were routinely among the last to draft a quarterback in their league, and for good reason. The gap between the QB1 and a guy drafted 10 rounds later was rarely as big as the gap at running back or receiver in that same range. Every so often a QB would have a wild outlier season, but those seasons were basically impossible to predict and almost never repeated.

Josh Allen is the obvious exception people point to, and he's a fair one. He's gone in the second or third round for years now and has still delivered, finishing as the overall QB1 in fantasy scoring for the fourth time in the last six seasons. Nobody's saying Allen at his price has been a bad pick. The point isn't that every early quarterback fails. It's that you don't have to pay that price to get access to the same kind of production, and history backs that up too.

C.J. Stroud is the flip side of that coin. After a legendary rookie season in 2023, he was being drafted as a high end QB1 heading into 2024. Managers who paid up for that breakout got burned. He finished that year as the QB26. The lesson isn't just about waiting on quarterback. It's about being skeptical of price tags built entirely on one great season, no matter how convincing that season looked at the time.

Then the position actually changed. Patrick Mahomes in 2018 and Lamar Jackson in 2019 were both generally available outside the top 100 picks in their respective breakout years. Neither required a premium pick, and both instantly became some of the best fantasy assets in the entire league. That's not ancient history either. Seven of the all time top 10 individual quarterback fantasy scoring seasons have happened in just the last six years. We are living in the golden era of quarterback fantasy scoring, and it keeps producing shocking value from guys who cost next to nothing on draft day.

Jayden Daniels is maybe the cleanest recent example. He carried a QB12 average draft position in 2024 as a rookie and finished the year as a top 5 fantasy quarterback, becoming just the third player in NFL history to throw for 3,500 yards and rush for 800 yards in the same season. Sam Darnold and Bo Nix did something similar that same year. Neither was drafted as a top 20 quarterback, and both turned into no doubt fantasy starters. Darnold alone beat his draft position by 22 spots. That's not luck happening once. That's a pattern.

The Rule That Actually Predicts Late Round QB Success

Here's the stat that sold me on this years ago. Over the last decade, 26 of the 28 quarterbacks who rushed for 100 or more attempts in a season finished as a top 12 fantasy QB that year. That's a 93 percent hit rate. And the two exceptions both have clean explanations. 2018 Lamar Jackson only became a starter midseason, so his sample size was tiny. 2020 Cam Newton was the only quarterback in the entire sample over 30 years old. Strip those two out and the rule is basically undefeated.

What that tells me is simple. Rushing floor is one of the most predictable things in fantasy football, and it doesn't care how much you paid for the player. A quarterback who's going to get you 40 or 50 rushing yards a game with any real touchdown equity is already halfway to a QB1 season before he throws a single pass. That's the entire foundation of waiting at the position.

The Honest Counterargument

I want to be fair here instead of just cherry picking the wins. Not every late round dart throw hits, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Some years the cheap quarterbacks just don't break out, and you end up scrambling on the waiver wire in September.

But here's the part that actually makes the strategy hold up under pressure. Paying premium draft capital doesn't protect you either. In 2024, three of the top six quarterbacks drafted and five of the top ten in ADP were massive fantasy busts. You can spend an early pick chasing safety at the position and still get burned just as badly as someone who waited. If the bust rate at the top of the position is that high, the opportunity cost of spending an early pick there instead of on a running back or receiver gets a lot harder to justify.

One Format Caveat Worth Knowing

This entire strategy is built around standard single quarterback leagues. If you're in a Superflex or 2 QB format, none of this applies the same way. When you need two startable quarterbacks every week instead of one, the position turns scarce fast, and paying up early stops being optional. Everything in this article assumes you're in a normal, single QB league. If you're not, you can basically ignore all of it.

It's also worth noting the market has adjusted some at the very top of the position. Josh Allen is now commonly going off the board in the second or third round in standard leagues, which is much earlier than the truly late round targets we're talking about here. The strategy isn't about ignoring the entire tier structure at quarterback. It's about recognizing you don't need to pay early to get access to the same rushing floor that makes those top guys so valuable.

The Names Actually Worth Knowing in 2026

Malik Willis is the one I keep coming back to. Miami just paid him 67 million dollars over 3 years to be their starter, so this isn't a camp battle, it's his job. In 6 career starts he's averaging 44.8 rushing yards a game with 4 rushing touchdowns. Over his time in Green Bay as a backup he completed 78.7 percent of his throws with 6 touchdown passes and zero interceptions. Small sample, sure. But that's a real rushing floor attached to a passer who hasn't turned the ball over.

Tyler Shough is the safest bet on this list. He's the Saints' undisputed starter now after taking over in Week 9 last year and going 5 and 4 down the stretch. Over that stretch he was the QB12 in points per game and hit at least 17.1 points in each of his final 6 starts. That's not a flash in the pan, that's a rookie who settled in and produced weekly.

Sam Darnold is the one people forget is even available this late. He's finished as the QB9 and QB13 in each of the last two seasons and he's still going in the double digit rounds because Seattle ran the ball at the third highest rate in the league last year. If that offense throws even a little more this year, he's a massive value at his cost.

Jared Goff is the safe floor play. His consensus ADP is sitting around pick 120, coming off 3 straight strong seasons throwing to Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, Sam LaPorta and Jahmyr Gibbs. He's never going to give you a rushing floor, but the weapons around him are as good as any late round quarterback in football.

Kyler Murray is the swing for the fences pick of the group. He's dirt cheap right now, and if the new coaching influence unlocks anything close to his rushing peak, the ceiling here is as high as anyone on this list.

How This Fits Into Your Draft Plan

This isn't about ignoring quarterback completely. It's about knowing you don't have to pay early round draft capital to get a guy who can produce like one. If you're building your board in tiers the way I do, quarterback should be one of the last tiers you touch in the first 8 or 9 rounds. Let the running backs and receivers dry up first, since that's where the real scarcity lives. Quarterback almost never dries up the same way.

My actual plan is simple. I take my first quarterback somewhere in rounds 9 through 12, usually leaning toward whichever of these rushing floor guys is still sitting there. If none of them are left, I'm fine grabbing Goff as the safe, low variance option and moving on.

The Bottom Line

The late round quarterback strategy isn't a gimmick, and it isn't a guarantee either. It's a bet on one of the most reliable patterns in modern fantasy football, that rushing production predicts fantasy production better than almost anything else at the position, backed up by real history of cheap quarterbacks outproducing expensive ones again and again. Spend your premium picks on the positions that actually run out. Let quarterback come to you.

Busy Dad Fantasy | X: @BusyDadFantasy

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