In 2000, I drafted Daunte Culpepper in round 11 of my fantasy draft. My friend Eric literally laughed aloud when I took Culpepper as my first quarterback. Several other guys chuckled in shock too.

I was the 12th (last) guy in the league to draft a QB. All of them had already drafted a starting QB. And a few teams had already drafted a backup as well. Later, I drafted Jeff Garcia in the 13th round and Rob Johnson in the 15th round.

I was literally the laughing stock of the draft night. But I would have the last laugh. I won the championship that year. It turned out pretty good for me. That was the year that I fully embraced the concept of drafting a QB late. And 25 years later, I’ve never looked back.

 

Supply Meets Predictability

I started playing fantasy football in 1995 (I was in 8th grade). I was hooked. And I was nerdy.

One day I was in my high school Statistics class. Our teacher was giving a lesson on supply and demand. At the same time, I had the sports section of the Philadelphia Inquirer open (I was discreetly reading the box scores from the previous weekend’s NFL games). And it dawned on me. The supply of QBs on the waiver wire was (oddly) higher quality than the supply of free agents at any other position.

A few minutes later something else hit me, the probability of predicting QB success from week to week seemed easily (more predictable) than when I compared it to other positions. Certainly, we’d guess wrong at times, but overall I felt more confident in my ability to predict QB success from week to week.

So, I put this all together. If there’s a decent supply of QBs on the waiver wire any given week and if I’ve got a decent chance to accurately predict which ones are going to have the boom weeks, then I probably could pick up QBs off the waiver wire in any given week and potentially still get good production from the QB position.

I informally tracked which QBs that were available on the waiver for the rest of that season. I did the same the following season (1999). And then in 2000, I took the plunge. That was the year that I waited to draft Culpepper late. My reasoning: “If Culpepper sucks, then I can just play the waiver wire game!”

 

QB Streaming Goes Mainstream

In 2011, JJ Zachariason wrote an e-book that became popular. Therein he advocated for the “late round QB” approach, for the same reasons I had discovered more than a decade earlier:

• Supply: Free agent QBs on the waiver wire tend to be higher quality than any other free agents on the waiver wire in any given week
• Predictability: It typically seems easier to predict which QBs are going to have boom weeks than it is to predict RBs or WRs.

Over the next several seasons, many fantasy experts began to embrace the late round QB idea. Zachariason would later coin the term “streaming” which referred to this practice of just picking QBs off the waiver wire each week.

 

The Raw 2024 Data

For more than two decades I’ve been advocating for late round QB drafting and/or streaming. But people still push back. Over and over again people just seem to believe that drafting a QB in the first few rounds gives them a significant edge.

So, I decided to do something that I probably should’ve done many years ago; I decided to track which QBs were free agents week to week in my fantasy leagues. (I intend to do this again in 2025).

Herein I’m going to give you the best three QBs that were available each week in 2024 in one of my fantasy leagues and I’ll tell you where those three QBs finished in that particular week. The guys listed herein were free agents in those particular weeks.

First, I want you to see what sort of production I would have gotten from week to week if I had mixed and matched each week. Secondly, we’ll compare this sort of production to what I would have gotten from the QBs drafted earlier in the draft.

NOTE: The league I’m using is a 12-team non-ppr league with typical ESPN scoring with several savvy fantasy owners, including my friend and podcast co-host Walt Cherepinsky, the owner and purveyor of Walterfootball.com.

WEEK 1

WEEK 2

WEEK 3

WEEK 4

WEEK 5

WEEK 6

WEEK 7

WEEK 8

WEEK 9

WEEK 10

WEEK 11

WEEK 12

WEEK 13

WEEK 14

 

Evaluating Frankenstein

I’m going to refer to my QB position as “Frankenstein.” Let’s examine Frankenstein’s results.

If I were able to pick my favorite free agent QB each week, my Frankenstein QB’s production would have outscored Jalen Hurts (QB6). Wow!

But what if my #1 preferred QB in any given week was already owned. Well, that’s why I listed my top 3 favorite free agent options from each week. If we average the production for all 42 QBs listed herein, then my Frankenstein QB’s production would amount to just edging out Jared Goff (QB8).

 

Goal: Stop Streaming, Ride the Hot Hand

My goal each season is not necessarily just to stream the QB position for the entire year. In fact, I prefer to have one quarterback that I can rely on, if possible. It’s less stress. But I’m just not willing to spend the significant draft capital needed to get a top quarterback.

My approach is simply to draft a decent quarterback in the later rounds, who also happens to have some decent upside. In 2025 my favorite late round guys are Justin Herbert and Drake Maye. They have significant upside. Hopefully whichever guy I take hits big, and I can just ride him all season. But if he doesn’t hit, then I can turn to streaming.

Last year, I drafted Jordan Love in round nine last season (I was surprised he was still on the board at that moment). I was fine to roll into 2024 with him. But then he got injured in week one in Brazil versus the Eagles. So I then had to turn to streaming.

If I’m streaming the QB position and I happen to stumble across a QB that is producing well, then I stick with them. For example, last year Baker Mayfield was still a free agent in several of my fantasy leagues after week three. In my mind, he was a decent streaming option. I picked him up and played him in one week.

Unfortunately, I made a dumb move, I actually dropped Mayfield later because I wasn’t convinced that he would be a good streaming option going forward. Bummer. He turned out to be the QB3 in 2024. But my Frankenstein QB still turned out pretty good.

When Jordan Love was injured, I mostly just picked QBs off the waiver wire. When Love came back, I plugged him back into my lineup. But there were other weeks when I actually picked up a QB from the waiver wire and played him over Love. One of those included James Winston in week 13 when Winston was the number #1 QB that week. Nice!

 

Conclusion

I think there are moments to draft a QB higher. I mentioned that in my Perfect Draft Plan for 2025, but that’s not my ideal approach. The QBs worthy of early selections will almost always be gone before I get to the place in the draft where I’d be willing to take them.

In all likelihood, I’ll be going with the late round QB approach, and that’s just fine with me. Typically I’m targeting rounds nine or ten to get my QB. If my guy hits, then I’m way ahead of the game.

But if my guy does not hit, then a few weeks into the season I’ll likely just start streaming the QB position. My Frankenstein QB doesn’t have a ton of upside, but he’ll consistently perform at a level that will keep my team competitive.