Late-Round Quarterbacks Who Will Outperform Their ADP

July 16, 2021

Antonio Losada looks at four sleepers at the quarterback position in 2021 fantasy football. Can one of these QBs help you win as a late-round flier?

It's time to dig deep. In fact, it's time to dig deeper. Everybody knows who is a top-tier fantasy asset. Everybody has a clear picture of who to target in the middle rounds of their drafts. That is why you need to study the full roster of available players and look for low-valued bargains with huge upside. And this is what we're here for.

Think for a minute that you're part of a way larger league than an eight or 10-team one. In that case, you'd find yourself desperate to find value wherever you can. You'd need to study the deepest of depth charts and probably the second-string quarterbacks or starters with low projections but huge upside in order to get a good return on investment. Using ADP data from hundreds of  MyFantasyLeague.com fantasy drafts, I have built a dataset to try and find some deep QBs that can be obtained late in drafts or even for free after the draft is finished.

Here is a look at four quarterbacks that can be considered sleepers. Keep an eye on them and track their presence on the draft board as they can become interesting pieces down the road during the development of the 2021 season!

Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins

ADP: 103, QB12

I'm writing this while looking at PFF projections for the 2021 season, and I have applied a simple filter to the QB position: players projected to at least 170 FP over the year. The result yields exactly 32 players, which is to say all of the expected starters and QB1s of the year. The difference that can be found in terms of price and production for some players, though, is mindblowing. Enter Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins sophomore and new go-to quarterback.

Tago's ADP of 103 has him getting off draft boards as the QB18... while he has a QB12 projection (again, via PFF). That, translated to a simple ROI figure, means that Tua is the most valuable player at the position with an ADP below 100. He's the only QB projected to a QB1 finish in the year while getting drafted below that mark. If you're not banking on Tua and getting shares of him in every league you're part of, you're missing on a true bargain.

The Fins opted to move on from veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick and are poised to hand Tua all snaps he can manage to play and then some. Not only that, but Miami bolstered the receiving unit with the addition of deep-threat Will Fuller and rookie wideout Jaylen Waddle--a first-rounder, no less. Tua only started nine games in 2020 and just couldn't compete for a QB2 finish because of the low playing time.

That being said, though, he was one of the best QBs at throwing catchable passes (80.3%) and showed Konami-Code-prowess, rushing the rock 3.6 times per game (70th percentile) and doing so inside the red zone in 10.5 percent of Miami's such plays. This surely looks like Tua's true arrival, yet most fantasy GMs have still not caught up to his potential exploits.

Baker Mayfield, Cleveland Browns

ADP: 96, QB13

Do you know who ranks right after Tua in the PFF projections for the 2021 season? That's correct, you got spoiled by the headline. Baker has the 13th-highest projection at the time of this writing, and if we're honest, that makes all of the sense. What is not so clearly reasonable is the fact that Mayfield is getting drafted at a low QB15 ADP (96th overall). That's a higher price than that of Tua paired with a lower projection, sure, but even then Baker is being a little bit undervalued by fantasy GMs drafting out there.

Baker is entering his fourth season and Cleveland already executed his fifth-year option. Not exactly a make-it-or-break-it year for Mayfield, but definitely one in which he should give it his all if he really wants to convince the Browns of signing him to a long-term deal past 2022. And the truth is that while Mayfield has not been a league-winning player (three straight QB2 finishes), he's been more than capable of manning NFL pockets.

Mayfield's ADP has bounced around a lot, going from 159 to 55 and lastly 137 in 2020. It's now back up at 96, which isn't cheap by any means but we could very well see Mayfield available around the 10th round in some 12-team leagues. That'd be steal territory, folks.

The Browns have kept their roster together and not touched a lot of things. Odell Beckham Jr., Jarvis Landry, and a couple of rushers Cleveland boasts are all still there. Contributions from signee Rashard Higgins, rookie Anthony Schwartz, and TE Austin Hooper will also pop up here and there. Mayfield might not have had any QB1 seasons so far, but he's getting there and 2021 could be his breakthrough campaign.

Teddy Bridgewater, Denver Broncos

ADP: 197, QB36

Now, let's get deep to try and find the ultimate value plays of this year's draft season, starting with a wildly career-undervalued QB: Teddy B. There will seemingly be a competition for the QB1 role in Denver, but it's all good between Bridgewater and Drew Lock as they are training together through the camps and trying to improve each other's game. Anyway, I think we're safe to assume Bridgewater will end up manning most of Denver's reps this upcoming season, at least if they want to win some games.

Nothing is set in stone at this point, and the Broncos' QB1 role is still up for grabs. Even then, PFF has a 192-FP projection for Bridgewater while Lock is projected to just 99 FP. If we play the silly-math game, we arrive at an ideal scenario in which Bridgewater plays all 17 games and finishes with a combined 275+ FP throughout the full campaign. Not bad, if you ask me. That mark would put Teddy in the QB2 realm with upside to finish as a high-end QB2 if he can raise that figure to reach around 290-300 FP.

Playing 15 matches for Carolina last season, Teddy already got to 241 FP, averaging 16.1 FPPG. The touchdowns and interceptions were very balanced with 15 and 11 respectively, but Bridgewater added five rushing scores on 53 carries to go with 279 yards on the ground. That's where Teddy's mojo is at, and that's also a part of his game that is going to be hard to find in other quarterbacks in this range: Bridgewater ranked fifth in RZ Rushing Rate (13.7%) among QBs with 700+ snaps last season.

Tyrod Taylor, Houston Texans

ADP: 215, QB39

Everything is looking quite bad for Deshaun Watson's 2021 upside these days, like it or not. Watson looks more like a 2022 bet than a reliable gamble to take in this 2021 season. In fact, we might not even watch him play a single snap next year. Ugh. That also means that Houston's QB2 and recently-signed backup Tyrod Taylor is now the starting quarterback for the Texans.

The only projected starter with an ADP below 200, Taylor might be the steal of the season. I know, I know. The Texans are pretty much a depleted, plain bad squad. Not happy with a thin-as-hell receiving corps to which they only added rookie Nico Collins and Chris Conley, they went on and signed two rushers to build a three-headed monster that now includes David Johnson, Phillip Lindsay, and Mark Ingram II. Good for us, Tyrod Taylor can surely rush the ball himself and he will be the man getting the rock from the center.

PFF projects Taylor to almost 200 FP to the tune of 380+ passing attempts to go with 70+ schemed carries. That means he would be part of around 450 opportunities created (for him and his teammates), a top-30 mark, and one above four other quarterbacks with much higher ADPs.

Taylor was massively unlucky last season when he lost the starting gig to rookie Justin Herbert because of reasons not having to do a thing with his game. We're four years removed from his stint in Buffalo finishing in 2017, but he was fantastic back then. Taylor went for 271, 270, and 223 FP in the three seasons there, and most encouragingly, he did it both passing and rushing the rock. He's now 32, which should give us some pause, but there are just no quarterbacks at all with his all-around game available this late in fantasy drafts.

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