RADIO
Justin Carter identifies NFL players at the quarterback position that disappointed fantasy football managers in 2022 and looks at their fantasy prospects in 2023.
With the 2022 NFL season row in the rearview mirror, it's time to look back and reflect on what happened during a wild NFL season that saw all kinds of things happen—which includes the farewell season for quarterback Tom Brady.
And speaking of Tom Brady, let's talk about quarterbacks who didn't live up to expectations in fantasy this year. Brady finished as the overall QB12, but was QB16 in points per game among players to play at least 10 games.
Below, we'll talk about Brady as well as some of the other big fantasy busts this year at the quarterback position. To filter out players who busted because of injury, I'm going off of fantasy points per game, and only looking at players who played at least 10 games.
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Tom Brady - Tampa Bay Buccaneers - QB16
Honestly...for being a 45-year-old man coming off a false retirement, Brady's 2022 season wasn't bad. It's just that when we're used to him being an elite fantasy option—especially during his Bucs tenure—and then suddenly he isn't that anymore, well...it's worth noting.
Brady threw a lot of passes this year, leading the league with 733 attempts. But his 276.1 passing yards per game were the lowest of his time in Tampa, and his 25 touchdowns were 15 fewer than his 2020 season and 18 fewer than last year. When it comes to figuring out what went wrong for Brady, the touchdown regression is really the place to look. He threw touchdowns on 3.4% of his pass attempts this season, per Pro Football Reference, his lowest mark since...well, ever, if we filter out the season he was hurt and played one game and his rookie season when he didn't make a start.
Part of that isn't Brady's fault. Chris Godwin and Mike Evans both missed a couple of games, while Julio Jones missed seven games. He also didn't have Rob Gronkowski, and the combination of Cade Otton, Cameron Brate, and Kyle Rudolph wasn't able to provide the team with the things that Gronk did down in the red zone.
That also helps account for Brady's red zone issues. He wasn't bad in the red zone, but per PlayerProfiler, he ranked 13th in the NFL in red zone completion percentage in 2022. In 2021, he was fifth. It's not a huge drop—62.0% in 2021 down to 57.1% in 2022—but it helps explain some things.
As for whether Brady can bounce back from this in 2023...well, that doesn't matter, because he retired again, and this time it sounds like it's going to stick.
Russell Wilson - Denver Broncos - QB18
I think you can see why Tom Brady regressed in 2022: he was old. It makes a little less sense why Russell Wilson did.
The Broncos made a huge swing in trading for the former Seahawks star, and they surrounded him with talent: on paper, having Jerry Jeudy and Courtland Sutton as your top two receivers should set you up for success, even if both players missed two games.
But in reality, Wilson was a mess. He completed a career-low 60.5% of his passes and threw just 16 touchdowns. His previous low had been 20. It was so weird that a whole "will Russ throw more touchdowns than he has bathrooms in his house" thing developed:
Part of his issues was because of play calling, as the Broncos ranked 17th in team pass plays per game, per PlayerProfiler. The Broncos didn't really let Russ cook. But he also wasn't very accurate when he did throw the ball. He ranked 26th in true completion percentage and 19th in accuracy rating. He couldn't find his receivers when they were being covered in man, as he ranked 30th among quarterbacks in completion percentage against man coverage. He was also sacked a league-high 55 times.
There are four players discussed in this article. For three of them, it makes sense why they were fantasy busts. But with Wilson, it's just so complicated. Did he regress? Was the coaching bad? Were the skill position players not as good as expected? A little of everything, right? But with Sean Payton now on board to coach the Broncos, Wilson should bounce back in 2023.
Aaron Rodgers - Green Bay Packers- QB21
Aaron Rodgers must have done a little too much ayahuasca this past offseason.
Okay, not really. An offseason ayahuasca trip might have changed Rodgers as a person, but it isn't the reason that the four-time MVP fell off a cliff this year. The reason for that feels pretty simple to me: no Davante Adams.
The Packers traded Adams to the Raiders, and Rodgers responded with worse numbers across the board. He threw for his fewest yards ever in a full season and had his worst completion percentage since 2019, and his 12 interceptions were his most since he threw 13 back in 2008.
It's not really hard to see what happened here. His top wide receivers were Allen Lazard, Romeo Doubs, and Christian Watson. Considering two of those are rookies, and that they were trying to replace one of the NFL's best wide receivers, then the struggles here make sense. Among all NFL quarterbacks, 40 players had better receiver target separation than Rodgers did. He was throwing into tighter windows than pretty much anyone else, and that makes it tough to play winning football.
In terms of a 2023 bounce back, it's hard to know what'll happen there because we don't know where Rodgers will be playing next season, or if he'll be playing:
Aaron Rodgers is going to Aaron Rodgers, huh?
Mac Jones - New England Patriots - QB26
Mac Jones is proof that it isn't just old quarterbacks who bust. Sometimes, it's second-year guys who can't live up to their rookie campaigns.
To be fair, the three guys above all entered 2022 with higher expectations than Mac Jones. Jones was a game manager as a rookie, and he was expected to be a game manager as a sophomore as well. The problem was that he couldn't even reach that level.
Jones missed three games this season, which accounts for some of his overall numbers regressing, but his per-play stats went down as well. His completion percentage dropped from 67.6% to 65.2%, and his touchdown percentage from 4.2% to 3.2%. He threw picks on 2.5% of his attempts, which was virtually the same as last season. His yards per game also went down, from 223.6 to 214.1.
Overall, Jones wasn't that much worse than he was in 2021, but it's really not a good sign to be saying that about a 24-year-old quarterback who was drafted 15th overall in 2021. Jones should have gotten better. He didn't. And now he heads into his third NFL season with a ton of question marks. Maybe the addition of Bill O'Brien to the coaching staff will help Jones have a third-year breakout, but I'm probably not drafting much of Jones in fantasy next season.
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