This article is taken from the 2023 Footballguys Best Ball Guide. To download the full 60+ page guide for free, click here.

This strategy works well in the 18-round format, and in a 20-round format, you can actually take it a step further and draft 4 late quarterbacks. But with most best ball leagues being the typical 18 rounds, let's focus on how to draft three late-round quarterbacks and why it can work. Let's look at last year for a quick example, as you could have drafted Justin Fields, Trevor Lawrence, and Daniel Jones as your three later quarterbacks. All three smashed at their ADP and finished the season as the QB6, QB7, and QB8. You also could have just drafted Patrick Mahomes II or Josh Allen in rounds 2 or 3 and could have been fine, but the cost of the examples is the bigger issue.

When taking the three later quarterbacks, it allows you to allocate your draft more to the skill positions of running back and wide receiver to start out and to really fill those roster spots as five (six with the flex) out of your required eight roster spots will be filled in by those two positions. When I go the three late quarterback route, I free up all the premium rounds to really focus on the running back and wide receiver positions.

Injury Protection

Another aspect of the three late quarterback drafts is that it gives you ways to protect yourself from lost games at the position or even dud games by one of your players. It gives you three shots at hitting a spike week performance each week as opposed to just one when you go all in on Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes II. The bigger aspect of it for me, though, is how it allows you to think of these Underdog tournaments as four different tournaments inside of one. You have Week 1-14, Week 15, and Week 16 that you all have to win just to get to the Week 17 finals. With that being the case, it gives you three shots of a spike week out of your quarterback position compared to just hoping the likes of Mahomes or Allen get you there four straight times.

Three Starting-QB Values

The primary concept of drafting three late-round quarterbacks is to make sure you have three starters and that they are values later in the draft. If you think they might have an upside it is even better. Often a lot of these names will be quarterbacks that might have had a down year the year before or have questions surrounding them via trade or free agency, rookies, new teams, bad offenses, or just recency bias. Looking at last year's top later-round quarterbacks in Fields, Lawrence, and Jones, the year before, they all had miserable seasons, and no one believed in the Bears, Jaguars, and Giants offenses heading into 2022.

I am not saying that I prefer the three-late quarterback strategy over any other strategy, as I also think the elite quarterback strategy can work just as well, but I am saying that you should mix up your drafting portfolio and don’t be afraid to try lots of different build types and try them in all the tournaments that Underdog has to offer. If you lock yourself onto a single build type, that is really taking the fun out of the game. You may as well just set all your drafts on autopilot with your rankings just set to how you value each position.

• You are giving up the advantage of an elite QB
• With a quantity-over-quality approach, you limit your ceiling while raising your weekly floor
• With a bit of luck, solid QB producers can be drafted late

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