Historical Performance of 1st Round Quarterbacks Every year there's a new crop of highly touted rookies, and fantasy owners looking to get an edge are often tempted to take a chance on an NFL newcomer. Before jumping for a rookie QB, you might want to review the history first!

Q: Every year there's a couple of hotshot college Quarterbacks get drafted in the first round, but it seems like for every Peyton Manning there are several Ryan Leafs...for a fantasy player how good an idea is it to grab a QB drafted in the first round?

A: We'll look at this strictly from the standpoint of how QB's drafted in the first round do in their rookie season. Obviously if you play in a "keeper" league your outlook needs to be a little bit different:

ANALYSIS: So overall clearly it's pretty suspect to get excited about a Quarterback picked in the first round for his rookie season -- many of them hardly see action (12/25 threw for less than 1,000 yards), and those that do aren't necessarily good performers (who can forget Ryan Leaf's infamous 2 TD and 15 INT brilliance?). Yet some of the "big hype" guys do all right in their first season, with Peyton Manning certainly putting up numbers that most fantasy players would be pretty happy with.

We'll judge player performance according to the following standards:

SOLID = 100+ Points -- 8/25 or 32%
STAR = 150+ Points -- 5/25 or 20%
STUD = 200+ Points -- 1/25 or 4%

For more insight let's break it out by looking at where a QB was picked, and how good a team he was drafted by:

ANALYSIS: There's a pretty direct correlation between where how early a QB was drafted in the first round and how much playing time he sees. Likewise the worse a team was in the prior year (and consequently the higher the draft pick they are likely to have), the better the chances that a rookie QB will perform "respectably" for a fantasy player. Even so though, unless you're happy with 1,936 yards and 10 TD's don't get focused on grabbing a top college Quarterback taken in the top three picks.

The six QB's drafted #1 overall averaged a healthy 2,463 yards, 15 TD's and 152 fantasy points, which might make a Carson Palmer interesting if he does indeed go number one in the 2003 draft. Our advice though is to wait on going after the rookie QB's. Even in keeper leagues, there's a pretty high risk, since arguably only 9 of the 25 QB's taken in the last twelve years would have been players you would even consider wanting on your fantasy roster. In single season leagues think of it this way: only one out of twenty-five 1st round QB picks has had a rookie season to get excited about!