Updating the Dynasty leaderboard every month makes a lot more sense than updating the Dynasty tiers every month, at least during the off-season. Because while players are definitely moving up my rankings, there are very few who make big changes relative to the tier they are in. Someone like Deshaun Watson would be an exception to this rule, but I’m still not sure anyone has any basis for pretending they know where to place or rank Watson.
Tier changes this season often have less to do with the players themselves and more to do with how I view them. For example, Joe Burrow ended up alone in Tier 3 this month after being paired with Dak Prescott and Jalen Hurts in last issue. Currently, Burrow isn’t a quarterback that I’m currently comfortable with with anyone else.
The reason he’s not in Tier 1 or Tier 2 is because he doesn’t show us anywhere near the same perks as Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Kyler Murray, Justin Herbert, or Lamar Jackson. That could absolutely change in the future, maybe even in the very near future, but I’m having a hard time ranking them with them when he’s predicting at least 25 fewer fantasy points than everyone else in this group for 2022.
As I said before, Burrow needs to drastically change one of two things before he can be ranked as an elite redraft quarterback. Either the Bengals have to throw the ball 100 more times or Burrow has to run a few hundred more yards. As it stands, I’ve predicted him for 63 more passing attempts and 46 more rushing yards in 2022, and he’s a lot closer to 12th place than the top-5.
Just don’t take that in such a way that I don’t understand the appeal. Burrow is a 25-year-old quarterback who just led his team to the Super Bowl while leading the NFL in both completion rates and yards per pass attempt. All the evidence points to him being an elite passer and his team really needs to throw the ball more. It’s just hard to project a big change in philosophy from a team that just went to the Super Bowl. The Bengals’ plan worked almost perfectly last year, why should they make any major changes?
If you were to ask me a bet, I’d bet that Burrow has the top five fantasy seasons ahead of it. It might just have to wait until the team pays him so much money that they can’t afford to build a good defense with the same budget. And since he’s not significantly younger than everyone else in the top 5 and has less near-term potential, there really isn’t a good spot for him. I just couldn’t keep him on the same level as Prescott and Hurts because they don’t have nearly the same long-term security that he does.
If you ask me to rank players in order of likelihood of giving you long-term top 12 production, Burrow would already be a Tier 1 quarterback. He has more fantasy to turn our heads before he gets there in the following Dynasty Tiers:
