Superflex strategy: how to draft, roster and trade quarterbacks when everyone needs two

Lesson 1 of 8

What superflex changes, and why it is arithmetic before it is opinion

The first superflex league I joined, somebody told me quarterbacks go early and left it there. It took me a full season to understand why, and once I did, every other decision in the format got easier. So I want to start with the why, because the why is counting, and counting is something you can check.

A superflex slot is a flex that accepts a quarterback. A quarterback almost always outscores a running back, receiver or tight end, so every team puts a second quarterback in it. Twelve teams starting one quarterback need twelve. Twelve teams starting two need twenty-four. The NFL has about thirty-two starting jobs, and a few of those are in offenses nobody wants a piece of. So in a one-quarterback league the best quarterback nobody starts is roughly the thirteenth best, and he is a perfectly good player. In superflex he is roughly the twenty-fifth best, and he is a backup on a bad team, or an injury away from being one.

That free quarterback, the replacement, is the whole story. A player is worth what he scores above the one you could have for nothing. The best quarterback did not change when your league turned on superflex. The one he is measured against did, and he got a lot worse, so the gap roughly doubled. The Positional WAR guide is the long version of that sentence. This page is what to do about it.

You do not have to take my word for the size of it. The table below is live, from the site's own rankings boards: the top quarterbacks in a superflex format beside the same players in the one-quarterback version of the same league type, from the same source, so nothing but the slot is different between the two columns.

Lesson 2 of 8

How many quarterbacks to roster, in redraft, dynasty and best ball

This is the question I get asked most about the format, and the answer is short enough to remember: three in redraft, four in dynasty, one more than that in a true 2QB league. Here is the reasoning, so you can bend it when your league is unusual.

Two start every week. The third exists for the weeks one of them is on a bye and for the one injury a season you should plan on, and he is worth having even if he starts three times all year, because the alternative in those three weeks is a flex player scoring half as much. A fourth in redraft is where it goes wrong. He sits on your bench for seventeen weeks, he scores nothing there, and the roster spot he takes could have held the running back handcuff who wins you week 14. Trade him instead, and the next lesson but two is about who to.

Dynasty changes the fourth one from a waste to a stash. Quarterbacks hold their value for years, a backup who gets a starting job is worth a first-round pick overnight, and a dynasty bench is bigger. Best ball goes the other way: nobody sets a lineup, so the third quarterback is your bye cover and your injury cover at once, and the spare spots are better spent on receivers, where a random big week is more likely to be the one the platform counts. Fourteen teams pushes every number up by one, because twenty-eight starters out of thirty-two leaves nothing on the wire worth picking up.

Lesson 3 of 8

Drafting in superflex: one pillar, then let the run tell you

Every superflex draft has a quarterback run. Somebody takes one in the first round, two more people panic, and by the end of round two ten or eleven of the twenty-four picks are quarterbacks. The run is not a mistake, exactly. Lesson 1 says those players really are worth that much. The mistake is being on the wrong side of it: either paying a first-round pick for the sixth-best quarterback because you were scared, or waiting it out and starting the twenty-fifth.

Here is the plan that has worked for me. Take one pillar quarterback in the first three rounds, a starter with a settled job and a full season of games ahead of him, and do not overthink which one. The pillar is insurance: whatever the room does after that, you have one of the twenty-four. Then take the best player available at every pick and watch the quarterback count. When the room takes three in a row, your second quarterback is next, because the tier is about to be empty. When the room ignores the position for a round, keep taking running backs and receivers, because every quarterback that goes early is a running back or receiver somebody left for you in round three, and those are the players who win a superflex league.

Where you pick changes the plan more than in a one-quarterback league, because the run happens in the long gap between your picks. Pick a slot below and read it.

Two things the plan leaves out on purpose. It says nothing about which quarterbacks, because that is what the rankings boards and the draft guide's superflex list are for, rebuilt nightly. And it says nothing about auctions, where the same logic applies with a budget instead of a turn: spend on one pillar early, let the room overpay for the next four, and buy your second quarterback in the middle of the auction when the money has thinned out.

Lesson 4 of 8

Dynasty superflex: startups, rookie drafts and the long career

Dynasty superflex is the format most of my leagues are in, and it is the one where the quarterback decision matters most, because you are not pricing one season. A running back is a three-year asset if you are lucky. A quarterback drafted at 24 can start for your dynasty team until you have forgotten who you traded to get him.

In a startup, that changes what an early pick is for. A 30-year-old quarterback in a good offense is a long-term asset in a way a 30-year-old at any other position is not, so the room that prices quarterbacks on age the way it prices running backs is a room where you can buy a starter for years at a discount. The reverse is true of rookies: a rookie quarterback is worth a lot on draft day and usually nothing for a year while he sits or struggles, so the rookie draft is where you sell quarterback hype and the in-season market is where you buy the player.

The 1.01 is a quarterback market. When a rookie class has a quarterback with a starting job, that pick is worth more in a twelve-team superflex league than in a one-quarterback league by a margin the trade guide walks through. When it does not, the pick is worth the best running back or receiver in the class, which is less, and the room often forgets to mark it down. Check the class before you price the pick.

On the roster itself: four quarterbacks. Two starters, a bye cover, and a stash who is either a young backup with a path or a veteran the league has written off. That fourth quarterback is the best speculative asset in dynasty superflex, because the day his starter gets hurt he goes from a bench spot to a player three contenders are bidding for.

Lesson 5 of 8

Trading quarterbacks: your third one is value, not wins

The trade guide says every trade has two readings, value and wins, and superflex is the format where they pull apart hardest. A starting NFL quarterback is worth a lot on any superflex value list. On your roster, if he is your third one, he starts twice a year and scores nothing the rest of the time. He is value with no wins attached, which makes him the perfect thing to sell to a team where he would be wins.

Who is that team? The one with two quarterbacks and a bye coming, or the one whose starter just went on injured reserve, or the one that waited out the run and is starting the twenty-fifth best quarterback every week. Look at every roster in your league and count the quarterbacks. A team with two needs a third and will pay a starter's price for him. A team with four has one to sell and will take less than he is worth to clear the spot. Both of those are trades you can make this week, and the calculator on this site will grade the value side in a few seconds.

Timing follows the same calendar the trade guide lays out. The price of a backup quarterback peaks in the week his starter gets hurt, which is when a contender is most desperate, and bottoms out in August, when everyone has three. If you are rebuilding, hold your spare quarterback into the season and sell him in October. If you are contending, buy your third quarterback in August, when he is cheap, and never be the team bidding in October.

Lesson 6 of 8

Managing the season: byes, backups and the second slot

A one-quarterback league lets you forget about the position from September to December. Superflex does not, because two slots means twice the bye weeks, twice the injuries, and a second slot that needs a decision every week you are short.

Check the byes against each other

The third quarterback covers byes only if his bye is not the same week as one of the other two. Nobody checks this in the draft, and every year somebody finds out in week 7 that their cover is on the same bye as their starter. Look up the three bye weeks the day after your draft, and if two collide, fix it while August prices are still low.

Know who is next in line

The best waiver pickup in superflex is the backup who is about to start, and he is on the wire the week before it happens, not the week after. Keep an eye on the quarterbacks whose starters are playing through something, and on rookies who are one bad half from getting the job. On the week the change is announced he is a new weekly starter and priced like one; the week before, he is a stash for a dollar.

Streaming the second slot

When you are short, stream. A quarterback with a soft matchup and a high team total is a fine second starter for one week, and in a twelve-team superflex league there are usually two or three on the wire. The start/sit tool grades any two of them with the matchup already in the projection and the game's implied total shown beside it. The one rule: never leave the superflex slot empty. A flex running back scoring 8 is not a quarterback, but he is not zero either, and zero is what an empty slot scores.

Lesson 7 of 8

TE premium on top of superflex: two settings that stack

Most of the superflex leagues I am in also run TE premium, and people treat the two as one setting. They are not. Superflex changes how many quarterbacks the league needs. TE premium changes what a tight end's catch is worth, usually half a point or a full point more than anyone else's, and it does its work at the top of the position, because the best tight ends catch twice as many passes as the replacement.

Put the two together and the early rounds get crowded. Quarterbacks go early because the slot needs them, and the two or three elite tight ends go early because the premium widens their gap over the free one. That leaves fewer early picks for running backs and receivers, which is exactly why the good ones fall further in a TE premium superflex draft than anywhere else. If you are not going to get a top tight end, do not pay a middle-round price for the fifth one: the premium barely moves the middle of the position, and the running back who fell is worth more.

On this site the two formats are separate boards, because the values really are different: dynasty TE premium superflex and redraft TE premium superflex. When a league is synced through League Pulse the format is read off the league's own settings, so the values inside a league page are already the right ones.

Lesson 8 of 8

Read your own league: how steep the quarterback line really is

Everything above is the general case. Your league is a specific one, with its own scoring, its own roster size and its own twelve managers, and the quarterback line in it is as steep as those settings make it. Six points a passing touchdown and a bonus for 300 yards makes the top quarterbacks worth more. A fourteen-team room makes the free one worse. A league that starts three receivers and two flexes spreads the scarcity around.

Open your league in League Pulse and pick Positional WAR from the league menu. You get one line per position, built from your league's own scoring and slots, with the replacement player found by filling a league's worth of lineups once from every projectable player, rather than assumed from a rule of thumb. In a superflex league the quarterback line is steep, and how steep tells you how hard to chase the position: a line that falls off a cliff after QB8 says pay up for one of the eight; a line that slopes gently to QB20 says you can wait.

2QB and best ball

A true 2QB league is superflex with the fallback removed: the second slot must hold a quarterback, so an empty one is a zero rather than a flex player scoring 8. Everything here applies with the volume turned up. Roster one more, take your pillar a round earlier, and never let both byes land in the same week. Best ball superflex applies the draft lessons and none of the in-season ones, because there is no in-season: three quarterbacks, drafted with the same one-pillar plan, and the platform picks the best two every week.

Been there

Mistakes I see every year

• Waiting out the run. The room took ten quarterbacks and you took none. You are starting QB25 in week 1 and trading a second-round pick for QB14 in week 3.
• Panicking into the run. Three quarterbacks went and you took the sixth-best one at pick 9. The running back you passed on is the one your opponent starts against you in the playoffs.
• Four quarterbacks in redraft. The fourth one starts zero games and costs you the handcuff.
• Two byes in one week. Nobody checked. Week 7 has an empty slot.
• Pricing a 30-year-old quarterback like a 30-year-old back. He has five good years left. The room is selling him like he has one.
• Holding the third quarterback. He is worth a starter to the team with two, and you are keeping him for a bye week in November.
• Reading the one-QB board. Every rankings board on this site has a superflex version. If the quarterbacks look too low, you are on the wrong board.
• Leaving the slot empty. A flex player scoring 8 beats a zero every week of the season.

Start to finish

A worked draft, with made-up picks

Say you have the seventh pick in a twelve-team PPR superflex redraft league that starts one quarterback, two running backs, three receivers, a tight end, a flex and the superflex. You pick 7th, then 18th, then 31st, then 42nd, and so on. Here is the whole method, in order, with the room behaving the way rooms behave.

Notice that the two quarterback picks were decided by counting the tier, not by a rule about rounds. From the seventh pick the pillar came in round two because the run started; from the eleventh pick it would have come at the turn; from the third pick it might have waited until round three. The plan is the same in every seat. The timing is the room's.

Pre-flight

Before your draft

Eight questions, one draft. If you cannot tick one, you have homework before the clock starts, and it takes ten minutes.

FAQ

Questions, answered

Next

Take it into your own league

The boards are the redraft superflex rankings, the dynasty superflex rankings and the two TE premium versions, rebuilt nightly. The draft is On The Clock, which watches the run for you. The trades are the trade calculator, and the season is League Pulse, where your league's own quarterback line lives. If you want the vocabulary first, superflex, 2QB, TE premium and the rest are in the glossary.