Fantasy Football: Biggest surprises of the 2023 season — quarterbacks

• First-year starter Jordan Love is arguably the biggest QB surprise of the year: From fantasy greatness to elite PFF grades, Love did it all in his first season as the Packers' QB1.

• Mr. Irrelevant no more: Brock Purdy proved that his great, but short, 2022 season was no fluke after delivering a full year’s worth of strong fantasy production.

• Patrick Mahomes lets down fantasy managers who invested a very early pick in him this offseason: 2022’s QB1 was unable to replicate his strong season, ultimately falling short of fantasy expectations.

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Every NFL season is full of surprises, both good and bad, and 2023 was no exception. Plenty of fantasy football assets emerged seemingly out of nowhere to become quality starting options, and others let us down, either due to injury, poor play and inefficiency or getting benched.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the pleasant surprises and surprise disappointments at quarterback from 2023, leaving out players who missed significant chunks of time due to injury.

Before getting started, it’s worth shouting out an honorable mention who didn’t play enough games to qualify. Cleveland Browns quarterback Joe Flacco is arguably the biggest surprise at quarterback this season. He finished as the overall QB4 during the fantasy playoffs and led the Browns to the NFL playoffs, after not even being on an NFL team for the first 12 weeks of the campaign.

Pleasant surprise: Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers

• QB5
• ADP: QB26

Love is easily one of the biggest quarterback surprises of the season, especially considering the discrepancy between his ADP and fantasy finish. Also taking into account that Love led the Packers to the playoffs, his first year as an NFL starter was a surprise on many levels. Since being drafted in 2020, Love appeared in just eight NFL games with fewer than 100 total dropbacks prior to 2023, so there wasn’t a lot to work off, other than him having just three touchdown passes and three interceptions.

Love immediately matched his career total for NFL touchdowns with three in Week 1, then followed that up with three more the next week. He quickly became a top streaming option and waiver-wire pickup, but it wasn’t until about Week 10 that he proved he could be a consistent starting fantasy option, finishing outside of the top-12 fantasy quarterbacks only once over that span while improving his PFF grades to near the top of the league.

Considering the injuries Love dealt with among his supporting cast, his strong play and breakout season should be considered an even bigger surprise.

Jordan Love | 2023 Season Splits

Pleasant surprise: Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys

• QB4
• ADP: QB10

Prescott is just one year removed from tying for the league lead in interceptions and having one of the least efficient fantasy seasons of his career. Now, he leads the NFL in touchdown passes and finished as the overall QB4 in fantasy football. Prescott’s 2023 bounce-back year earned him PFF Fantasy’s Comeback Player of the Year, as he exceeded his ADP and caught fire from Week 6 on, a stretch during which he delivered four straight top-five finishes at his position and was as consistent as they come.

We previously highlighted Prescott’s potential for a QB1 season, and it had a lot to do with his history of high-end fantasy production combined with an elite WR1 in CeeDee Lamb. Lamb and Prescott both delivered career-high PFF grades, allowing each other to thrive all season long. Through Week 17, Prescott’s 90.5 overall grade and 88.7 passing grade were both the best of his career and the second best at his position. He also tossed just eight interceptions, which helped him consistently deliver for fantasy managers this year. He was a great bargain as a player who often fell outside of the 10 highest-drafted quarterbacks this offseason.

Pleasant surprise: Brock Purdy, San Francisco 49ers

• QB6
• ADP: QB19

Purdy often went undrafted in fantasy leagues this offseason, despite being heralded as a sleeper. There wasn’t a ton of faith that what he accomplished on a smaller sample size as a rookie could be replicated over an entire season in 2023. Purdy ranked fourth in fantasy points per dropback in 2022 from Weeks 13-18 and threw for at least two touchdown passes and no more than one interception per game during that stretch. However, as he recovered from offseason UCL surgery, he consistently fell outside the top 15 fantasy quarterbacks drafted in 2023.

Purdy not only got healthy in time to start the 2023 season but also picked up right where he left off and delivered 10 top-12 fantasy quarterback finishes on the year. Purdy's appeal always stemmed from his having weapons at every position to get the ball to and let them do the rest, and that’s exactly what happened in 2023

He played in all 16 games and finished as an incredibly efficient QB6 on the year, greatly outperforming his ADP expectations. Purdy even surprised the PFF Fantasy expected points system by coming up with 80.0 total fantasy points over expected this season — by far the most among any quarterback — with his 5.0 fantasy points over expected per game also the top number at the position.

Surprise disappointment: Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs

• QB7
• ADP: QB1

Calling Mahomes a disappointment feels a bit harsh, but considering his cost in drafts this offseason and his production in the second half of the season, plenty of fantasy managers were expecting more from him in 2023.

More often than not, Mahomes was the first quarterback drafted in fantasy drafts this offseason, thanks to his QB1 finish in 2022, but he fell well short of that mark in 2023 as the overall QB7 and just the QB11 in points per game. When also considering that the other two quarterbacks drafted in his range, Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts, finished as QB1 and QB2 on the year, respectively, it makes Mahomes' drafters wince that much more.

Week 7 was Mahomes’ best fantasy finish of the season (QB2), but he managed a top-five finish only twice on the entire season. Allen and Hurts did so a combined 17 times, with at least eight each. Following that strong Week 7 game, Mahomes failed to do much at all for fantasy managers, producing just the 15th-most total fantasy points over the remaining 10 weeks. Mahomes also never cracked the top 15 fantasy quarterbacks during the fantasy playoffs, which likely sank plenty of rosters for those who still trusted him in the most crucial weeks of the season.

Patrick Mahomes | 2023 vs. 2022

Surprise disappointment: Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers

• QB16
• ADP: QB6

Prior to Herbert’s season-ending injury in Week 14, there was plenty of disappointment from the ADP QB6. While Herbert did have some weeks of fantasy goodness, delivering four top-five quarterback finishes in 13 games, he was also extremely volatile, producing five games where he finished outside of the top 15 at his position.

Herbert suffered through injuries to two of his top three receivers, with Mike Williams and Josh Palmer missing significant time, as well as the disappointing season of Austin Ekeler, who he was able to rely on for 13 receiving touchdowns over the prior two campaigns. This ultimately led to Herbert finishing 10th in points per game (18.6), making for a second straight year of relative disappointment in that regard.

Surprise disappointment: Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars

• QB14
• ADP: QB8

Lawrence finished as the overall QB7 through 17 weeks in 2022. With another year under Doug Pederson and with wide receiver Calvin Ridley added to the offense, Lawrence was expected to keep it going in 2023, if not perform even better. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen for the Jaguars, who ultimately fell short on the year as a team. Lawrence didn’t quite live up to the top-10 fantasy quarterback expectations for which he was drafted, finishing as the QB18 in points per game through Week 17.

Lawrence managed just two top-five quarterback finishes and seven finishes outside of the top 15 at his position. He threw for three touchdowns in a game just once this year, which was offset by also throwing three interceptions in the same outing (Week 14). In 2022, Lawrence threw for three or more touchdowns four times in the regular season with just eight total interceptions on the year. This season, Lawrence’s 14 interceptions tied for the fourth most in the league, while his touchdown total (21) tied for 15th. Lawrence currently ranks as Nathan Jahnke’s QB14 in early 2024 rankings after his down year.