Making sense of the packed field of available QBs this offseason | Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast

Yahoo Sports' Matt Harmon is joined by Patrick Claybon of NFL Network to talk about the incredible amount of quarterbacks that are available to sign or trade for this offseason.

Video Transcript

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MATT HARMON: We saw three quarterbacks signed long term deals earlier this week, Derek Carr, Daniel Jones, Geno Smith. So now by my count, though, that still leaves 17 teams who could be making some kind of significant move at the quarterback position in 2023. Let's set this up by saying who's available here, like, who's available in our pool of matchmaking that we're going to do.

First of all, the free agent quarterbacks fall-- there's a lot of them. There's a ton available. But they fall somewhere on a wide spectrum of the stopgap quarterback spectrum. There's an abundance of first round flameouts, potential placeholders. 15 of those guys I'll nominate here, Jimmy Garoppolo, Gardner Minshew, Carson Wentz, Marcus Mariota, Jameis Winston, because he's probably going to get cut, Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Teddy Bridgewater, Case Keenum, Jacoby Brissett, Andy Dalton, Mike White, the pride of ODU, ODU's finest, Taylor Heinicke, and Pro Bowl quarterback Tyler Huntley, who's a restricted free agent.

PATRICK CLAYBON: Yeah, got to get that Pro Bowl quarterback part in there.

MATT HARMON: Pro Bowl quarterback, baby.

PATRICK CLAYBON: Got to.

MATT HARMON: That is on your resume. First of all, Claybon, I think that Jimmy stands out as a tier above the rest of these guys. But does anybody else just off the list jump out as reasonably exciting?

PATRICK CLAYBON: From the jump, to me, because we went through this with Baker being free and the 49ers were having their particular injury problems after Garoppolo goes down, after Trey Lance goes down, and there was all this, well, is Baker going to Santa-- and I remember thinking, Jacoby Brissett is being benched for the nasty man. He has played perfectly fine the entire season. I wanted Jacoby Brissett in Santa Clara because I would like to see him not have that opportunity. He deserves it. I think he's there with Jimmy G.

Personally, to me, when I'm looking at this list of guys, because the Teddy thing, we've seen the decline happen in Teddy physically. I think at this point, I think last year kind of speaks to that a little bit. So I would have Jacoby and Jimmy up there and then maybe Jameis. And there's real separation within this package quarterbacks to me.

MATT HARMON: Yeah, I love Jacoby Brissett. I'm sure listeners of the podcast are sick of me mentioning this stat, but he was 12th in EPA per drop back, whereas Deshaun Watson was outside the top 40 guys when he played. They were in essentially the exact same environment. So I think Jacoby Brissett-- I ranked the free agent quarterbacks, Lamar-- asterisks, he's sort of not a free agent, although he can negotiate with other teams-- Jimmy, and then Jacoby Brissett. I'm with you that he's the third guy there.

So now, there's also the consensus top four rookie quarterbacks. We've got Bryce Young, CJ Stroud, Anthony Richardson, and Will Levis. And then we've got our trade options, Aaron Rodgers, Ryan Tannehill, and I had to throw my guy Tyrod Taylor in there.

PATRICK CLAYBON: Got to. Why not?

MATT HARMON: They just gave all this money to big Daniel Jones, Danny Dimes. Shout out to Danny Dimes for getting paid. But you know, Tyrod, maybe they want to get his backup contract off the books. Anyways, that's our pool of guys to pick from here, unless you've got another name I have completely forgotten about because there's--

PATRICK CLAYBON: No, Matt, because this list is so extensive, I might have missed Taylor Heinicke. He might not necessarily have been on my priority list.

MATT HARMON: I'll never--

PATRICK CLAYBON: It's a comprehensive list of quarterbacks.

MATT HARMON: I will never miss ODU's finest. I will never miss ODU's finest, Taylor Heinicke. I mean, for God's sakes, I put Mike White on here. I think Taylor Heinicke can get on the list as well.