Trevor Lawrence Is the Ideal Late-Round Quarterback in Fantasy Football This Season

National Champion. All-American. No. 1 overall pick. Fantasy football stud?

The first three items on the list are already earned accomplishments on rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence's mantle. The fourth, though, is all that matters to us fantasy football degenerates.

What value will Lawrence bring to our fake football teams this season? I'm here to help uncover the answer to that burning question.

Let's dive in.

Historical Precedent

Lawrence already has a place in NFL history merely because he was selected as the first pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. With that draft capital comes a certain level of expectation, and the selection puts him in company with a long line of NFL greats such as Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, John Elway and others. Is it possible we can glean some insights from recent signal callers who were taken first overall?

Focusing on the previous 10 seasons -- basically the modern fantasy football era -- yields a sample size of seven quarterbacks who went number-one: Joe Burrow, Kyler Murray, Baker Mayfield, Jared Goff, Jameis Winston, Andrew Luck, and Cam Newton.

One of the benefits of being the first selection is, almost without fail, lots of playing time. Other than iconic mediocre coach Jeff Fisher providing Goff with just seven starts (or maybe Goff just didn't earn them), every passer we just rattled off played at least 14 games in their rookie seasons when healthy. As such, we'll look at their fantasy finishes compared to their peers who played at least 10 games (or 63% of games) in each season, so that game sample outliers aren't fudging the data.

The chart shows that passers to go number-one in the last 10 years have been fantasy values, averaging 17.1 fantasy points per game, with an average seasonal finish (based on points per game) of QB14.

Goff is the clear outlier from the group -- he started just seven games, didn't even crack 9.0 fantasy points per game and was the only guy on the list who didn't beat his ADP. The numbers look quite a bit better if we remove Goff from the sample, which pushes the clips to 18.6 fantasy points per game and an average finish of QB12.

Impressively, the current market is pretty on point with Lawrence, as he's the QB14 (124th overall), per FantasyPros' ADP. It's worth noting, however, that Lawrence is considered by many scouts to be the most surefire quarterback prospect since the aforementioned Luck, so it's not outlandish to expect him to end up on the high-end of this group.

Even if you don't think Lawrence is the Perennial All-Pro prospect he's pegged to be, let's agree he's not Goff. With that in mind, the chart anecdotally tells us his floor is likely around 17 points per game and a QB18 finish. While that is by no means a perfect exercise, it paints a helpful piece of the picture.

What's Lawrence Working With in Jacksonville?

On the surface, you might not be thrilled about a passing offense that ranked 30th in Adjusted Passing Net Expected Points (NEP) per play last season. But this isn't last year's offense.

Let's start with the weapons. Jacksonville brought in Marvin Jones this offseason. Often underrated, Jones has scored nine-plus touchdowns in four of his last seven seasons and has put up 14.2 yards per catch for his career. Jones is well acquainted with new offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, who helped propel Jones to some good seasons in Detroit. Jones provides Lawrence with a veteran boundary receiver who excels in contested-catch situations (fifth-best last season).

The team also added stud receiving back Travis Etienne with the 25th pick in the draft. Over the last two seasons playing with Lawrence at Clemson, Etienne caught 85 balls and averaged 12 yards per catch. Their chemistry out of the backfield should provide an explosive safety valve for Lawrence right away, with the opportunity for more down the field.

Jones and Etienne complement a versatile group that includes D.J. Chark, Laviska Shenault, Collin Johnson, and James Robinson. Chark is coming off a down season, but he's 6'4" with a 1,000-yard campaign and second-round draft capital on his resume. Shenault also comes with second-round capital, profiling favorably as a yards-after-catch slot maven, and it's worth pointing out PlayerProfiler has his comparison set as A.J. Brown.

There's room for optimism regarding the offensive line, too. Establish The Run's offensive line expert Brandon Thorn has the unit ranked 15th overall.

We should elaborate on the addition of the aforementioned Bevell as the offensive coordinator on Urban Meyer's staff. Bevell has experience coordinating offenses for Russell Wilson and Matthew Stafford. While having quarterbacks of that caliber clearly helps, Bevell's offenses have ranked inside the top half in the league in terms of Adjusted Passing NEP per play every year since 2012, with multiple top-10 and top-5 finishes.

Yet another potential feather in T. Law's cap is pace. Jacksonville ranked 26th in plays per game last season under former coach Doug Marrone. Meanwhile, according to Sharp Football Stats, Bevell ran the seventh- and eighth-fastest neutral situation offenses, respectively, in 2019 and 2020. This jives perfectly with Meyer's recent comments on pace in which he said he wanted his offense playing faster. Pace expert Pat Thorman also recently talked up the Jaguars playing up in pace.

Whatever your evaluation of the Jags' skill group, it's objectively better than what most top overall picks walk into, and the coaching situation should be a plus. All in all, it's a solid environment for Lawrence.

The Schedule Is Nice Early On

Lawrence's schedule -- especially early -- is another reason to get excited.

While other rookie quarterbacks such as Trey Lance, Justin Fields and Mac Jones may not even start Week 1 (whether or not they should is a different discussion), Lawrence is set to get cooking from the jump.

Per Sharp Football Stats, Jacksonville has the fourth-easiest strength of schedule based on forecasted win totals. They start the year with the Houston Texans, Denver Broncos, Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals, Tennessee Titans, and Miami Dolphins.

While defensive stats aren't always sticky year over year, the Texans, Titans, Cardinals and Bengals all ranked in the bottom 11 in overall D last year, per our schedule-adjusted metrics. Meanwhile, Tennessee and Arizona both ranked top-three in neutral situation pace. Houston was 9th, and Cincy was 12th before Joe Burrow's injury.

We're talking shootouts, y'all.

Overall, Sharp Football Stats has Jacksonville with the 11th-easiest strength of schedule against pass defenses.

Trevor Lawrence's 2021 Fantasy Football Projections

Earlier on, when we looked at the rookie-year production of recent quarterbacks who went first overall, the numbers came out to Lawrence's floor being right around QB18. That's where our projections have him, slotting him at exactly QB18.

Projections are more a median outcome tool and are not the be-all-end-all when it comes to player rankings, especially when we're chasing upside -- which is what you should be doing at quarterback.

Notably, guys like Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins, Baker Mayfield and Tom Brady are above Lawrence in our projections. (You can and should read more about Brady's likely regression.) There's one major reason to believe Lawrence can outscore every one of those passers: rushing.

Our projections are pretty conservative on Lawrence's rushing stats, projecting him for 37 carries for 163 rushing yards and 1.36 touchdowns. That equates to per-game averages of 2.2 carries, 9.6 yards (4.36 yards per carry), and .08 touchdowns. Over his last two seasons at Clemson, Lawrence rushed 171 times for 766 yards (4.48 yards per carry) and 17 touchdowns across 25 games. Those are per-game averages of 6.8 carries, 30.6 yards, and 0.68 touchdowns.

Obviously, we can't simply take Lawrence's college rushing stats and apply them to the NFL, but it's noteworthy that his college production was more than triple our projections for carries and yards, while it was more than eight times higher for touchdowns. It's possible we're severely underrating Lawrence's ability to run the ball, especially near the end zone.

Yes, the college game can be very different than the NFL, but Urban Meyer has a long history of deploying rushing quarterbacks. In his 17 seasons as a college head coach, 14 of his signal-callers had at least 100 carries, per Hayden Winks of Underdog Fantasy.

And while they're not the same player, Russell Wilson has averaged 1.3 fewer carries per game since Bevell left Seattle, getting 6.0 rushes per game under Bevell. So Bevell isn't afraid to let his quarterback run.

It all adds up to Lawrence being the perfect late-round quarterback this year. He's walking into a decent situation, can get going early thanks to a friendly schedule and has upside via his rushing ability. He checks all the boxes for those who wait to take a quarterback.