<
>
EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
Get ESPN+

Carson Wentz leads way among quarterback breakouts

Fantasy football owners should be conditioned to be wary of rookie quarterbacks by this point, but when passers chosen with the highest of real-life draft picks get to Year 2, things change. We saw it in the interest level of Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Jameis Winston and Tennessee Titans icon Marcus Mariota, the first two picks in the 2015 draft. They were actually solid as rookies, and while only Mariota improved for fantasy purposes his second season, fantasy owners were obviously intrigued by them and their bright futures.

A year later, the top two picks in the NFL draft were Jared Goff and Carson Wentz, and each is expected to make strides this season, but only one of them appears intriguing for impatient fantasy rosters, and that’s for formats deeper than 10-team leagues. Then again, what if each of them took strides to greater fantasy relevance? We’ll take a deeper look in this space, because for some the term “breaking out” can mean dreaming, too. As with sleepers and busts and the rarely-understood-for-context term of “do not draft,” this can be interpreted myriad ways.