When we play the “Start, Bench, Cut” game, someone is always going to get their feelings hurt. Which is fine. This is football and there are always going to be winners and losers.
We can even play the long game with this exercise, because a make-or-break decision when it comes to who will be their QB1 in 2024 could be the difference in not just winning your fantasy football league but — gasp! — it could mean something to your actual fandom.
In this case, we present Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, or Jalen Hurts as the quarterbacks, and you only have room for one of them in your starting lineup, one on your bench … and one who you’ll force to hit the unemployment line. Start one guy. Bench one guy. Cut one guy. That’s how it works.
Since these three players all find themselves in the conversation about the NFL’s elite quarterbacks, deciding between them might seem like an impossible task at times.
We’re here to tell you, it most definitely is not.
Yes, Burrow has suffered season-ending injuries in two out of his four NFL seasons. That’s not a good ratio.
But when he’s right, like Burrow will be headed into 2024, you can’t go wrong by picking him over Allen and Hurts. Burrow led the Cincinnati Bengals to an AFC Championship following the 2021 season and back to the AFC Championship Game following the 2022 season, where he came one boneheaded late-hit penalty away from upsetting the Kansas City Chiefs for a second year in a row at Arrowhead Stadium.
He remains the only active NFL quarterback to have beaten Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs, which is no small feat.
Burrow is getting paid unlike any player in NFL history thanks to a five-year, $275 million contract extension signed before the 2023 season, but he’ll eventually have to deliver on that payday.
With a mostly-stout defense and one of the NFL’s best wide receiver tandems in Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins—though he may not have both for much longer—it’s not hard to see Burrow putting together the final pieces of what could be a legendary career—remember that he finished fourth in NFL MVP voting in 2022.
It’s not outside the realm of possibility to think Burrow could approach 5,000 passing yards and 35-plus touchdown passes in 2024, which are MVP-type numbers. Start him every day of the week, twice on Sundays, and thrice if you’re ever going up against a Mahomes-led outfit. Allen gets benched almost solely because of his staggering propensity to turn the ball over, including a career-high 18 interceptions in 2023. That shouldn’t be happening in his sixth year as a starter for the Buffalo Bills. If you want to look a little deeper, Allen has thrown at least 10 interceptions in all but one season, when he threw nine interceptions in 2019.
The thing that keeps fantasy owners—and Bills fans—coming back to Allen is that there isn’t really a quarterback like him operating in the NFL right now due to his rushing abilities, which are exponentially more valuable in fantasy football circles.
The closest comparison is probably two-time NFL MVP Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, but Allen has almost double the playoff starts as Jackson. Allen is also as durable as any NFL quarterback that’s come along in some time, as he hasn’t missed a start in five seasons despite the fact that he’s the only QB in the league that can truck an NFL linebacker, a skill which he has used more often than you’d think—and more often than Bills fans and coaches would like.
Allen is at an interesting point in his career. He’s led the Bills to the postseason each of the last five seasons but has continually come up short and nowhere was that more pronounced than a loss to the Chiefs at home in last season’s AFC Divisional Round.
Things aren’t going to get any easier for Allen after Stefon Diggs was traded to the Houston Texans in the offseason and Gabe Davis signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars, leaving him with a group of unproven wide receivers to work with in 2024.
If you watched the Philadelphia Eagles and Hurts play down the stretch in 2023, then you saw a quarterback and a team coming apart at the seams.
Philadelphia seemed like the runaway favorite to win a second consecutive NFC title on the way to a 10-1 start, but finished the regular season 11-6, then bottomed out with a loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC Wild Card Round. Hurts was awful when his team needed him the most.
Over the final five games of the regular season, he only threw for over 200 yards once and his two worst rushing games of the season were in the regular-season finale loss to the New York Giants (four yards) and the playoff loss to the Buccaneers (five yards).
Hurts finished 2023 with career highs in passing yards (3,858), passing touchdowns (23), and rushing touchdowns (15), but did so in an offense catered to his every whim. Those numbers were negated by the fact he also finished with career highs in interceptions (15) and fumbles lost (5).
One thing to understand about Hurts or any other dual-threat quarterback is how they are able to evolve into more of a drop-back passer as their career progresses. Hurts has seen his rushing totals go down in each of his three seasons as full-time starter for the Eagles and has continued to take sacks at a high rate, with almost 40 in each of the last two seasons.
Hurts doesn’t seem like a guy other players are going to rally around and wasn’t even the leader of Philly’s offense in his time as a starter—that was six-time NFL All-Pro center Jason Kelce, who retired following the 2023 season.
Hurts was paid a ridiculous amount to be an average quarterback in 2023. The 25-year-old is now making $51 million per season, both of his top receivers are getting $20+ million a year after signing lucrative new extensions this offseason, they doled out huge contracts to several critical offensive line pieces, and to top it all off, they snagged premier free agent RB Saquon Barkley to lure him away from their division rivals.
It’s time for Hurts and company to step it up.