It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout July and August. Let’s talk about Trevor Lawrence, or “Tree Law” as I like to call him and I’m totally going to make that a thing. Last season he shook off the shambling ghost of Urban Meyer and finished as QB8. Will he make another leap and end up in the top tier of fantasy quarterbacks? Yes: yes he will.
Trevor Lawrence ADP and AAV:
Average Draft Position: QB8, 54th overall
Average Auction Value: $8 (10 Teams), $9 (12 teams)
Trevor Lawrence Statistics:
| Year | G | GS | Att | Comp | Comp% | Yds | TD | Int | Comp/G | Att/G | Yds/G | TD/G | INT/G |
| 2022 | 17 | 17 | 584 | 387 | 66.3% | 4113 | 25 | 8 | 34.4 | 22.8 | 241.9 | 1.5 | 0.5 |
| 2021 | 17 | 17 | 359 | 602 | 59.6% | 3641 | 12 | 17 | 21.1 | 35.4 | 214.2 | 0.7 | 1.0 |
| 2020 | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A |
| Year | 4 PPTD | 6 PPTD | 4 PPTD/G | 6 PPTD/G | Year | Att | Yd | TD | YPC | Att/G | Yd/G | ||
| 2022 | 295.6 | 345.6 | 17.4 | 20.33 | 2022 | 62 | 291 | 5 | 4.7 | 3.6 | 17.1 | ||
| 2021 | 199 | 223 | 11.7 | 13.12 | 2021 | 73 | 334 | 2 | 4.6 | 4.3 | 19.6 | ||
| 2020 | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | 2020 | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | ||
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | Y/A | TD% | INT% | Sacks | Yds/Sack | ||||||
| 2022 | 4328 | 7.41 | 7.00 | 4.3% | 1.4% | 27 | 6.81 | ||||||
| 2021 | 4734 | 7.86 | 6.00 | 3.3% | 4.7% | 32 | 7.44 | ||||||
| 2020 | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | #N/A | ||||||
| Draft Year | College | Height | Weight | Draft Data | |||||||||
| 2021 | Clemson | 6-5 | 213 |
Jacksonville Jaguars / 1st / 1st pick / 2021
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Okay, so, first of all, my editorial staff just informed me I should not have said, “Yes: Yes he will,” about Trevor Lawrence’s possibility of making another leap. They’re telling me I should have said something like, “read on to unlock the answer to this mystery.” I say it’s my company and I can do what I want! If I want to tell you Trevor Lawrence is going to be fantasy fire this year in my intro, I can. If I want to make a 7-minute-long video about how I time the tempo of each new quarterbacks dropback bounce and compare this to footage from the past 25 years, I will:
I’m not insane, they’re insane!
Trevor Lawrence improved from QB21 to QB8, last year. He made Christian Kirk look like, well, a guy who deserved the ridiculous salary Kirk got to go to Jacksonville. Now the Jags has the hopefully-enraged Calvin Ridley, a guy who was WR4 his last full season in the NFL. Things are all pointing toward another great year for the Jacksonville offense.
2022 Trevor Lawrence Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Trevor Lawrence Salary Cap Value: $15 (10-Teams), $18 (12-teams)
Draft Ranking: QB5, 45th overall
Yeah, I’m industry high on Tree Law. I came up with a specific test during my obsessive tape-watching right after the Covid lockdown. I used it to successfully predict Josh Allen’s monster QB1 fantasy breakout. The test is this: I watch the tempo of the up-and-down bounce rookie QBs do on their dropback. Almost always, their tempo increases if the pocket starts to collapse. My theory is that this increase happens because they are reverting to their college instincts and thinking of sprinting out of the pocket when they should be keeping their tempo and studying their reads. The increase in game speed between college and pro is monumental, and my theory is that rookie quarterbacks who increase their tempo are sacrificing their chances to learn to adjust to this increase in speed. Thus, if their tempo increases, they fail my “bounce test.”
On the rare chance a quarterback passes my test and keeps their tempo even, my theory posits that they will adjust to the speed of the game faster and see a marked increase in fantasy performance their next year. Only three rookie quarterbacks have ever passed my “bounce test:” Andrew Luck, Josh Allen, and Patrick Mahomes. If you don’t remember: Mahomes smashed fantasy records his sophomore year. The bounce test works.
Now, Trevor Lawrence didn’t pass the bounce test his rookie year. But there weren’t a lot of tests Jacksonville passed on their way to repeating as the lowest-winning team in the league. So I decided to give him a do-over and watch his bounce tempo in his second year, 2022. Watch this:
If it plays from the beginning, I’m talking about 1:32 in. As the pocket breaks down, Lawrence doesn’t maintain his tempo, here, he actually slows it down. I’ve never seen that in my 40 years of watching NFL games. It’s something he does pretty often too, I’ve devoured Lawrence tape ever since even the glimmer of possibility he passes my ultra-exclusive test, the guy is intent on maintaining his reads and adjusting to the speed of the NFL.
Trevor Lawrence learned a ton about rising to meet the speed of the game in 2022, a year when he took the Jaguars from the NFL basement to the divisional round of the playoffs. Their wild-card game against the Chargers is a microcosm of what I’m seeing: Lawrence threw four picks in the first half, then adjusted and came back from a 27-0 deficit.
Lawrence learned a ton more last year than almost any other young quarterback ever has. Lawrence is going to break out. The Jaguars are going to flip out. Don’t trounce the bounce.
Best Case Scenario:
Trevor Lawrence has a monster year like Patrick Mahomes or those Denver years when Peyton Manning was singlehandedly winning fantasy leagues. I retire a billionaire because of this 2023 Trevor Lawrence player profile.
Worst Case Scenario:
I dunno, he was QB8 last year, and he’s being drafted QB8 this year. Even if you trounce the bounce you can end up with Lawrence at his current ADP and AAV and most likely get a commensurate return on this investment. That’s worst-case scenario even if everything I know and stand for is wrong!
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[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]
