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Steve McNair career statistics

Let's take a look at Steve McNair as a fantasy QB, and as a fantasy passer.

McNair became the team's starter for good in 1997. For his first three years, here were his ranks, in terms of fantasy points per game:

                 Total fantasy points      Passing only fantasy points 
Year                per game rank               per game rank
----------------------------------------------------------------------
1997                      10                         25
1998                       9                         19
1999                       3                         20

[NOTE: the "passing only" ranks are computed by subtracting the rushing fantasy points for all QBs, not just McNair.]

So here we clearly have a young QB who is a valuable fantasy commodity, but only because of his rushing ability. Judged strictly on his passing numbers, he's a fantasy backup at best.

Now take a look at his last two years:

                 Total fantasy points      Passing only fantasy points 
Year                per game rank               per game rank
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2000                      21                         22
2001                       5                          8

For the last two years, his overall rank and his passing-only rank have been very close. Both were poor in 2000, but both were good in 2001.

This indicates a couple of things, and could be considered good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it. Good news: it's possible to interpret these numbers as a sign that McNair has finally arrived as a passer. Last year was the first season that McNair has had starter-quality passing numbers. If he can keep that up, and bump the rushing numbers up to where they used to be (he averaged 6.5 rushing fantasy points per game from 97-99 versus 4.8 last year), he could have a huge season. Bad news: maybe McNair's days of running wild are over and his 2001 passing season was a fluke. After all, 2001 was his first season in five tries as a top-10 fantasy passer. And even if his passing abilities really did improve, there's the question of whether Jeff Fisher will return to something a little more conservative this year.

I like McNair, and have always thought that his aerial shortcomings have been exaggerated, so I interpret it as good news.

In any event, you've got a 29-year-old QB who's been in the fantasy points per game top 10 for four of the last five years. If you can get him later than pick #50 or so (which all the mocks seem to indicate that you can), that sounds like a good deal to me.