Is Matt Ryan The 11th-Best Fantasy Quarterback This Season?

As part of our ongoing series of fantasy posts in partnership with FanDuel, I wanted to take a closer look at the fantasy valuation of one Matthew Ryan.

At Ryan's FanDuel valuation, he's considered roughly the 11th-most valuable quarterback in fantasy. Depending on your league and scoring rules, that means he could be going anywhere from the 3rd to the 7th round, the former being okay value and the latter being excellent. Why is a guy with Julio Jones, Roddy White and a better line, albeit one that's already banged up, going so low?

To answer that, we have to look at the QBs above him. Most of them aren't worth quibbling with, but Nick Foles, Robert Griffin and Tony Romo ought to raise a few eyebrows, for different reasons. Heck, even Tom Brady isn't likely to put up the same kind of fantasy numbers he did early in his heyday. Griffin is coming off a down year, Foles has one admittedly excellent season to his resume and Romo should have a ton of opportunities but may be a Dez Bryant injury away from disappointing. The biggest knock on Ryan will probably be that his supporting cast hasn't improved much, the whole team is coming off a lousy season and Tony Gonzalez is gone, all of which are fair points.

But why look a gift horse in the mouth, as my grandfather who liked to wrap presents with live stallions would say?

Bottom line: Don't overpay for Ryan, but with that ADP hovering in the early-middle rounds of most re-draft leagues, you may just get a nice value and your favorite team's quarterback if you can wait out the early quarterback run. That's something we'd all enjoy.

Editor's Note: SB Nation's partner FanDuel is hosting a $1,000,000 Fantasy Football Contest for Week 1's NFL games. It's only $25 to join and first place wins $100,000. Starts Sunday, September 7th at 1pm ET. Here's the link. FYI: These are just my opinions and Fanduel gave me money to play the game. I stink.