Football's back, which means it's time to sharpen the blade. Pru, Dex, and Chiz kicked off their 2026 Guillotine Fantasy Football preview series with the position that sets the tone for your whole draft: quarterback. This is the first of several positional breakdowns leading up to the site's final overall rankings, dropping mid-August at theshrewdness.beam.ly — so hold off on mock drafting until then.

Here's how the guys built it: each host ranked all 34 relevant quarterbacks individually, the scores got averaged together, and out popped a top 10. It's not a perfect mirror of any one host's list — you'll find the full individual rankings alongside the consensus on the site — but here's the group take, counted down from 10 to 1.

Why Guillotine QB Rankings Look Nothing Like Your Redraft League

Quick level-set for the uninitiated: in a Guillotine league, the lowest-scoring team every single week gets eliminated, and their roster hits waivers for the survivors to pick over. There's no "shake off a bad week" — you're in sweats from kickoff to the final whistle every Sunday, because somebody's getting the chop. That reality reshapes the whole board. Floor matters more than ceiling. Strength of schedule matters — a lot, especially early, since a rough Week 1 or 2 matchup can get a great player cut before he ever pays off for you. And no kickers. Guillotine doesn't run kickers or D/ST. As Pru put it: "all they do is cause heartburn and heartache."

The Countdown: Shrewdness Top 10 QBs

10. Baker Mayfield (Buccaneers) — The archetypal Guillotine quarterback: never spectacular, rarely a disaster, a nice warm fuzzy blanket at the position. He's a proven volume-throwing gunslinger who'll tuck and run for the occasional score, and he's playing out the final year of his contract. The knocks: he's lost Mike Evans, he's on his sixth straight new offensive coordinator, and the Cincinnati and Minnesota matchups early in the year aren't friendly. Dex had him as high as 7th; Chiz had him mid-pack at 15th.

9. Justin Herbert (Chargers) — Dex's guy, ranked 4th on his personal ballot. Herbert ran for nearly 500 yards last year, inherits new OC Mike McDaniel, and gets his left tackle back healthy. The opening slate is a dream (home vs. Arizona, home vs. the Raiders, at Buffalo), though Weeks 4-5 (at Seattle, home vs. Denver) will require a streaming plan. Chiz summed him up in three words: talent, Arizona, Las Vegas.

8. Dak Prescott (Cowboys) — High volume, low variance, a genuinely soft schedule to open the year (Giants, home vs. Washington, home vs. Baltimore, before a tough trip to Houston). George Pickens playing under the franchise tag was framed as a plus — a motivated Pickens paired with CeeDee Lamb and Jake Ferguson gives Dak real explosive upside on a defense that isn't walling anybody off the field.

7. Matthew Stafford (Rams) — The reigning MVP, but the lowest-ranked name on the list for Dex, who isn't thrilled about Stafford's age or an opening month against San Francisco, at Denver, and at Philly. Chiz counters with the raw numbers: 4,700+ yards and 46 touchdowns last year, and even a step back from that is a fine floor. The swing factor everyone flagged: whether Puka Nacua is fully squared away off the field this offseason.

6. Joe Burrow (Bengals) — When healthy, Burrow has been a top-two fantasy quarterback — full stop. The talent ceiling drags his floor up with it. The concern is obvious: he's had multi-week injury absences in back-to-back years. But Cincinnati carries the third-easiest schedule in the league this season, and the receiving corps (Chase, Higgins) is fully intact. Pru had him 3rd on his personal list; Chiz couldn't get past the injury risk and had him 8th.

5. Jared Goff (Lions) — The biggest surprise of the top 10: not one host had Goff in their individual top five, yet the group average landed him here. The case is simple — over the last three seasons he's led all quarterbacks in passing yards, touchdowns, and 300-yard games, without needing a single rushing yard to do it. Jahmyr Gibbs and Amon-Ra St. Brown are locked in, and Detroit opens with the easiest schedule in the NFL. He's not a sexy name, which means he may still be sitting there in your draft after the "elite" tier is gone.

4. Drake Maye (Patriots) — Fresh off a Super Bowl run, Maye adds AJ Brown to the mix and led the league in completion percentage last year (72%, only eight interceptions, 4,400 yards). The catch: Week 1 is on the road against Seattle's number-one-ranked defense, the same unit that shut the Patriots down in the Super Bowl months earlier. Everyone agrees the Week 1 landmine is real; the debate is whether his talent carries him through it.

3. Jalen Hurts (Eagles) — Yes, the Shrewdness still has Hurts top three, "Tush Push" and all. The rushing touchdown equity is what does it: as Chiz laid out, 150 passing yards is worth the same fantasy points as one Hurts sneak into the end zone, and he's averaged double-digit rushing touchdowns across recent seasons — numbers most feature running backs don't touch. He loses AJ Brown but adds pieces, and the opening schedule (Washington, at Tennessee, at Chicago) is friendly into October.

2. Lamar Jackson (Ravens) — A former MVP with maybe the softest opening schedule in football (home vs. the Colts, at New Orleans, home vs. Dallas, at Tennessee) and a fully intact core in Derrick Henry, Mark Andrews, Zay Flowers, and Rashod Bateman. New OC Declan Doyle — a 29-year-old considered one of the league's rising offensive minds after his time under Ben Johnson in Chicago — adds an explosiveness-focused scheme that should only help. The one real concern: durability, after a couple of seasons with extended in-year absences.

1. Josh Allen (Bills) — The unanimous name at the top for two of the three hosts, and the pick the group has ridden to deep Guillotine runs for years. Elite passing plus rushing touchdowns that don't depend on garbage time makes him the safest floor at the position. The one wrinkle: a Week 1 date at Houston, a defense that held him to 9 points on 253 yards with zero touchdowns last time out. Dex flagged this hard enough to drop Allen to 5th on his personal ballot — his advice is to let a truly elite quarterback fall to you rather than reach in the first two rounds, since the drop-off in value at running back and wide receiver is steeper than at QB.

The Debate Round: Names That Didn't Crack the Consensus

A few honorable mentions sparked real disagreement among the hosts and are worth watching:

  • Kyler Murray (Vikings) — Dex's boldest take of the episode, ranking Murray 3rd overall on the strength of a new offensive-minded landing spot, Justin Jefferson, and one of the softest schedules in football. Chiz pushed back hard on Murray's motivation and had him all the way down at 26th. Pru split the difference at 20th, intrigued by the weapons but unconvinced Murray himself is the missing piece.

  • Bo Nix (Broncos) — Chiz's guy, sitting inside his personal top 10 on the strength of a full season under Sean Payton and an improved receiving room (Courtland Sutton, plus a new addition). Dex and Pru both had him closer to expectation, around 17-18th.

  • Jayden Daniels (Commanders) — Pru's value pick at 10th, betting on a return to the top-three fantasy QB form Daniels flashed before last year's injury. Dex and Chiz were far more cautious given the injury history and a brutal Week 1 date at Philadelphia.

The Big Takeaway

This isn't a ranking of who's the "best" quarterback for a normal 17-week season — it's who gives you the safest floor to survive the chop, week after week. That's why names like Goff and Mayfield rank ahead of higher-ceiling, lower-floor options elsewhere on the board, and why a Week 1 matchup can swing a top-five talent down several spots. Don't overpay for name value either — as the guys pointed out, most of these guys land in the first two rounds regardless, so know your value before you reach.

Full individual rankings and the group averages are posted at theshrewdness.beam.ly, with running backs up next in the series. Final overall rankings land mid-August — don't draft before then.

Listen to the full episode, "Shrewdness Guillotine Fantasy Football: Top 10 QBs ranked," wherever you get your podcasts, and follow The Shrewdness on Spotify and YouTube for the rest of the series.

Stay shrewd, everybody.

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