Andy Dalton's place in the NFL is up for debate, but most believe he's a steady quarterback who can win playoff games in the league. The Cincinnati Bengals quarterback didn't do his Fantasy Football owners any favors on Sunday, though. In his team's opening weekend game against the Baltimore Ravens, Dalton was a complete dud, struggling en route to a shutout being imposed against his team. As a result, most of his fantasy football owners are destined to suffer the same losing fate.
Dalton struggles badly
If somebody wants to find a silver lining for Sunday's performance, it's that Dalton completed more than half of his passes - barely.
He wound up finishing 16-of-31 for 170 yards. That stat line would be mediocre if there wasn't more to it. But besides the absence of any touchdowns, Dalton also had plenty of turnovers to sink his team and the fantasy football owners that rely on him.
He threw four interceptions during the contest, in addition to losing a fumble, for a grand total of five turnovers. Dalton hadn't thrown four interceptions in a game since he faced the Ravens in 2013. He has recorded just 15 turnovers over the past two seasons COMBINED. He's more than a quarter of the way to that total after just one awful game. And while his team took the brunt of his bad performance, fantasy football owners were not spared from the carnage.
Fantasy football owners cry foul
Dalton's performance was historically bad in terms of his fantasy football output. According to ESPN's QBR metric, it was one of the five worst starts since 2006. His total QBR of 0.6 was only better than a performance from Jay Cutler and a particularly horrific performance from Peyton Manning in the annals of NFL history.
While he finished with a positive total QBR for the week, he finished with a negative fantasy value in standard ESPN leagues.
He tallied negative three points for the week, the worst for any quarterback prior to the Monday night contests. The only other quarterbacks with negative ratings were Tom Savage (Houston Texans) and Sean Mannion (Los Angeles Rams), who combined to throw less than half of the throws Dalton did on Sunday.
The Bengals quarterback was expected to have an improved fantasy football season with improved health from A.J. Green and Tyler Eifert, as well as the addition of speedster John Ross. So far, things are off to a rather auspicious start for the supposed franchise quarterback.
