Superflex and 2QB drafting: why quarterbacks move 40 picks

Two rooms, one player, 32 picks apart

Josh Allen's player page on September 3 shows two prices. In PPR drafts he goes at 3.10, an average pick of 33.5, the first quarterback off the board but not by much of a margin over the receivers around him. In 2QB and superflex drafts he goes at 1.02, an average pick of 1.8, second overall behind Jahmyr Gibbs.

That is the same player, 31.7 picks apart, and Allen is the smallest move among the starters. The board's 2QB view comes from its own sample, 7,045 drafts from August 4 to September 3, so nothing here is an adjustment we made to a PPR list. It is what drafters in superflex rooms do.

The table

Source: Parlae board, Sep 3 2026, average overall pick in each format's own sample.

The top four quarterbacks move an average of about 43 picks. The move grows as you go down the position, because in PPR the twelfth quarterback is a ninth round afterthought and in superflex he is a third round starter. Mahomes and Herbert each move almost seven rounds.

Why 40 picks is the right size

The reason is arithmetic, not hype. In a 12 team one quarterback league, twelve starters are needed and about thirty quarterbacks are draftable, so the replacement level, the quarterback you could have for free, is roughly the fourteenth. The gap between the first quarterback and the fourteenth is real but modest, and the position is easy to stream, so the room waits.

Add a superflex slot and the league now starts up to 24 quarterbacks. The replacement level drops to about the 23rd quarterback, the free option becomes a backup who might not start for his own team, and the value of every starting quarterback over that free option roughly doubles. The draft assistant's construction model treats a superflex slot as 0.9 of a quarterback start when it sets the replacement rank and exempts quarterbacks from the streamability discount entirely in 2QB formats, because with two starters there is nothing to stream.

Forty picks is about three and a third rounds in a 12 team league. That is the distance between "the room waits" and "the room does not."

Who pays for it

The picks the quarterbacks move into have to come from somewhere, and they come from the receivers and backs the PPR room takes in rounds one and two.

CeeDee Lamb goes 10.3 in PPR and 24.7 in 2QB. Justin Jefferson goes 11.7 and 27.6. A.J. Brown goes 17.0 and 34.4. Chris Olave goes 19.2 and 41.5, nearly two rounds later. Omarion Hampton goes 22.2 and 38.5. Kenneth Walker's player page shows 2.09 in PPR and 3.12 in superflex.

Look at the top 36 picks in each room. In PPR it is 17 receivers, 16 running backs, two tight ends and one quarterback. In 2QB it is 16 quarterbacks, 10 running backs and 10 receivers. Sixteen quarterbacks in three rounds is the whole story of superflex, and it means the second round receiver you counted on in your PPR league is a fourth round receiver here.

Not everyone slides. Gibbs goes 1.5 in PPR and 1.7 in 2QB. Jonathan Taylor and Derrick Henry actually go earlier in the 2QB room, 5.3 and 10.1 against 7.4 and 16.0 in PPR. Superflex drafters pay for the elite backs the same way and pay for quarterbacks instead of second tier receivers.

The plan

There are two ways to draft a superflex league and one way to lose it. The way to lose it is to draft your PPR board, take a quarterback in round six, and discover the eighteenth quarterback is your second starter. On the 2QB board, Tyler Shough, the eighteenth quarterback, goes at an average pick of 50.6. Round five. By round six the position is backups.

The first plan is to take two quarterbacks in the first three rounds. The 2QB room prices Allen, Maye, Lamar Jackson and Burrow inside the first ten picks and Prescott, Daniels, Hurts and Caleb Williams inside the first 22. If you are picking late in round one, Daniels or Hurts at the turn and a second quarterback by round three gives you two starters and lets you take the receivers the room pushed down.

The second plan is to take one elite quarterback early and accept the mid tier for your second, targeting the round three shelf where Mahomes, Herbert and Nix go between picks 24 and 31. That costs you nothing at running back, where Taylor and Henry are cheaper here than in PPR, and gives you two quarterbacks by round four.

Either way, the thing to fix in your head is the exchange rate. In this room a receiver at 24.7 is Lamb, not a tier three player. The prices you learned in PPR are wrong by about three rounds at one position and about one round at the others.

A note on the sample

The 2QB sample window opened August 4 and runs a month, against seven days for the PPR sample. That makes it stable and a little slow. Any news from the last week is more fully priced into the PPR room than the 2QB one, so for a player whose situation changed recently, read his PPR movement and apply it yourself.

What to do with this

1. Switch the board to the superflex view before your draft and rewrite your first three rounds from it. Two quarterbacks by round three, or one in round one and one at the round three shelf, are the two shapes that work.
2. Write down the eighteenth quarterback's price, 50.6 this week, and treat it as the deadline. A second starter has to be on your roster before that pick or you are drafting a backup.
3. Take the discount on backs and receivers the room hands you. Olave at 41.5 and Hampton at 38.5 are the same players the PPR room takes at 19.2 and 22.2, and the superflex room has moved them for you.