Head to head · July 2026 draft-day read
Joe Burrow or Lamar Jackson?
Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson are a near-tie on 2025 production (16.8 vs 16.5 half-PPR PPG). At matching July 2026 ADP, the pick came down to your roster build, not a market tiebreak.
This week's projections are in the Week 9 start/sit card below. The July 2026 draft-day read that follows is opinion, framed from the cited 2025 data.
This week's start/sit · Half-PPR
Week 9: start Joe Burrow or Lamar Jackson?
Joe Burrow by default: Lamar Jackson is BAL's backup QB behind Tyler Huntley in Week 9.
Joe Burrow projects for 20.9 pts.
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QB · CIN
Joe Burrow
20.9 pts projected · range 10.0–32.0
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Not projected · Backup QB
Lamar Jackson
Backup: Tyler Huntley starts for BAL (depth chart) — no Week 9 projection.
2026 season · the games so far
2026 head-to-head so far
Through Week 8, Joe Burrow has out-scored Lamar Jackson by 8.4 PPR points per game, 24.2 to 15.8 (Joe Burrow 7 games, Lamar Jackson 5 games).
Through Week 8 · Week 8 in progress — 13 of 14 games final · nflverse stats as of
Lamar Jackson · Week 8 injury report Injury report — ankle, full practice
| Joe Burrow | Metric | Lamar Jackson |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | Games | 5 |
| 24.2 | PPR points per game | 15.8 |
| 302.1 | Pass yards per game | 193.4 |
| 2.9 | Carries per game | 3.8 |
| 99% | Snap share | 71% |
| 31.0 | PPR points per game, last 3 games | 13.1 |
Purple marks the higher figure. Shares are team-relative, averaged per game; snap share counts only games with a published snap count. "Last 3 games" is each player's own last 3 games played. A dash means no 2026 figure. 2026 regular season via nflverse.
Game by game: Joe Burrow · Lamar Jackson
Draft-day record · July 2026
The July 2026 draft-day read
This is the July 2026 pre-draft read, kept as published. Every ADP and market figure on this page comes from the Fantasy Football Calculator snapshot of Jul 15, 2026 and is not updated in-season — 2026 drafts are over and ADP has stopped moving. In-season tools
Metric by metric
The tale of the tape
| Joe Burrow | Metric | Lamar Jackson |
|---|---|---|
| 44.8 (QB2) | Draft ADP (July 2026) | 55.8 (QB3) |
| 46 | Overall ADP rank (July 2026) | 56 |
| 16.8 | Fantasy points / game | 16.5 |
| +4.6 | Points over expected (FPOE) | — |
| 11 | Sleeper search rank (July 2026) | 12 |
Purple marks the better figure. A dash means the engine did not cite that metric for that player. 2025 regular season via nflverse · ADP via Fantasy Football Calculator, Jul 15, 2026 snapshot.
xFP (expected fantasy points) is what a typical player would score with the same targets, carries and field position. FPOE (points over expected) is actual points minus xFP, per game.
The consensus read
July 2026 drafts separated them by a hair — Joe Burrow at ADP 44.8, Lamar Jackson at ADP 55.8. On 2025 production it is 16.8 vs 16.5 half-PPR points per game.
What had to be true
This call flipped on beliefs that were checkable at the time. Every belief was tied to a checkpoint: the exact data point that would confirm or deny it, with its value at the time of the July 2026 read.
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Checkpoint · Joe Burrow
Points over expected (FPOE) per game, season (2025)
+4.6 pts/gm vs expectation (2025) · as of July 2026
Strong move if you believed
Joe Burrow's scoring over expected (xFP) is skill, not variance
Poor move if instead
Joe Burrow's scoring over expected regresses to the xFP baseline
Sources: Fantasy Football Calculator · Sleeper · nflverse. Every figure here is a value the analysis engine cited from the underlying data. Stats are 2025 regular season via nflverse (CC-BY 4.0); ADP via Fantasy Football Calculator (Jul 15, 2026 snapshot, not updated in-season).
FantasyTools analysis is opinion for entertainment purposes only — not betting, financial, or professional advice.