Is Andy Dalton a top-five Fantasy football quarterback?

Heath Cummings and Chris Towers debate Andy Dalton's chances of finishing the season as a top-five Fantasy QB.

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Heath Cummings and I are great friends. But we don't always agree. We seemingly have an epic in-office argument every week -- mostly about the relative merits of Cavaliers' reserve guard Matthew Dellavedova -- and Tuesday was no different.

The topic? Bengals' quarterback Andy Dalton, a top-five quarterback in Heath's eyes. We decided to recreate the debate in text form for our readers, to see whose side they are on. Who is right?

Heath:Just looked this up. Andy Dalton is averaging 10.23 Y/A through four games. Can't find a QB with that high of a mark through four games in the last 10 years. Only Brady (2011), Manning (2009) and Romo (2007) have even topped 9.5.

Chris:Fittingly, the only other player to do it in the last 10 years is Ben Roethlisberger.

Heath:Man, that's a pretty impressive list of quarterbacks. Just since 1990: Jim Kelly, Kurt Warner, Roethlisberger, Andy Dalton.

Since you brought up Ben, he and Dalton are also right next to each other on the active touchdown percentage leaderboard. Starting to look like we were wrong for disregarding that 2013 Dalton season, I guess.

Chris:And right below them, annual top-five Fantasy quarterback Jay Cutler! This is a place where just pointing to a ranking doesn't do much to buttress the argument. Touchdowns are one part of the equation, but they aren't all of it, especially given how much they tend to fluctuate from one season to another.

Another place where just pointing to a ranking -- without context -- doesn't tell the whole story is with Dalton's 2013 top-four Fantasy finish. Yes, Dalton finished as a top-five quarterback that season, but was actually just 11th in terms of Fantasy scoring per pass attempt at .575. He was closer to Jake Locker (.552) than Phillip Rivers (.627), for context. In fact, even in his disappointing 2014 season, Dalton averaged .541 Fantasy points per attempt, not far off from that 2013 season. In 2012, he was at .576.

The reason 2013 stands out for him is because he threw 36.6 times per game, by far the highest mark of his career. This season, he's at .914 points per attempt. That is better than Peyton Manning had during his 55-touchdown 2013 campaign, for reference. He's putting up these huge Fantasy numbers right now in spite of the fact that he is throwing a career-low 29 pass attempts per game. This is the outlier, not last season.

Dalton is a fine quarterback, and his ability to stay healthy makes him look especially valuable in a season in which five of the top-seven or so quarterbacks coming into the season are either already hurt or dealing with serious questions about their ability related to health. If you're expecting Dalton to be a top-five quarterback, the argument for it shouldn't be based on what he's done for these three games; it should be based on the attrition rate around the league.

Dalton is a safe quarterback for Fantasy at a time when safety is rightly valued. He's not leading you to a championship this year; he's just the best lifeboat on a sinking ship.

Heath:Also behind Dalton (and Cutler) on that career touchdown percentage list: Andrew Luck, Eli Manning, Matt Ryan, Cam Newton, among many others. Touchdowns do fluctuate from year to year; that's why I went with career totals.

From what I gather, you're discounting Dalton's 2013 season because he threw too much while also discounting his 2015 start because he hasn't thrown enough. This sounds like a pretty typical response to anything Andy Dalton does. He's the anti-Luck -- who we're all too happy to praise regardless of his faults.

I saw that eye roll...

Let's look at their numbers since Luck came into the league:

Name	COMP%	TD%	INT%	Y/A
Dalton	63.1	5.1	3.2	7.3
Luck	58.4	4.7	2.6	7.1

As for, "He's not leading you to a championship this year." He absolutely could. Dalton has six games left this season against the Browns, Steelers, Ravens and 49ers. You don't think he could put together a four -game stretch like he did to end 2013: 11 TD and 1,152 yards?

Chris:Re: the Luck/Dalton comparison, I don't think it's totally unfair. Luck's been a pretty overrated Fantasy quarterback two of his three years in the league, and given his average draft position as a first-round pick this season, he was extremely overrated coming into this season. However, you also have to take in mind that Luck has rushed for 12 touchdowns and 970 yards in 51 games; Dalton has 661 yards and 13 rushing touchdowns in 68 games. Luck gives you value beyond his passing in a way Dalton doesn't.

But on a per-pass basis, Dalton hasn't been much worse than Luck in their careers. If Luck was only throwing 29 times per game, I would certainly discount him the way I am Dalton. Luck is averaging nine more attempts per game this season, so even if you think they are roughly comparable on a per-pass basis, Luck's volume gives him the edge.

And the point isn't to discount Dalton for 2013's volume and then discount him for 2015's lack thereof; it is to point out that for most of his career, he's been a fairly middling player on a per-pass basis. In 2013, he threw the ball a ton, and eventually accumulated enough pass attempts to rank among the position's best. This season's fast start looks like a total outlier in that regard, and the lack of volume is going to catch up to him.

Additionally, looking at Dalton's schedule, he's got the extremely tough Arizona and St. Louis combination in Weeks 11 and 12, before three pretty cake matchups in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. However, if you're counting on him leading you to a championship, you should know that the Broncos loom large in Week 16 as arguably the league's best defense in a game that could have home field advantage implications for the AFC bracket.

Bengals fans are very familiar with the concept of Dalton letting them down in the biggest game of the season.

Heath:And there it is: throw a jab about Andy Dalton in the playoffs, everyone giggles, and we can forget all the numbers. You could have at least mentioned that he's playing those Broncos in prime time on the road to complete the joke.

Maybe people will want to bench a top-five Fantasy quarterback in their championship, those are the types of tough decisions that Fantasy owners have to make. But it's also the type of decision that Dalton's performance has and will lead them to.

I'm not saying he's Aaron Rodgers. I'm not even saying he's a better Fantasy option than Luck if Luck gets his volume. I am saying three months from now we're probably looking at the least-respected QB ever to have two top-five Fantasy seasons in his first five years in the league.

I'm also saying he's a 27 year-old quarterback in his fifth year in the league. He's had a roller coaster of a first four years, but this is his prime and he's playing like it. The best three to four seasons of his career should be happening, and as long as his weapons stay healthy, we have no reason to expect anything less.

Chris: It took you too long to bring up his weapons, because those are absolutely the best reason to believe Dalton can keep up some of his early production. If you accept my argument -- Dalton is an average-at-best quarterback -- then his supporting cast might be enough to get him the rest of the way there. With Jeremy Hill running between the tackles, and Giovani Bernard catching it out of the backfield; Tyler Eifert running up the seams; A.J. Green manhandling corners on the outsides and Marvin Jones taking the top off the defense, Dalton has arguably the best supporting cast in the league.

And let's throw in the offensive line too, because it deserves a ton of credit for this start too. Per ProFootballFocus.com, Dalton has been pressured on just 27.8 percent of his pass attempts this season, the eighth-lowest mark in football. Of course, he had the second-lowest rate of pressure dropbacks in the league last season at 25.0 percent, so that really hasn't improved.

What has improved is his success rate; he has yet to throw an interception under pressure, while completing 55.2 percent of his attempts. Last season, Dalton wilted under the minimal pressure he faced, completing just 46.6 percent of his passes, while giving the ball away to the defense on 7.9 percent of them; the latter was the highest mark in football, and one of just two over 7.0 percent.

So, we've got a quarterback drastically outperforming his career marks in several ways, and riding that to his lofty place in the rankings. Heath, I'm sure we can both agree he has regression on the way; the question is how much. You give him credit for improving, while I think it is more likely than not just a good four-game stretch, something he has done before. I'll still take the likes of Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan, Carson Palmer, Phillip Rivers and Luck ahead of him, let alone Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers.

Reader, who do you agree with?