Drake London Week 1 Fantasy Football Expectations

These reports aren’t about Drake London specifically, but September 10th has had two crucial updates about his quarterback situation. Here’s how it impacts his fantasy football value.

Starting with this first tweet from Underdog NFL, they cited Josh Kendall in talking about Tua Tagovailoa:

“Tua Tagovailoa appeared to suffer discomfort in his back during individual throwing drills on Thursday and briefly went to the ground, per @JoshTheAthletic.”

That would then be quote-tweeted with a follow-up writing, “Cooper Rush said he took all the reps with the 1st-team offense on Thursday.”

Now, the quarterback play was already in question heading into the year with Tagovailoa, but this is far from ideal. London is an elite talent, but what can you really expect if Cooper Rush starts instead?

What to Expect From Drake London in Week 1: Fantasy Football

Right now, ESPN’s consensus fantasy football expert rankings have London as the WR7 this week, so there are clearly big expectations.

First, taking a look at the passing volume from Tagovailoa last year, he threw for just 2,660 yards, 20 touchdowns, and 15 interceptions in 14 games.

Now, of course, these numbers are going to be skewed because Rush is not a starting quarterback, but last year in two starts and four games played, he had 303 passing yards, zero touchdowns, and four interceptions. Not ideal.

That said, if you go back to 2024, where he had 8 starts (12 games played), Rush threw for 1,844 yards, 12 touchdowns, and five interceptions. Tagovailoa in 2024 had 2,867 passing yards, 19 touchdowns, and seven interceptions (11 starts).

Ultimately, when taking the number of passing yards divided by starts in the year, that comes out to 151.5 YPG for Rush in 2025, but 230.5 in 2024. As for Tagovailoa, he would have 260.6 YPG in 2024 and 190 in 2025, beating Rush in both years.

For as much as people love to dunk on Tagovailoa, this is certainly a downgrade for London, and while we don’t know who the QB one will be at this point, if Rush starts, you should value London closer to that fringe WR12 range.