Era-adjusted fantasy football player rankings: Ernie Nevers, Larry Fitzgerald fly high for the Arizo

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the creation of fantasy football, The Athletic is reviewing the best fantasy players and fantasy seasons in NFL history.

A detailed overview of the system used to grade historical fantasy performance can be found in our greatest fantasy players of all-time introduction page, but here’s a quick summary.

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Fantasy player performance is era-adjusted so that players who dominated during lower scoring eras can compete versus players who racked up huge point totals in higher scoring eras.

After these adjustments are made, players are then given credit for having a starter-caliber season (one point), a quality season (one point), an impact campaign (1.5 points) or being an elite starter (two points). These points stack and are measured in both non-PPR and PPR and serve as the basis for determining who are the best fantasy players in NFL history.

Now that we have the preliminaries out of the way, let’s look at the best fantasy players in Arizona Cardinals team history!

(Note: the numbers listed below are for the player’s performance while on the Cardinals.)

All-time fantasy starting lineup

QB: Jim Hart

RB: Ernie Nevers

RB: Ollie Matson

WR: Larry Fitzgerald

WR: Mal Kutner

TE: Jackie Smith

SuperFLEX: Sonny Randle

Quarterback — Jim Hart

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
851.52851.5233

Hart was the original Air Coryell quarterback, as the arrival of Don Coryell as the Cardinals head coach in 1973 moved Hart from being an occasional low-tier QB1 to becoming one of the best fantasy quarterbacks in the league. From 1973-76, Hart ranked fifth in career points, behind only Roger Staubach, Fran Tarkenton, Ken Anderson, and Bert Jones. Hart had one more QB1-caliber season after Coryell left in 1977, but that combination led to Hart ending his career with eight starter-caliber campaigns, a total tied for third all-time in Cardinals history.

Running back — Ernie Nevers

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
334.56334.5633

Nevers was a phenom back in the late 1920 and early 1930s. He scored 87 fantasy points in 1931, a season in which only 10 players tallied more than 30 points and the average starter tallied 12 points. This performance is so incredible that it rates as the best fantasy season in NFL history, but Nevers’ best game actually occurred in 1929 when he accounted for all 40 points in the Cardinals’ 40-6 Thanksgiving Day destruction of the Chicago Bears. It set an NFL record that still stands to this day.

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Running back — Ollie Matson

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
641.50640021.5

Matson is best known for being a part of one of the largest trades in NFL history when the Rams dealt eight players and a draft choice to Chicago to acquire Matson from the Cardinals in 1958. It’s easy to see why Los Angeles wanted Matson, as he had posted five Top 7 rankings in non-PPR and four Top 6 rankings in PPR in his first six years with the Cardinals.

Matson won this honor by a small margin over Ottis Anderson. Here are Anderson’s career points totals:

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
6400540019

Matson and Anderson are tied for the most starter- and quality-caliber seasons among Cardinals running backs, but Matson had a 2.5-point edge in career points and, thus, won the tiebreaker.

Wide receiver — Larry Fitzgerald

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
135001260036

Fitzgerald ranks second in league history in non-PPR starter-caliber seasons by a wide receiver, behind only the incomparable Jerry Rice, who has 16. Fitzgerald ranked first or second in both non-PPR and PPR points in both 2005 and 2008 and had seven Top 7 rankings in WR PPR points. His 311.1 PPR points in 2008 still stands as the highest WR PPR total in Cardinals history.

Wide receiver — Mal Kutner

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
434.56434.5635

Kutner only played five NFL seasons, all with the Chicago Cardinals, but he sure made the most of his limited time in the league. Kutner’s 1947 season is the best era-adjusted performance by a Cardinals wide receiver, but one could make a strong argument that Kutner’s 1948 campaign was even better. In that season, Kutner led the league in receiving yards and racked up 14 receiving touchdowns despite catching only 41 passes in 12 games. The 14 scoring receptions total still ranks tied for second in Cardinals history. Kutner ended up with three perfect 11-career point seasons and, thus, won this starting wide receiver spot over Sonny Randle.

Tight end — Jackie Smith

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
1151.521041.5237

Smith is one of only five tight ends to post 10+ non-PPR starter-caliber seasons (Tony Gonzalez, Shannon Sharpe, Antonio Gates, and Jason Witten being the others) and places tied for fifth with Ozzie Newsome with 10 starter-caliber PPR seasons. Smith placed in the Top 8 in TE PPR points from 1964-70 and had back-to-back consensus No. 1 TE seasons in 1967-68. He is the only Cardinals tight end to ever post 130+ PPR points, which means that his 234.1 PPR points in 1967 remains the record-setting total for Cardinals’ tight ends by more than 100 points 55 years after he posted it.

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SuperFlex — Sonny Randle

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
641.52541.5226

Randle’s 1960 season was a strong contender for best Cardinals wide receiver season ever, as his 15 receiving touchdowns in only 12 games that year still ranks as the club record in that category. Randle never quite reached that production level again, but he did tally three Top 8 non-PPR rankings and three Top 10 PPR rankings in 1960-63.

Randle won this spot by a small margin over Roy Green, Neil Lomax, and Mel Gray. Here are their career points totals:

Roy Green’s numbers:

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
7230723024

Neil Lomax’s numbers:

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
5232523224

Mel Gray’s numbers:

StarterQualityImpact ElitePPR StrPPR QualPPR ImpactPPR EliteCareer Points
741.50721.5023

All-time best era-adjusted fantasy seasons

QB: Neil Lomax, 1984 (290 points)

RB: David Johnson, 2016 (328 non-PPR, 407.8 PPR)

WR: Mal Kutner, 1947 (134.4 non-PPR, 177.4 PPR)

TE: Jackie Smith, 1967 (178.1 non-PPR, 234.1 PPR)

SuperFLEX: Ernie Nevers, 1931 (87 non-PPR, 87 PPR)

(Top photo: George Gojkovich/Getty Images)

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