Mahomes vs. McDavid vs. Ohtani: Fantasy Hall of Fame Stats

Three superstars, three sports; one question for all the fantasy managers who have ever had a beer in hand and argued about: Who has produced the most fantasy winning production in their careers?

Patrick Mahomes provided historically great quarterback performances at an elite level. Connor McDavid has provided a decade of league leading scoring numbers. Shohei Ohtani is, depending on how you fill out your roster with your fantasy platform, literally two fantasy players that are included in a single roster spot.

We were able to determine this by developing a cross-sport "Fantasy Hall of Fame Index" (FHFI) that allows us to normalize production from different time frames, different methods of scoring and different roster construction. The FHFI will evaluate each player based on four equally weighted factors: the level of dominance they have shown above baseline (40%), the amount of leverage they have in their best season (30%), the number of games they play (20%) and their ability to be placed in multiple rosters (10%). Here is what the actual numbers show.

How We Normalized Three Different Sports

The core challenge in cross-sport fantasy comparisons is that a "great" quarterback week looks nothing like a "great" center iceman week. To handle this, we mapped each player's per-game fantasy output onto a Normalized Fantasy Value (NFV) scale of 0 to 100, anchored between two poles: the "last comfortably startable" output for the position (baseline) and a practical upper bound observed across modern elite seasons (ceiling).

Formally: NFV = 100 x clamp((FPPG minus Baseline) / (Ceiling minus Baseline), 0, 1)

To account for availability across sports with very different schedule lengths, we then computed a Dominance-Adjusted Season Share (DASS) for each season:

DASS = NFV x (Games Played / Scheduled Season Length)

Summing DASS across a career produces something WAR-like in spirit: how many peak-equivalent seasons above the startable baseline did this player actually deliver, weighted for how often they were on the field or ice?

For scoring style, we used points-league formats for each sport, since those translate more cleanly across sports than multi-category roto does. Mahomes' season lines draw from FantasyPros' historical passing and rushing tables (2018 to 2025). McDavid's year-by-year scoring comes from ESPN's career stats table (2015 to 2026). Ohtani's hitting and pitching lines are anchored by MLB.com player records and confirmed by Reuters reporting on his 2024 pitching absence.

Patrick Mahomes: Two All-Time Peaks and a Position Economics Problem

Mahomes' fantasy Hall case is largely based upon only two seasons, 2018 and 2022. In 2018, Mahomes scored 5,097 passing yards and 50 touchdown passes in his first full year as a starter. Per game Mahomes averaged 26.1 points in standard QB scoring. Our model calculates that is a normal fantasy value (NFV) of approximately 95 out of 100, the highest single season NFV for any player in this evaluation. His 2022 season, with 5,250 passing yards and 41 touchdown passes plus additional running back production, generated a NFV of 76.0 and demonstrates that this was not a one-year anomaly.

However, the challenge facing Mahomes is the band of mediocre to poor seasons bookending these two peaks. In 2020, Mahomes' NFV was 81.9, good but much lower than his 2018 peak. However, his numbers in 2023 and 2024 were also down, and the 2025 season was limited to 14 games. Therefore, the three best seasons by Mahomes averaged 25.2 fantasy points per game, which is elite, however the drop-off in Mahomes' production from his peak to his floor is greater than for either of the other two players.

Some of this drop off is likely a function of the positional environment and not necessarily the actual decline of Mahomes. The larger structural drag on Mahomes' FHFI score is what I will call "position economics". As stated earlier, in standard one-quarterback league formats, the replacement level at QB is significantly higher than at any other premium position. This means that even a mere "good" quarterback can generate startable weekly numbers. Therefore, while Mahomes' career DASS accumulation is important, it is systematically compressed by the baseline compression in the league at the QB position. Therefore, in superflex or two-QB formats, Mahomes' relative scarcity premium increases substantially and his FHFI case moves closer to 76 or 77 out of 100. In standard formats, the model assigns a FHFI score of 70.6.

It is worth noting that this structural cap on Mahomes shows up in real-world fantasy ranking ecosystems too. Independent draft-value systems, including FPTrack’s football player rankings, reflect how quarterbacks are typically slotted behind other positions despite elite raw production. Meanwhile, their most recent fantasy hockey board ranked McDavid at No. 2 for the 2025-26 season. The result: Mahomes ranks below McDavid in their respective sports' fantasy ranking hierarchies, a gap this index corroborates with actual career data.

Connor McDavid: The Cleanest Fantasy Resume of the Three

While Mahomes' case is based upon peaks, McDavid's is based upon something even more rare: consistent elite production over a decade without a bad season. As shown in ESPN's year-by-year table, McDavid's development into a top player began in his first season in the NHL in 2015-16, as he produced 48 points in 45 games as a rookie. Thus, he already possessed better per game production than many of the top forwards in the league. From that point onward, McDavid's trajectory continued upward. He surpassed 100 real points in several seasons, and in 2022-23, he posted the most impressive individual scoring season in the modern era with 153 points. The normalized value in this model for McDavid's 2022-23 season is 96.6, which would be the highest in the dataset, with the exception of Mahomes' 2018 season. To put that in perspective, the next-highest NFL season in this dataset produces a normalized value of approximately 82.

What sets McDavid apart from the others is not simply the 2022-23 peak, but the floors that exist around it. For example, McDavid's shortened 2020-21 season still graded as a normalized 82.6, while his 2019-20 pandemic season graded as a normalized 61.1. In years where McDavid's numbers were lower, he never fell below startable levels. His top-three seasons average 6.11 fantasy points per game in a skater-points model, and his 712 career games played is a strong durability measure in the NHL.

For the purposes of points-based fantasy hockey, goals and assists are the currencies. McDavid's high volume of assists creates a very high floor in fantasy points. Even if McDavid has a poor shooting week, he is unlikely to lose production due to the fact that his ability to make plays for teammates is so consistent. NHL.com ranked McDavid as the #2 player among fantasy forwards in February 2026, even though he was entering his 11th season in the league. This is consistent with what the DASS calculation shows: multiple high plateau seasons, rather than one peak followed by a decline. McDavid's FHFI composite score of 81.7 is far and away the best among the three players, and it is the most stable of the three scores across sensitivity testing.

Shohei Ohtani: The Two-Way Rules Engine

Unlike the other two players, Ohtani's fantasy case is structured differently, and examining it without referencing platform-specific roster construction is effectively impossible. Not only does Ohtani generate elite-level value in one fantasy market (hitting), but in his best seasons, he simultaneously generates elite value in a different fantasy market (pitching).

Ohtani's hitting resume is incredible. In addition to documenting a 2023 season of 44 home runs and a 1.066 OPS, Ohtani also went 10-5 as a pitcher with a 3.14 ERA and 167 strikeouts in 132 innings. Ohtani did not pitch in 2024, and according to Reuters, it was a result of recovering from elbow surgery. However, in 2024, he hit .310/.390/.646 with 54 home runs and 130 RBIs, along with 59 stolen bases. His 2025 return to two way action saw Ohtani produce 55 home runs as a hitter and a 2.87 ERA in 14 starts. That type of performance is the kind of thing that changes the lens through which we view the potential of a single roster slot.

In the model's main scenario, which considers Ohtani as a single two-way player who occupies one roster slot and produces both hitting and pitching points, Ohtani's greatest seasons create a compositional advantage that is very difficult to replicate. His 2023 season graded as a normalized 100 out of 100, which is the model's ceiling, since no other player has been able to generate the unique combination of elite hitter and front line starter in a single slot. Ohtani's top three seasons average 6.91 fantasy points per game in the combined model. Ohtani's composite FHFI score of 78.7 places him in second.

However, the key issue with Ohtani's FHFI score is the availability issues with respect to his pitching. Ohtani did not pitch in 2024. Ohtani also did not pitch for part of the 2019 season, and suffered from injuries that affected his pitching in other seasons. If you evaluate his pitching production as a separate roster entry instead of a bonus from a single slot, Ohtani's pitching DASS drops substantially, and in a "split player" interpretation of Ohtani, the model rates Ohtani as being below Mahomes, at approximately 68.0. The order of McDavid and Ohtani above Mahomes is stable in unified formats, while Ohtani falls to third in split player formats. That format sensitivity is the most critical factor in this analysis.

The Numbers: Index Scores, Trajectory, and Sensitivity

Here is the primary scenario output under unified Ohtani, points-league scoring, and standard weighting:

The normalized career trajectories illustrate each player's shape well. Mahomes is front loaded: his 2018 season, with an NFV of 94.9, is the highest single season NFV in the dataset, and Mahomes' numbers have trended downward to the low-mid 20s normalized value for every season since his 2018 peak. Ohtani spikes sharply in two-way seasons and then drops down to the 40s in years where he does not pitch at all, reflecting the zero normalized value of Ohtani's 2018-2020 seasons, where he had little-to-no MLB playing time. McDavid's line is the flattest of the three in terms of its variance: Once McDavid established himself in 2019-20, he never fell below the 50s normalized, and his 2022-23 season, with an NFV of 96.6, is only 3.4 points from Mahomes' all-time peak.

The sensitivity analysis shows a few things worth flagging. First, changing to a peak-heavy weighting (50% peak leverage, 20% career dominance) causes Mahomes to jump to second, and causes the difference between Mahomes and McDavid to narrow considerably, as Mahomes' 2018 season is the best single season in the dataset. If "Fantasy Hall of Fame" means "the best single season", Mahomes has a case. If "Fantasy Hall of Fame" means "the best career long asset", the current weighting is more suitable. Second, in hockey formats that emphasize hits, blocked shots, and penalty minutes, McDavid's lead over the competition shrinks, although major fantasy platforms continue to rank McDavid as one of the top values at forward. Finally, in Superflex formats, Mahomes' score moves to the high 70s, and may surpass Ohtani in split player formats.

Final Ranking and What Could Change It

The Fantasy Hall of Fame ordering from this analysis, in primary scenario form:

1. Connor McDavid (81.7) -- The cleanest combination of ceiling, repetition, and position dominance. A decade of elite fantasy hockey production that has never had a genuinely bad season is an extraordinarily rare profile.

2. Shohei Ohtani (78.7) -- The most format-dependent case of the three, but in unified two-way formats the ceiling is genuinely unmatched. His hitter-only resume, even stripped of pitching, is still an elite fantasy career.

3. Patrick Mahomes (70.6) -- Two of the best individual QB fantasy seasons ever recorded, surrounded by a position structure that compresses their relative value against the rest of the field. In Superflex leagues, revisit this ranking.

The clearest path to changing this ordering: move to a peak-first weighting in a Superflex league with split Ohtani, and Mahomes rises to first. Move to a unified Ohtani interpretation with heavy career-dominance weighting, and McDavid leads comfortably with Ohtani second. The Mahomes-to-first scenario requires a very specific set of format conditions. The McDavid-at-first outcome is the most robust finding in this analysis, holding across nearly every tested combination of weights and scoring assumptions.