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With any ranking heading into a season, you base your list on some combination of past performance and projection going forward. With that in mind, how can we project Andrew Luck to be any different this year than he's been in the past? The Colts didn't add to their receiving core (unless you count Kamar Aiken), their running game hasn't changed, and we've seen no evidence that the new fangled offensive line can protect Luck anymore than the ones in year's past. Given all of that, when we're judging & predicting what Andrew Luck might do in 2017, wouldn't it be safest to just assume he'll repeat some collection of what he's done in the past? I think so, that's why I dug through his past five seasons, and what I found was, Luck is consistently about the 5th best QB in fantasy football.
2012: Andrew Luck was a rookie, so we can probably just throw this year out. But, for full disclosure sake, he finished as the 10th best QB in fantasy.
2013: This was a solid season for Luck, and his first without QB guru Bruce Arians as his coach. That year; he finished behind Brees, Rivers, Dalton, & Stafford. Finishing 5th overall.
2014/2015: I coupled these together for a reason. 2014 and 2015 are the epitome of the highest upside and downside of what he brings to the table. On one hand he has the ability to be the #1 QB in fantasy football (2014) and in the other hand he is susceptible to going down with an injury, thus providing little-to-no value to your team (2015). Those 2 years in essence cancel each other out, because they're the 2 extremes, the outliers in his set of seasonal data. Also, fun note: In 2014 (in 6 points per passing TD leagues) Luck's point total would have had him finish as the 5th best QB in last year's crop of signal-callers. Noticing a trend?
2016: Last year, you guessed it, Andrew Luck finished as the 5th best QB in fantasy football. Luck only missed one start in last year's action. 2013 & 2016 are really the best indicators for what he's likely to do in 2017...given the lack of changes to the team, his relative health last season, and the knowledge of him getting back to action slowly in this off-season due to shoulder surgery. In fact, the surgery was 5 months ago and he's still not throwing. Point being, it's not like he could take this off-season to get better at his craft.
I still love me some Andrew Luck, there are simply better options out there. A combination of old/proven vets, and offenses with fire-power greater than Indy's. I'd start looking at Luck around round 6 or 7 in a 12 team league.
My 2017 QB rankings:
1. Aaron Rodgers
2. Tom Brady
3. Drew Brees
4. Matt Ryan
5. Andrew Luck