Fantasy football owners were wringing their hands over the dearth of good quarterbacks in the NFL not long ago, but now we're in the midst of a boom period for fantasy QBs. I count 15 quarterbacks with a reasonably decent chance of getting you 300 yards and/or three TD passes in any given week, even against good defenses. The league also has a lot of bad QBs right now. There are 12 quarterbacks who are starting for NFL teams but aren't good enough to regularly start for fantasy teams. The list includes young QBs Chad Henne, Mark Sanchez and Matthew Stafford, who all have reasonable odds of developing into reliable fantasy contributors but still have a long way to go. The middle class of quarterbacks mirrors the middle class of American society in that they're both shrinking. There are five quarterbacks occupying the no-man's-land between quality fantasy starter and non-starter, and one of those five got his starting job less than two weeks ago. Let's take a look at the Not Quite Fab Five:

1. Eli Manning — His defenders will point to the championship ring on his finger, but let's face it: The youngest of the Manning brothers is overrated as a fantasy quarterback, and the numbers suggest that he might be overrated in the non-fantasy sense, too. (And let's not forget that if David Tyree doesn't make perhaps the greatest catch in NFL history, Eli doesn't have that ring.) In four full seasons as a starter, Eli has never thrown more than 24 TD passes in a season. By comparison, older brother Peyton has never thrown fewer than 26 TD passes in a year over 11 full seasons as a starter. Eli's career TD-INT ratio of 111-82 isn't particularly impressive. He hadn't completed 60 percent of his passes for a full season before last year, when he barely cleared the bar at 60.3 percent. Eli also tends to start fast and then hit the wall. In 2007, he didn't have a 300-yard game after Week Six, and only once in his last nine starts that season did he throw more than one TD pass in a game (and his four-TD outing in Week 17 came too late to benefit most of his fantasy owners). In 2008, Manning threw for fewer than 200 yards in 10 of his last 12 games. Now, Manning appears to be slowing down after a hot start, with a TD-INT ratio of 3-6 in his last three games after a 10-2 ratio over his first five games. It would be tough to make the case that Manning is anything more than the 16th-best fantasy QB in the league.

2. Matt Hasselbeck — His family ties to shrill TV talk-show host Elizabeth Hasselbeck, his sister-in-law, will not be held against him here. But the 11-year veteran is now 34 and perhaps nearing the end. Back and knee injuries limited him to seven games last season, and he's already missed a pair of games this year due to a rib injury. Hasselbeck has gone 18 starts and nearly two years since his last 300-yard game, which occurred on Nov. 18, 2007. He's thrown nine TD passes this season against only three interceptions, but two of his five starts this season have been washouts (the Week Two game against the 49ers in which he got hurt and a miserable Week Six performance against the Cardinals). His seven starts in 2008 were mostly bad, resulting in five TD passes, 10 interceptions and the worst yards-per-attempt average (5.8) since his days as Brett Favre's backup in Green Bay. But there have been problems with the supporting cast lately. Injuries decimated the Seattle WR corps in 2008. Hasselbeck now has a healthy and capable group of pass catchers, but the Seahawks have had little continuity along the offensive line the last couple of years. Erstwhile stud OLT Walter Jones can't stay healthy anymore. And, frankly, the Seattle O-line hasn't been very effective since the team let star OLG Steve Hutchinson walk in free agency a few years ago. Hasselbeck still has some nice games, but it's hard to count on an injury-riddled quarterback who's getting poor protection from his offensive line.

3. Kyle Orton — "Game manager" has become such a contrite term, so let's instead refer to Orton as a caretaker. He commits few turnovers and compiles modest numbers. He will not win many games on his own, nor will he single-handedly lose many. In 22 starts dating back to the beginning of the 2008 season, Orton has a 15-7 record and a tidy TD-INT ratio of 27-13. But he's had only two 300-yard games over that span, and only once during that time has he thrown more than two TD passes in a game. Orton's specialty is the short-passing game. As for his accuracy on deeper downfield throws ... um, did we mention that he's good on short passes? Orton is an efficient quarterback who's steadily improving, but he'll probably never put up lights-out numbers over a full season.

4. David Garrard — It's tough to figure out what to make of this guy. Two years ago he fashioned a terrific 18-3 TD-INT ratio. Since then he's thrown nearly as many interceptions (18) as TD passes (20). Last year he operated behind a porous, injury-plagued offensive line and threw to perhaps the worst group of receivers in the league, yet he threw for a respectable 3,620 yards and 15 TDs (with 322 rushing yards and a pair of TD runs to boot). This year he has a better offensive line and two pretty fair receivers in Torry Holt and Mike Sims-Walker, yet he's on pace for fewer TD passes than he had in '08, his completion rate is more than two percentage points worse, and his passer rating is worse. In 2007 and 2008 he had at least one TD pass in 23 out of 28 starts. This year he's failed to throw a TD pass in five of his seven starts. He threw for 323 yards and three TDs in the first game against the Titans this season (Week Four), then threw for 139 yards and zero TDs against the Titans last week. Garrard is turning into a hit-or-miss enigma.

5. Alex Smith — He has just been reinserted as the 49ers' starter after spending all of the 2008 season and much of the '07 season holding a clipboard on the sideline, but the former college star out of Utah suddenly looks like a real quarterback for the first time in his pro career. Smith came off the bench in Week Seven and almost dug the Niners out of a big hole against the Texans, completing 15-of-22 passes for 206 yards and three TDs in a 24-21 loss. Last week he played respectably against a tough Indianapolis pass defense and almost led San Francisco to a noteworthy road upset. Smith has looked confident in the pocket, and his throws have been crisp. He seems to have an instant rapport with high-upside rookie WR Michael Crabtree, and he threw three TD passes to blossoming TE Vernon Davis in the game against Houston. It could be premature to promote Smith to the middle class after he's spent most of his career wallowing in the gutter, but Smith now appears capable of turning in a quality fantasy performance in any given week, which is more than you can say for a dozen starting NFL quarterbacks.

In addition to "Fitz's Five," each week during the season Pat Fitzmaurice will post his frequently updated player rankings based on the week's matchups, "Ten most intriguing players" of the week, and "The 60-second rant" — all in the Fantasy section.

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