I love playing and learning board games, especially new ones I’ve never tried before. The key to a successful gaming session – aside from the obvious need for good snacks – is that everyone needs to understand the rules: How do you win? What does a turn look like? Are there teams, or do players compete solo? While the questions may differ, reading and understanding the rules is also crucial to competing and winning in your Individual Defensive Player (IDP) fantasy football leagues, especially when it comes to IDP scoring.
This is the first article in a series I am writing to help players new to IDP fantasy football wrap their heads around the leagues they’ve joined, or maybe to feel the confidence to try IDP out for the first time.
Solving the IDP puzzle may feel like a roll of the dice at the outset, but starting with the foundational building blocks – your league scoring settings – will help you create your own process for the long-term. As the saying goes, “give someone a fish and they’ll eat for a day; teach them Go Fish, and you have a tabletop gamer for life.” Or something.
How do your league’s IDP scoring settings affect fantasy strategy?
IDP Scoring Settings for Beginners
Get a Clue: Basic IDP Scoring Settings
Exactly like offensive fantasy football, the other side of the ball also has distinct categories that are tallied up, scoring you a certain amount of points per instance.
Below, I’ve listed these most common categories and explained both what they are to football and how they’re important to IDP scoring so that you have a rough understanding of the building blocks of the format. For those of you with some IDP experience and not true beginners, it can certainly help to have a refresher. If you’re well past that, don’t worry about skipping to the next section – we’ll meet you there.
- Tackle (or Solo Tackle): When a defensive player brings down an offensive player.
- Assist (or Assisted Tackle): When two or more defensive players bring down an offensive player.
- Sack: When a defensive player tackles an opposing quarterback while they are still a passer behind the line of scrimmage.
- Quarterback Hit: When a defensive player hits the quarterback while – or immediately after – throwing the football.
- Tackle for Loss (or Stuff): When a defensive player tackles a ball carrier (quarterbacks who are running the ball, not passing, count here) behind the line of scrimmage.
- Forced Fumble: When a defensive player knocks the ball out of an offensive player’s hands.
- Fumble Recovery: When a defensive player secures a loose ball.
- Interception: When a defensive player catches a pass from the opposing team.
- Pass Defended (or Pass Defensed or Pass Deflected): When a defensive player alters the course of a pass to prevent a catch by the offense.
Some leagues also include points for blocked kicks, block returns, conversion returns, safeties, etc., and every league service provider will have their own options you can customize, but these are the categories you are most likely to encounter.
The most basic IDP scoring categories are the tackle and assist. These are the basic defensive answer to the offense’s rushing attempt or reception – statistics that form the concrete of how the game progresses and measure opportunity for a player. A fast player will get to the ball carrier more often and a strong wrap-up tackler will allow fewer broken or missed tackles – thus earning more tackles and assists. While not a perfect measurement of opportunity, this is the most frequent IDP scoring occurrence and so it forms the basis of a defensive player’s value.
Passes defended are the other opportunity metric, though they don’t tend to be considered a companion to tackles and assists. While much more common for defensive backs than any other defensive position group, the PD should be seen both as a measure of which player has the quality to be able to deflect the pass away but also who gets in position to make that play on the ball. Even quarterback hits are somewhat of an opportunity metric, as a number of factors can influence whether or not a sack is completed, but the QBH largely depends on the defender’s ability to beat the blocker.
Secondarily, we have what is referred to as “big plays”: these are any plays that significantly dampen or defeat the offense’s attempts to move the ball and score. Sacks and tackles for a loss both result in a loss of yardage for the offense, while takeaways like fumbles and interceptions both result in a loss of possession, and both of these are dramatic moments for the defense in a football game. Players’ totals in these categories are also significantly less consistent week-to-week and even season-to-season than tackles for the front-seven (defensive linemen and linebackers) and passes defensed for the secondary (cornerbacks and safeties).
Suffice it to say, knowing what you earn points for is half of the battle to understanding your league in IDP fantasy football. Now, what points you earn for each event is a different matter entirely. Let’s get into scoring systems and IDP formats.
Four of a Kind: IDP Formats
There are three main IDP fantasy football format types, and most leagues can be categorized into one of them: tackle-heavy (TH), balanced, and big-play (BP). These are just shorthand ways for you to quickly process the way your league is structured, though; not every league will match the definitions of these perfectly. If you think of these scoring formats as a spectrum, TH is on one end, BP is on the other, and balanced is smack-dab in the middle.
In balanced scoring, the rule of thumb tends to be that a big play’s point worth relates to a solo tackle at a rate of about 3:1. So, if sacks in your league are worth six points and a solo tackle is two, that is what I would call a balanced IDP format. If the total events of a fumble (forced fumble and fumble recovery) average three points and a solo tackle is one, that would also qualify.
TH scoring is exactly what it sounds like: heavy on the tackles. These are scoring systems where a big play is worth less than 3:1 when compared with a solo tackle, typically in a ratio of 2:1 or lower. If your league awards four points for a tackle for a loss and two for a solo tackle, at the risk of sounding like a Jeff Foxworthy bit, “you might be” in a TH league.
In some wilder formats, I’ve seen three points per solo tackle and just one per interception – that is TH IDP scoring. These scoring systems mean 100-tackle inside linebackers and in-the-box strong safeties are the cream of the crop. IDP in TH systems tend to be more consistent on a week-to-week basis, but this means fewer players are viable fantasy options and fewer will emerge on the waiver wire.
Finally, BP puts an emphasis on the big plays. These are formats where the scoring ratio is more than 3:1, typically closer to 4:1 or 5:1. I have a few leagues where sacks equal five points, interceptions are six, and solo tackles are just one. These are definitely big play leagues, and the inherent volatility of week-to-week scoring means these formats encourage you to aim for scoring upside over security.
In BP leagues, proficient sack artists like Chandler Jones will have much more value and tackle-racking players like Jordan Hicks will be less valuable. Here, some cornerbacks and free safeties (who tend to pick up fewer tackles but do see interceptions and other big plays) will score similarly to strong safeties, making them much more viable for your starting lineups.
Within these broad buckets, many variations and exceptions exist. You may find that your league service site allows you to give different IDP scoring systems to different positions, and while the scoring for defensive linemen might award 2.5 points for solo tackles and five for sacks (TH), for linebackers it may be one for solo tackles and five for sacks (BP), and defensive backs earn two for solo tackles and six for interceptions (balanced).
How you score points changes how you win the game, so getting a grasp on these structures will allow you to figure out how a single player’s value or even the entire ranking of positional value shifts in your IDP fantasy football scoring format.