I am joining a league this year that is not a PPR league, but instead gives points for first downs. Does anyone have thoughts on how I could project first downs to be able to see how this might impact rankings? I think it is going to have a somewhat significant impact as a first down is worth as much as 20 yards rushing/receiving. Thanks for any help
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First Downs as Scoring Category (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Wach35
- Start date
This is becoming popular due to the fishbowl scoring rules I think. I like it better than ppr, but don't think it is necessary in 4 point passing TD leagues. I like it better than ppr because I hate it when someone gets a reception for -3 yards and gets rewarded for it. This page has some info:
https://fantasyknuckleheads.com/making-sense-of-points-per-first-down-fantasy-scoring/
I found a page that had number of first downs by position, but cannot find it now. One league I am in has fish bowl rules of 25 yards value for TE and 10 for RB and WR, while the other is just 10 for all. 20 sounds pretty high across the board, unless there are other rules to compensate, that seems like it would massively decrease the value of QB, and maybe increasing the value of a top TE like Kelce since he might have 3x the first downs of some 10th round pick.
https://fantasyknuckleheads.com/making-sense-of-points-per-first-down-fantasy-scoring/
I found a page that had number of first downs by position, but cannot find it now. One league I am in has fish bowl rules of 25 yards value for TE and 10 for RB and WR, while the other is just 10 for all. 20 sounds pretty high across the board, unless there are other rules to compensate, that seems like it would massively decrease the value of QB, and maybe increasing the value of a top TE like Kelce since he might have 3x the first downs of some 10th round pick.
boilerdave
Footballguy
Ted Stickles
Footballguy
I've always thought that 1st downs should be rewarded for the RB, WR, or TE making the play and is a much better indicator of actual production than getting a point per reception.
The PPR was made to level the playing field about 10-12 years ago when each team replied on a single RB (not the RBBC you see today) and when 15 of the top picks in the fantasy draft were RBs.
I miss those days where RB depth over the course of the season was a main key to winning.
The PPR was made to level the playing field about 10-12 years ago when each team replied on a single RB (not the RBBC you see today) and when 15 of the top picks in the fantasy draft were RBs.
I miss those days where RB depth over the course of the season was a main key to winning.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
The Scott Fish Bowl is this massive charity league that has pretty much every fantasy expert in the universe and some avid fans (over 720 people). Each year Scott changes the rules drastically in order to ensure that it's always interesting/different. This year he got rid of PPR and moved to points for 1st downs except TEs get 1.5 for 1st downs.
Biabreakable
Footballguy
This is a great resource as this information is somewhat hard to find.
It would be nice to have comprehensive list of the 3 year average for 1st down by RB, like the author did for WR and TE.
This resource has the rushing first downs that goes back to 2009 that could be used for that part of it.
1st downs by receptions is also provided there, you just need to pull the RB out of the list and then add those totals to the rushing first downs.
Aside from leagues that give points for first downs, this information can be useful because of the percentage of 1st downs generated by players should generally be an indicator for players getting future opportunities from their coaches. So when comparing two RB on the same team for example, the one with the higher 1st down percentage will often be favored by their coach over a RB with a lower success rate. You still have to consider down and distance in this equation though.
Biabreakable
Footballguy
If the scoring is 1 point for a 1st down and .1 points per yard, then a 1 yard run on 2nd and 1 would be worth 1.1 points and a 9 yard run would be worth .9 points.
So a .2 point difference.
spider321
Footballguy
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Ilov80s
Footballguy
No different than PPR where a 0 yard catch is worth more than a 9 yard run. I mostly agree with you as I am anti-ppr, but at least a first down has significant value in football. A 1 yard run on 3rd and inches is much more valuable than a 9 yard run on 3rd and 20.
spider321
Footballguy
Agreed on the first part. Ppr makes no sense, especially in today's passing league with few workhorse running backs.
...but people like to reinvent the wheel so whatever floats your boat. ?
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Yeah, I wouldn't do the 1st down thing. I like the traditional yards and TD scoring. I do think superflex or 2 QB makes a lot of sense though. That or harsher penalties for interceptions. There should be something to make QBs more valuable.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Right, that is the idea: level the playng field. I don't think 6 pt passing TD does that so much as it being a superflex league.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
Plus I do not see how you could realistically project "first downs" which adds an element of luck to it. PPR has some flaws but at least their is some basis for projecting receptions.
Hankmoody
Footballguy
Like ilove80s, I'm not a PPR fan, but people pretty much insist on finding ways to increase points (because I guess moar points = moar better), so I think the best middle ground is points per first down for many reasons*. And I would contend that projecting first downs is similar to projecting receptions. Players playing certain roles will catch different ratios of first downs per reception than guys in other roles. And players with a few years of experience probably have a pretty solid trend, so you can just estimate (for example) 70% of his projected receptions will be 1st downs.. I'm just guessing, though. I haven't found a PPFD league yet, so I haven't started crunching numbers, but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard or unpredictable. Certainly can't be as unpredictable as TDs!
*gives value back to RBs who don't get a lot of receptions, reduces the value of guys that compile receptions without advancing the chains, increases the value of guys that are extending drives, etc.
Hankmoody
Footballguy
Incorrect. It's to allow more players to be viable replacements, reducing the injury luck factor. Back in the day before flex lineups and PPR when it was all hardcore 2RB/2WR lineups, if you lost a RB you were toast, that was 15 PPG that you had no chance to recover. It wasn't uncommon to see owners go RB/RB/RB in a 2RB league just because they were so valuable. All of those "gadgets" like flex plays, PPR, rolling waivers, etc. were done to increase the player pool of viable alternatives so that one could recover from devastating injuries.
I'm not the hugest fan of PPR either, and I like the idea of PFD, it's at least a little more relevant to actual importance on the field, but that culture is going to be a long, hard one to break.
Maybe incorrect to you, but I've heard people say that before. The phrase I'm used to hearing is more along the lines of "it's more exciting when there is higher scoring" which really just means "moar points = moar better". And no, people didn't go RB/RB/RB due to scoring system - they did it because there used to be a lot of bell cows. Go back and look at how many RBs had over 300 carries 15 years ago vs. now. Or 250 carries vs. now. It's crazy. PPR was invented to take away value from RB and add to WR, but the game has shifted and PPR is no longer needed, but you can't take away that toy from the baby. I blame millennials
However, what you said has long been my argument against PPR. It does feel like it increases the player pool, which yes, can help teams with injuries, but you know who else it helps? Bad managers who whiff at a position in the draft. Increasing the player pool without increasing the number of starting spots is essentially a parity mechanism.
Hankmoody
Footballguy
Didn't mean for that to come out so snippy, sorry. But all of the experiences I have had, and when all the articles were coming out and being hailed as the next big thing on all the FF sites, it was all about solving the stud RB dilemma.
Of course it helps bad managers, all helpful rules do. But by the very nature of being bad they are going to take less advantage of it than good managers will. As long as something helps good managers at least as much as bad managers it's fine by me because it gives me an advantage by subtraction. I can't tell you how often I see guys with cavernous holes on their benches skip the first waiver run of the year.
I didn't say because of scoring, I said because of lineup requirements. Which is driven by scarcity, which is driven by the dropoff of non-bellcow RB being all that's left on waivers. You are making my point for me. If you lost one of the ones you drafted you lost far more points back then. So we drafted them much higher and much harder than we should have. "take value away from RB" is just a different way to say "make more guys viable replacements" since it doesn't only affect WR, it also brings 3rd down RB's into the picture as well, which is what the original intention was. And I agree millennials are preventing the correction.Maybe incorrect to you, but I've heard people say that before. The phrase I'm used to hearing is more along the lines of "it's more exciting when there is higher scoring" which really just means "moar points = moar better". And no, people didn't go RB/RB/RB due to scoring system - they did it because there used to be a lot of bell cows. Go back and look at how many RBs had over 300 carries 15 years ago vs. now. Or 250 carries vs. now. It's crazy. PPR was invented to take away value from RB and add to WR, but the game has shifted and PPR is no longer needed, but you can't take away that toy from the baby. I blame millennials
However, what you said has long been my argument against PPR. It does feel like it increases the player pool, which yes, can help teams with injuries, but you know who else it helps? Bad managers who whiff at a position in the draft. Increasing the player pool without increasing the number of starting spots is essentially a parity mechanism.
Of course it helps bad managers, all helpful rules do. But by the very nature of being bad they are going to take less advantage of it than good managers will. As long as something helps good managers at least as much as bad managers it's fine by me because it gives me an advantage by subtraction. I can't tell you how often I see guys with cavernous holes on their benches skip the first waiver run of the year.
We would be beating the point to death if I addressed the 2nd paragraph much. I see it a little differently but not enough to get into it.
But on the 3rd paragraph I strongly disagree. Increasing the player pool drastically helps bad managers more than good managers. Good managers can find diamonds in the rough at the end of the draft and compile solid depth on their bench, such that there's a significant opportunity cost to cutting those players to stream WW players throughout the season, whereas bad managers typically have their bench littered with scrubs that are easily cut for a couple guys only worth a single week spot start.
Maybe my memory is failing, but I can't recall anything as frustrating in 0PPR as when you're playing 1PPR and you see a guy you'd never start put up 10 of his 11.6 points in the final drive of a 2 score game because he caught 6 dump offs for 40 yards in the 2 minute drill. Sure, it sucks to start that guy every week because that scenario doesn't usually play out, but it sure is annoying to match up against him the one week he scores double digits.
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Hankmoody
Footballguy
That's a huge factor for sure, and it's my biggest peeve of my dynasty leagues, and if bad managers took advantage of this with regularity I would agree with your overall point. But they don't. Bad managers don't do that streaming. They hold onto bad investments and only manage the top 40% of their roster. We see it all the time. I have a couple of leagues where Cordorelle Patterson is taking up 7% and 8% of cap space of the teams he's on, and those owners are still carrying him. Those same owners don't even put in a claim for Tyreek Hill when he busts out. It's a PITA to pull out because the report is weekly, but one year I looked at one of my leagues and of the 4 terrible owners I identified, they had made a grand total of 7 waiver claim attempts. 40 man roster with full IDP, 12 man taxi, and they averaged less than 2 claims per manager per year.
Back to the point though, I think PFD is more realistic than PPR and I would be up to making the change, it's just tough to get a league to consider it.
BoltBacker
Footballguy
I think this is one of the problems developing in the hobby. Somehow a "good" stat is one that can easily be projected by the industry. That's why yards/receptions have become way, WAY too important. And conversely TD's and turnovers are less easily projected so they have become so undervalued it's completely ridiculous.
If we are trying to avoid luck let's just have bigger teams and more starters. Heck, I'm even fine with cumulative scoring instead of H2H to avoid luck. But the way the hobby has morphed a 3rd down back that catches 4 passes against soft defenses at the end of a half can score a lot more points than a guy scoring a go-ahead TD. That's just stupid. As to this thread, at least a first down is accomplishing something. It's giving you another set of down and getting you closer to FG range or a TD. The guy that catches a ball for 5 yards on 3rd-15 does NOT deserve 2 points for his effort, a full third of a TD.
To me FF games should be decided just like real football games. TD's and TO's are the REAL stats that matter..... even if they can't be as easily projected. Even better than TD/TO would be contextualized scoring so that if you throw an INT when the game is tied it hurts you much more than throwing an INT when you're team is up or down by 21 points. Computers could do all that now.
Hawkeye21
Footballguy
Why not start a league with those settings and let us know how it goes? Sometimes I think people are trying way too hard to make it like real football and making things way too complicated. It's not real football, it's fantasy. So far every league I've seen that tried to make it more realistic, failed. The reason the current scoring systems are the way they are now is because they are fairly simple and they work.BoltBacker said:
BoltBacker
Footballguy
PPR didn't come around because it was more simple than what came before it. There was actually a time when you had to specify your league was a "yardage" league because not every league even used yardage at all.
At one time the leagues were scoring. Picking a FG kicker was kind of a big thing, because they scored. Nothing was broken in that system and it was very simple if that's the goal.
Then there were distance scoring leagues, where you got extra points for yards to get the TD, but all you had to look up in the paper was the scoring plays.
Those could easily be done using the USA today or whatever newspaper you chose to use.
Then came yardage leagues and your hands would be black after sliding them up and down the newspaper and it was like mana from heaven when online services started actually calculating the stats for you.
NONE of these changes came about because it made things simpler. NOW everything is automated and it takes no effort to make scoring.... "complicated". Maybe it makes it complicated to get cheatsheets or offer services to help people draft if they can't think for themselves.
