Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post
No one likes weeds. Once they appear, they take over the area and are difficult to remove. Next thing you know, the weeds have taken over the yard, and now you have to resod your whole lawn.
Fantasy football scoring formats need a good resodding. The weed that is PPR has infested the entire fantasy landscape.
What a terrible idea this was at the outset. It was born out of desperation, to break up running back-dominated fantasy drafts of the early 2000s. Instead of, say, tinkering with roster construction — like adding a wide receiver or removing a running back — someone decided to pretend that catching a pass was of more value than taking a handoff.
It didn’t seem to matter that in the game of football, how you gain the yards is irrelevant. There is no rational reason to weigh a catch as more important than a carry. But that’s what we, the fantasy community, did.
For some reason, PPR got popular. The only reason we can think of as to why is because, “Points! Fun!” And we, the fantasy community, have let it overtake virtually every corner of fantasy football.
Pretty much everyone is aware of the most obvious hypocrisy: A catch for zero yards is worth the same as a rush for 10 yards. That backward notion alone should be enough to disqualify PPR as a scoring system for any serious fantasy league. But it is worse than that. It can actually significantly change the fantasy value of players.
Take the 2020 season. Alvin Kamara had a fantastic year. He tallied nearly 1,700 total yards from scrimmage and scored 21 times. So it should be no surprise that he was the top fantasy RB and scored more fantasy points than any non-quarterback in PPR.
Only … Derrick Henry had a top-five all-time NFL season that same year. Henry topped 2,000 rushing yards, had nearly 500 more rushing yards than the next best RB, was 223 scrimmage yards better than the next best Flex player, and he scored 17 touchdowns.
Fantasy Football DVQ Explainer
Hop out of the pool, unpack your vacation suitcase, boot up your laptop and get ready, because fantasy football season is back.
The Fantasy Madman has returned with the latest iteration of his DVQ.
The Draft Value Quotient is a player rating system that assigns one universal number for every player. This value projects the point in the draft at which a player’s projected production will match the estimated draft pick value.
Since there is a wider separation among production at the top, so too is there a wider gap between DVQ values at the top of the rankings.
The player projections takes into account playing time, expected use/touches, coaching tendencies, part performance and injury history. The DVQ measures these projections against a player’s schedule and factors in positional depth and value above replacement.
These ratings are updated regularly.
By any reasonable measure, they both had great seasons, though Henry’s was a bit better. But PPR isn’t reasonable. Kamara caught 83 passes that season, Henry just 19. That artificial 64-point boost was enough to vault Kamara to the top for RBs. In fact, Dalvin Cook got a 25-point PPR bump to push him into second.
So Henry’s all-time great football season was just the third-best among fantasy RBs that year. Because … PPR.
Can we stop this madness? Please?! Somebody??
We know everyone likes points, because, “Points! Fun!” And yes, we understand removing PPR and returning to old-school standard scoring creates too much reliance on touchdowns — which are notoriously volatile from week to week and season to season.
There is a solution: Replace PPR with what we will call FDC — first downs converted. Instead of scoring for a stat that has no real-world impact, why not score for something that reflects actual performance and contribution on the field?
First downs keep drives alive. Players who convert them help their real-life team in a real-life game. FDC doesn’t discriminate based on how you obtained the ball, it scores fairly for both rushing and receiving.
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It is clearly a superior format. More fantasy league websites should offer it. More commissioners should employ it. More fantasy players should demand it. We, the fantasy community, should get to work making this happen.
So jump aboard our campaign. Start the push to get your leagues converted to first-downs-converted scoring.