C. Tackle-Heavy vs. Big Play IDP Scoring

Playing with IDPs offers a fantasy experience that differs drastically to offensive players primarily through having tackles as the main scoring statistic.  This is because a made tackle does not necessarily correspond to the defensive player making a good play.

It’s easy to see Bobby Wagner or Luke Kuechly at the top of the fantasy IDP rankings and think that all IDP scores correspond to the value of the player.  This is simply not true.  And to illuminate this error, read any IDP draft guide or listen to an IDP-related podcast and you will be exposed to the strategy of acquiring the worst defensive player on the field.  Why?  Because that is the player the offense will try to exploit, and he will receive the most targets.  That creates more tackle opportunities, which will lead to more tackles acquired, even if he is a crappy player.  This is not what fantasy football should be about. 

And a tackle isn’t even an official NFL statistic.  There is no official source of tackle statistics.  Instead, the stat crew of the home team provides the tackle totals for the game, and what these stat crews consider a tackle or an assisted tackle varies wildly from team to team.  Some use it to promote their star players, such as back in the day the Ravens stat crew assigning the tackle for any pile of bodies to Ray Lewis, or one infamous event in the 90s when the Falcons had more tackles assigned than there were plays in the game.  Because of these biases, you can also find IDP analysis favoring certain players due to which stat crews they will be exposed to in the upcoming season.  I kid you not.  Both of these are pretty huge reasons, in my mind at least, why we should not count tackles as the primary stat for IDP scoring systems.

Instead, we should favor scoring that recognizes and rewards good plays, and thus good players.  The best statistics for doing so are sacks, interceptions, touchdowns, QB pressures and QB hits, tackles for loss, and passes defensed.  The only problem is that these plays don’t come along very often.  And if you’re wanting to score IDPs in the range of offensive players, that means assigning large point totals to infrequently occurring events.  And that leads to both wild swings in points, and absurd results, such as a sack being worth more than a rushing touchdown.  Tackles become such a tempting statistic in comparison, simply because of its frequency.  It happens on just about every non-scoring play.   

In balancing the pros and cons, I still come out on the side of Big Play scoring systems rather than Tackle-Heavy.  I want to see a fantasy team win over the course of the season because he has the best players.  Period.  All complications are merely problems to solve.