July 28, 2012

The Quest for an IDP Scoring System

In case you didn't know, IDP = Individual Defensive Player.  In 2010, the CKL decided to scrap the antiquated team defense spot and adopt IDPs onto our rosters and into our scoring family.  It's been a great addition to the league, as the Jason Pierre-Pauls, Patrick Willises, and HELL-BEAST Clay Matthewses of the world are much more fun to track than the entire team defense of, say, the lame-ass Philadelphia Eagles.  Plus, the wild and unpredictable scoring swings provided by team defenses were long a source of frustration in the league... you work so hard to build a better team than your opponent, then he gets 25 points from the Packers Defense and beats you.  Grrrrrrr.  It's throw-the-remote-against-the-wall-and-kick-your-dog levels of irritation.  Grinding teeth through the night to the point of enamel erosion.  Stomach ulcers, GI issues, and a career-impeding chip on your shoulder.  Team Defenses suck, IDPs are awesome.



Anyway, we brought IDPs into the league, and its been an unmitigated success.  The next step, however, is finding a scoring system for those defensive players that striates the available player pool, elevates the good IDPs clearly above the middling IDPs, elevates IDPs above kickers (in terms of fantasy impact), and elevates predictably good IDPs far enough above replacement value that you'd find a bench spot to hang onto a good IDP during his bye week.  Ultimately, we want our IDPs to be tradeable commodities, somewhere along the lines of a good WR3 or a low-end TE1 (Anquan Boldin was our working point of reference.  We want Patrick Willis to be about equal in value to Boldin.)

In that vein, the CKL put together an IDP scoring task force, to scour the interwebs for inspiration on how to fine-tune our IDP scoring system.  That crusade led one member of the task force - Nathan - to this excellent series of pieces from the fantastic site, Pro Football Focus.

If you're a CKL coach just looking for a greater depth of understanding on where we're trying to go with IDPs and want to explore the source of our inspiration, or if you're a non-CKL fantasy football player who just wants a great read about IDPs, these links are for you.








Kudos to the guys at Pro Football Focus for putting these together, and a hearty THANK YOU to Nathan for finding the articles at the time we needed them the most.  I feel like we're on a really interesting and exciting trajectory with our IDP scoring system, with the three pieces linked above serving as the locomotive driving that train.

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1 comment:

  1. Nathan Sanford7/29/12, 9:12 AM

    We've come a long way in a short time, but we still have work to do. I truly believe we either need to flex one (or all) of our IDP slots, OR expand the roster with an additional starting spot or two. One or both of these will continue to increase the value of IDPs and force coaches to move elite players up their draft boards.

    I know additional changes might be non-starters due to "change fatigue" but if there is one crew that could be persuaded, its the CKL. If you had told me five years ago we'd be two years deep into IDPs, I would have never believed you. But we're a dynamic bunch.

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