Footballguys continues to advance the world of fantasy football. With several additions to their offerings once again in 2010, the much heralded Best Online Content Site for 2009 has joined the world of High Stakes Fantasy contests. Joe Bryant and David Dodds have teamed with David Gerczak and Alex Kaganovsky of Fantasy Football Players Championship (myffpc.com) to create the first annual Footballguys Players Championship contest.

By studying the rules of both the FFPC and the FPC along with some of the history and previous performances by FPC players, insights can be found that will help many players to not only compete well in both contests but also to be in a position to win their league and be in the running for a top prize in the championship round.

As the summer rolls on, I will continue analyzing many aspects of the Footballguys Players Championship and the Fantasy Football Players Championship. Through these articles I hope to provide extra help with fully understanding how to best build a top notch fantasy team within the contest. As someone who has competed against the best players in the world and in several contests much like the FPC and the FFPC, I fully understand how every possible advantage and extra edge can make all the difference in the world.

The Team Defense Position

Under the microscope this time around is the position of team defense. According the rules of the Footballguys Players Championship, the rosters are as follows:

Starting Roster

1 QB

2 RBs

2 WRs

1 TE

1 K

1 D/ST

2 flex players (RB/WR/TE)

With the following relevant scoring system in place:

Scoring system – Team Defense

1 point for D/ST sack

2 points for all turnovers

6 points for all D/ST touchdowns

5 points for every safety

12 points for every shutout

8 points for allowing between 1 - 6 points

5 points for allowing between 7 - 10 points

So how do you analyze the impact of this scoring system to the current crop of potential fantasy team defenses? We need to dig into some numbers.

First, let’s take a look at 2009 production for this scoring system over the course of NFL Weeks 1-16. Why not Week 17? Two reasons. First, the FPC (and FFPC) end their contests in Week 16, and if you can recall last year’s final week there were many “throwaway” games played out with teams resting players. That data would really not be valuable at all, so we focus on the first sixteen contests.

Listed in Table 1 are all the NFL Team Defenses in descending order of fantasy points using the FPC scoring system. In addition, all the points are broken down by the component of the total scoring. Points from touchdown returns (six points each), turnovers (two points), sacks (one point), safeties (five points) and the points against (ranging each week from 0-12):

Table 1: 2009 NFL Team Defense Scoring Under FPC Rules

A few things stand out in Table 1. First, the Saints were dominant early in the year with their turnovers and touchdowns, a trait which helped them to win their first Lombardi Trophy in February. The next item to notice is that the Jets were great at holding teams to 10 points or less, the 49ers were right there with them with another six games in that same 0-10 points against range. That’s remarkable given that the NFC West is expected to struggle again in 2010. Only five other teams even achieved 30 points from this category (Baltimore 38, New England 37, Denver 34, Dallas 30 and Green Bay 30). The league average was below 20 with just 13 teams coming in either at or above that mark.

A second look at this data would be a good idea, and this time it would be smart to look at the percentages of Team Defense scoring that comes from each category. Table 2 breaks this down nicely by percentages, with high and low percentages highlighted:

Table 2: 2009 NFL Team Defense Scoring Percentages By Category

The first thought would be to worry about teams that put up a great deal of their points due to touchdown returns, as those seem to be riskier to reproduce from a previous season. The other concerning area would be for points against. Teams that struggle to hold teams down on the scoreboard would also be a concern. The interesting results in Table 2 are that the teams that scored a larger percentage of their points from touchdowns are also the ones that tend to get less value from holding teams to lower scores. While that does make sense on some levels – these teams are going to be in more shootout-style contests – it is a nice check on the balance of their team scoring. Of course, this is not a 100% correlation, as Detroit and Jacksonville struggled all year long and were near the bottom of many team defense categories.

Now let’s move on to the Place Kicker position.

The Place Kicker Position

Under the microscope now is the position of place kicker. According the rules of the Footballguys Players Championship, the rosters are as follows:

Starting Roster

1 QB

2 RBs

2 WRs

1 TE

1 K

1 D/ST

2 flex players (RB/WR/TE)

With the following relevant scoring system in place:

Scoring system – Place Kicker

3 points for every FG of 1 - 30 yards plus 0.1 point for every yard thereafter

So how do you analyze the impact of this scoring system to the current crop of potential fantasy kickers? We need to dig into some numbers.

No, not really.

Sorry, folks. These are kickers. This is not that deep of an analysis here for place kickers. Odds are that most teams in the FPC will draft one kicker total for their team, so a list of your favorite 15 kickers will do just fine. The recommendation would be to target a kicker that will be on a good offense and be playing in good weather for the first two months of the season, as it is quite likely that you may switch kickers due to bye weeks between Weeks 4-10 on the NFL calendar.

The other recommendation would be to look for both teams that might move the ball well but struggle to punch it across the goal line (Philadelphia had this problem last season, making David Akers a Top 5 kicker). Also consider teams and coaches that trot their kickers out there for longer attempts. Given that the scoring favors 30+ yard kicks (50 yard field goals are worth 5 or more points), take a long look at those kickers who have a track record of longer attempts. A quick look at the 2009 data for the top kickers sorted by 40+ yard attempts is shown in Table 3:

Table 3: 2009 NFL Place Kicker Scoring Sorted By 40+ Yard Attempts

Parting Thoughts

Every fantasy league and its rulebook is a little different. For the FPC and the FFPC, the scoring of Team Defenses is favorable to teams that both create turnovers and also keep the opposing teams off of the scoreboard. Even though giving up 10 points or less sounds like a rare event, it did occur over 90 times in the first 16 weeks of the 2009 season, which equates to roughly 19% of all team scores through Week 16. Finding a team that can hold a team to 10 or less is not easy (only 10 teams managed to do so four or more times through Week 16), but finding one can be a difference maker.

As far as kickers go, there is not too much science to it other than grabbing one from a team that should have a productive offense. Snagging a kicker that kicks in a dome or has a coach that trusts him to kick from 45+ yards away is also a good benefit given the scoring system.

Given the FPC setup of 20 roster spots, most teams will only dedicate one spot to each position of kicker and team defense. With that in mind, it can be of benefit to wait as long as possible to select your choice at both positions as long as you have a list of 15 or so options for each. Just be certain that you are wary of their bye weeks, for if they share one you may have to make two moves at once and it could be tough to keep one or both should you become enamored with either of your selections (for example, taking both the Jets defense and Nick Folk may create roster headaches in Week 7).

It takes a little time to get your mind wrapped around a new contest with a new set of rules, but the time spent is often well worth it if the goal is to field a competitive team. Giving a little bit of effort to get a greater understanding of the twists and turns to the rulebook can give turn a good fantasy player into a great one and a great player into a dominant force. Knowledge is power – so be as powerful as you can!

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.