Passing Fancy - Strategies for QB-Weighted Leagues

by: Tony Ambrosini

Editor's Note: Below you will find the Introduction for Passing Fancy - Strategies for QB-Weighted Leagues.  If you'd like to read the entire article, please click HERE to order our 2009 Pre-Season Draft Guide.

I can understand where people are coming from. After all, most will argue that the quarterback is the most important position on the field. So when the fantasy football-playing community participates in leagues where they choose to give extra weight to the quarterbacks, I get it. The only other person who touches the ball as often as the quarterback is the center who snaps it to him. It really makes a lot of sense!

However, you typically read pieces that focus on the basic scoring strategies, where quarterbacks receive three or four points per touchdown and one point for every 20 or 25 passing yards, maybe even taking a point away for each interception. In a scoring system like this, the quarterback position becomes devalued in a way. For instance, you may not see a ton of difference between Kurt Warner and Eli Manning over the course of the year. Perhaps you could see Donovan McNabb getting drafted later than a guy like Jamal Lewis, even though McNabb’s Philadelphia Eagles have a much more potent offense than the Cleveland Browns.

Thoughts like this are likely what prompts some leagues to adopt a quarterback-heavy scoring system. Maybe a league likes to give the QB his due and reward his position by giving six points for every touchdown instead of three. Maybe a PPR league is looking to find a way to bring some extra value to quarterbacks and put them on even footing with the running backs and receivers. Some leagues might go as far as awarding a quarterback a bonus for a 300-yard passing game, or maybe even for longer touchdown passes.

However, the goal of this piece is for us to gain some perspective as to what happens when we make the change from three points per touchdown pass to six. Let’s keep this simple; the questions we need answers to are:

Effect from QB to QB

The first order of business is to see what occurs when we change the value of a touchdown pass from three to six. I chose to grab 2008’s numbers for each of the quarterbacks who made "significant contributions" to their respective teams, which I defined as any quarterback who threw the ball at least 100 times. I also subtracted a point for each INT thrown in the first data set.

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As mentioned atop this release, if you like to read the entire article, please click HERE to order our 2009 Pre-Season Draft Guide.

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