This week we’ll be looking into how to approach playing in Individual Defensive Player (IDP) leagues in terms of understanding how tackle metrics are “officially’ determined, and which defensive player positions you should target in your upcoming drafts. Throughout both postings, I’ll be name-dropping for you the various resources and individuals you need to follow in order to have the upper-hand with managing your team’s defensive positions this season.
Like most common fantasy fans who participate in IDP leagues, whether it was during the draft or during the season, I would just pick the big names that I knew and looked for the most projected points hoping those two pieces of information would lead me to success. It wasn’t until listening to the Fantasy Guru’s IDP Corner Volume 7 podcast with host Justin Varnes (@downwithIDP on Twitter) that the “official” metric “tackles per opportunity” came to my attention. The reason I say “official” is because there isn’t an official metric for measuring tackles in the NFL. Come to find out from the podcast every stadium’s game crew are the ones responsible for tallying defensive metrics such as tackles.
Solo tackle vs assisted tackle. What players get credit for which, why, and where? While this subjectivity can be off-putting to some I’m here to tell you that there is one particular resource that accounts for this variability that fantasy managers can use to calm some of their concerns. Enter Ryan Sitzmann.
Ryan Sitzmann (@TheIDPGuru on Twitter) and the Home Stats Crew over at IDPGuru.com were able to chart out which game crews from the 2016 season consistently assigned solo vs. assisted tackles by looking at the total tackles issued per opportunity when compared to the league average. Below is a small sample of interesting defensive takeaways (pun not intended but appropriate) they charted:
Why is this important?
By understanding a stadium crew’s tendency to assign a particular tackle designation per game you are better able to determine which IDPs to start in order to exploit that tendency. Furthermore, it was noted by Sitzmann that each stadium’s crew does a good job of staying consistent with how they score tackles during a season. Therefore, monitoring trends early in the season could give you helpful insights on how to adjust your defensive roster throughout the season.
Now while this little piece of information isn’t the be all and end all when it comes to determining which IDPs you should have on your roster, it IS helpful in the sense that knowing which of your IDPs has the best home and away odds of producing the most points can be the difference between giving you that defensive edge to win your week by multiple points or to lose it by something as small as half a point.
