RFL Fantasy Football
Section 3 — RFL Scoring System™
Scoring Methods
Double Rule
Standard RFL leagues use the "Double Rule". Scoring points are doubled for the following types of plays, if they are over 45 yards:
- Touchdown Pass
- Touchdown Catch
- Touchdown Run
- Defensive Touchdown
- Defensive Interception
- Defensive Safety
- Defensive Sack
- Defensive ½-Sack
- Kick Return Touchdown
The amount of 45 yards was originally determined by examining the length of yardage in NFL plays. 45 yards was the point where almost every play longer than that length resulted in a Touchdown anyway, but they were rare enough to prevent the goal of producing realistic football scores from becoming unreachable. Long Field Goals are far too common to include with the doubled bonus points, as it would result in scores that are undesirably high.
Examples
- A 46-yard TD pass thrown is doubled and worth 12 pts instead of 6
- A 45-yard TD catch is still only worth 3 pts (It must be over 45 yards to be doubled)
- A 50-yard Interception is doubled and worth 6 pts instead of 3. (Defensive Interceptions do not have to result in a TD)
- A 65-yard Interception returned for a TD is worth 12 pts (Double 3 for Defensive TD and double 3 for Interception)
Punting
The highest Punting Average prevents tie games, because it contains a half-point that can only be awarded to one team.
The Punting points are awarded to the punter with the highest Average Yards Per Attempt (This is usually shown in Box Scores broken down to tenths of a yard, as "AVG").
In case of a tie in Average Yardage, the punter with more punting Attempts receives the points. This means that a punter with listed stats of "6-45.3" (6 attempts for a 45.3-yard average) wins over a punter with "5-45.3".
If the punting is an exact tie in both Average Yardage and Attempts, the Home Team receives the points. This is the RFL "Home-Team Advantage".
RFL Hardcore Leagues
The following rule adaptations are used for RFL Hardcore Leagues:
- The Double-Rule does not apply to any scoring.
- Touchdown Catch is worth 6 points.
- Defensive Touchdown is worth 6 points.
- Touchdown — Kick Return is worth 6 points.
Use of the "Hardcore" format and designation is entirely optional. It's for tough-minded players who seek the highest realism in Fantasy Football scoring.
RFL Scoring System — Background History
The original intent of the RFL was to create realistic football scores, rather than the ridiculous numbers produced by traditional Fantasy Football systems. The secondary goal was our unwavering desire to select individual Defensive players and include Punters, unlike other systems.
Thus, the challenge was that the scores had to be low enough to resemble actual football games, but there also had to be a way for all players to score or there was no sense including them. The RFL Scoring System had to meet those goals and achieve the desired balance.
The other original players were very adamant about using a method to highlight "exciting" plays. They badly over-estimated how many of these plays would affect their scores (which can make it a hard disadvantage to overcome when your opponent gets one), but at least it made the halftime shows more bearable. I was strongly outvoted and they insisted upon having a Bonus scoring method, which became the "Double Rule".
The Double Rule made our realistic scoring goal even harder to achieve. I now had to accept that we might be closer to producing College scores than the NFL, especially with our usage of Defensive players and Punters. It would still be a "football" score, so I bit the bullet and pressed on.
I started with the Touchdown ("TD") as our base score, to always be valued at the standard 6 points that are scored in a real game, and proceeded to work from there:
Kickers — Kicking was easy enough. I simply kept Field Goals and PATs at their NFL value of 3 and 1 points, respectively. No adjustments were needed to match actual football scoring. The Double Rule would not be applied, because it was unnecessary. My research showed that the top 8 Kickers (enough starters for an 8-team league) are very close in total scoring. Rarely do they average more than 3 points per game higher than another, and they all average much less than one "doubled" FG per game. Despite the false appearance of a long FG's extra value, inflating the game score by an almost-equal amount for both teams was worthless.
Punters — The justification for using Punters was that they can be important enough to affect games (the difference between the top 8 Punters can sometimes be dramatic) and should be included. I could only estimate their value, as they are "Field Position" specialists and not "scorers". I started with our base and estimated their value as worth one TD. To counteract that these non-scorers could only inflate our score, I cut the value in half (to 3 points) and limited the points to only one Punter (leaving it as a 6-point swing in value, but not in the team score). Adding a half-point (to 3½) gave us our "tiebreaker" and the Punter his importance, but raised the 'swing value' to 7 points.
After a few years, we realized that Punters were scoring more points than many other "scoring" players and deciding too many games per season, so I reduced their 'swing value' to that of a Field Goal by reducing the awarded points to 1½ (To this day, that is the only scoring adjustment ever made to the RFL system). Punting was now important enough to break ties and not inflate scores, but not overly-important and affecting more game resuts than intended.
Running Backs — RBs were also easy. Since only one player is involved in a Rushing TD, it was set at 6 points. RBs overwhelmingly score mostly from Rushing, so there was no need to adjust the value (Their other scores then reflect the importance of a stellar RB). There aren't a large percentage of long TDs by RBs, so allowing the Double Rule on rushes can reward a great play without inflating too many game scores.
Quarterbacks — Since two players are involved in a Passing TD, and the players would most-likely be on different RFL teams, the points were split equally at 3 for the QB and 3 for the player who catches it. However, this left the QB and WR scoring at a disadvantage when compared to RBs.
For a QB, the team leader who controls the ball more often than anyone else, their importance should instead be the highest. The QB scoring disadvantage is somewhat reduced because they also score a few Rushing TDs. To counter the rest of the imbalance, Passing TDs were increased by 3 pts (to a value of 6). Considering that QBs have a lot more 'doubled' TDs than RBs will have by Rushing, this effectively eliminated the disadvantage.
Next, I had to reflect the difference in the quality of QBs by making a bad performance less valuable. Interceptions Thrown would deduct the same amount of the bonus given to Passing TDs (3 pts). [The 3-point value was determined from research showing that Interceptions usually led to an opponent TD around 50% of the time. This set the value of throwing one at 3 points (50% of a TD's value) for the opponent.]
By using this method of adding and subtracting equally for passing performance, QB scoring will always match the TD-to-INT passing percentage of the NFL. Since other scoring is left unchanged, the RFL Scoring System automatically adjusts itself to any changes in NFL trends or rules which change the balance of scoring. Owners merely have to plan their Draft according to current NFL trends and the RFL scores don't alter any differently than the NFL does.
Wide Receivers — The Double Rule provided enough balance for the WRs to overcome their disadvantage with RBs, since the vast majority of long scoring plays were Touchdown Passes and not Rushes (the amount is proportionally opposite). Overall, WRs will get many more doubled TDs than RBs and pushing that many possible Reception TD scores to 12 is one reason that other systems score unrealistically high.
The occasional Rushing TD, Return TD, and prevalence of WRs used as KRs also helps overcome the disadvantage. Most RFL teams will use a WR as KR, which is a good idea depending upon the quality of their team. Since there are more WRs on the field than RBs, a team's 3rd WR is usually a higher scorer than their 3rd RB (or any other allowable player they could use, for that matter). Still, a great RB is always going to outscore an average WR—but isn't that how it should be?
Tight Ends — Since TEs are used as a blocker most of the time, the lack of doubled TDs reflects their lesser importance as a scorer when compared to other players. Still, a good scoring TE is so rare that they can make a tremendous difference. With the lower scoring in the RFL system, even 3 extra points for a short TD can go a long way. [You could theoretically lower the disadvantage by allowing an extra TE as a KR, but you'd either have; (a) an atrociously-bad team which is beyond help, (b) an astounding two great TEs on your roster, (c) a lot of players on a BYE, or (d) need to get your head examined.]
Defensive Linemen — Most DL points are going to come from non-scoring plays (such as Sacks), so I kept the scoring for a full Sack at a low 2 points. Since a lot of Sacks are shared, I also set the value of a "Half-Sack" at 1 point. Non-scoring DLs don't inflate scores too badly, but are properly rewarded for the rare INT or TD. When using a LB at this position, their value remains equal since LBs typically specialize either in getting INTs via Pass Coverage (less of them, but slightly higher in value than a Sack and a larger chance for a doubled score) or getting Sacks via Blitzing. The rare LB who is good at both is proportionately more valuable as a DL, but not enough to inflate scores too high.
Defensive Backs — The DB's meat-and-potatoes score would obviously have to be the INT, and since the TD-to-INT ratio is around 50% they will get about half as many as WRs get in TDs. I balanced this by giving 3 pts for an INT, since the DB can also score 3-point TDs (Linebacker INTs balance the other receiving TDs from TEs and RBs) and often the INT results in both, keeping the TD scores at the base value of 6 points. I noted that a large majority of Touchdowns from INTs were usually long plays which would be 'doubled', so I cut the Defensive Touchdown base value in half (to 3 points) to keep the DBs from overloading the scores with 12-pointers (which would make them much more valuable than WRs). The lack of TDs is balanced by the additional Defensive points being awarded for non-scoring plays (such as Sacks and non-scoring INTs).
Kick Returner — Fairly simple. Only one player is involved, so a Return TD's value was initially set at the base of 6 points. The Double Rule could be applied without inflating too many scores, because Return TDs are pretty rare. However, these TDs are going to be "doubled" almost every single time, so the final value was cut in half (to 3 pts). They are rare enough that simply getting one is enough of a bonus.
I also had to consider that the KR is being used by the RFL at their normal position and they don't actually have to return kicks, so to award 12 points for Doubled scores to a player that can also score in other ways could create inflated scores in what was intended to be a 'flexible' lineup position.
Offensive Linemen — Try as I might, I simply could not find any way to include Offensive Linemen. There were no stats for them in Box Scores. So be it.
Summary — By keeping the Defensive scoring lower than the Offense, I achieved the goals of; using individual Defensive players, giving them various ways to score, and not inflating the scoring to an unrealistic level. As for the Offense; When Rushing is trendy, RBs will properly outscore everyone. When Passing is king, the QBs and WRs will rule the land.
It played out pretty well.
