Cornerbacks: The Forgotten Position
Cornerbacks. The position stands alone in fantasy football as an anomaly. It is the one position that rewards players for being picked on by an opposing team and whose performance isn’t tightly bound to how well a player performs. IDP owners frequently stream the position in a similar manner to the kicker position.
Yea, it’s THAT bad!
So why, in an era of analytics and highly refined scoring systems, is this issue allowed to persist? The question seems straightforward enough but the answer, unfortunately, is anything but. Several factors have converged to keep the position unimportant and devoid of dynasty value. Big name cornerbacks like Richard Sherman, Josh Norman and in the past Darrelle Revis simply haven’t translated as excellent assets in IDP dynasty leagues. These players tend to either be found on the waiver wire or are rarely plugged into starting line ups during heavy bye weeks. For those unfamiliar with IDP, it would be the equivalent of finding an Antonio Brown or Mike Evans on the waiver wire or kept out of a team’s starting lineup, it’s simply inconceivable.
Why then, do IDP players allow this to happen? Well, the biggest reason is either tradition or apathy, depending on how you look at it. There hasn’t been a great push to change how things have been done since the beginning of the format. Cornerbacks have always been an afterthought the logic goes, why mess with what has worked?
Well, if I’m being honest, it hasn’t worked. It’s lazy thinking and, frankly, frustrating acceptance of a problem that doesn’t have to exist. Fantasy owners wouldn’t accept if wide receivers were ignored or undervalued. Why then should IDP owners accept that their defensive counterparts are viewed as waiver fodder or something resembling bad joke? The acceptance of this travesty must have its root somewhere.
It does.
When IDP first began to form as a possibility, pioneers of the format used what they had available to them in terms of measurable statistics. Tackles were an obvious starting point, sacks, interceptions and fumbles were also statistics that were readily available to anyone with access to a box score. These statistics made scoring for non-secondary positions fairly elementary and still a large percentage of any IDP owner’s strategy revolves around these statistics.
The IDP format is much younger than its “traditional” format sibling with the first proposal of an IDP format appearing in Fantasy Football Magazine around 1993. However, it wasn’t until 2004 that the term “IDP” yields results on MyFantasyLeague.com. Mock drafts exploring the concept began about two years prior to that but 2004 was the first league which played a full season which required users to set line ups. By 2005 there were a handful more. By 2006 the first IDP auction league become a reality and the format has seen a slow but steady rise since then. This short history lesson because for the growth that the format has seen, the scoring has remained nearly identical since the format’s inception as I mentioned earlier.
As a huge proponent and supporter of the IDP format, it pains me to say this but, the format has stagnated in terms of its development. Sure, it’s growing in terms of sheer numbers, but very little has changed, been introduced or even innovated with how the format is played since its inception. Meanwhile, over that same time period, traditional fantasy has seen the emergence of auction leagues, salary cap leagues, devy leagues, 2QB leagues and several scoring changes including PPR, tight end premium and the growing PPC (points per carry) variation. Stated another way, people are finding new ways to play traditional fantasy, not so with IDP.
Most great articles inspire a call to change, so here is mine: IDP supporters must innovate and develop ways to improve the format. It is my hope that at least this small proposal to the IDP format may, at the very least, begin a discussion on how to make IDP more interesting and accessible. In my opinion, righting a long held wrong in the format is a big step toward that.
So back to this issue with cornerbacks, they may be broken in the IDP format, but how can we fix that? This solution won’t be easy and it would require some additions to how IDP is scored, but the statistics I reference in this article exist, they are tracked and they are obtainable from many different sites that track statistics. The issues here won’t be a question of if the change is possible, it will boil down to if fantasy hosts and statistic tracking sites are willing to make the needed changes.
The two statistics which will make cornerbacks a relevant piece of the IDP value landscape are targets and yards after the catch. Targets already exist for offensive players but not for defensive players. The aversion exists because not all receptions can be tied to a targeted defender, some receivers get wide open and there isn’t a defender who can be charged with the target. Honestly though, this is fine. Plenty of tackles can’t be clearly assigned to a single player, quarterback hurries are often a team effort and offensive players will run out of bounds leaving no tackler on a play. Hell, many offensive targets can’t be clearly assigned to a single player when a pass is in the vicinity of two players, why should defensive targets be different? The short answer is, they shouldn’t.
The second statistic, yards after the catch, would be beneficial not only for IDP scoring but offensive scoring as well. Think of the changes in coring that could be made if we were able to accurately define how productive various receivers were with the ball in their hands. This statistic is long overdue and is readily available from countless outlets, yet it is mysteriously absent from major live statistics offerings.
The addition of these two common statistics would instantly transform how the IDP community looks at cornerbacks. In most formats cornerbacks are locked into a unique dynamic that attempts to shoehorn the position into values that doesn’t recognize the unique skills required the position, mainly stopping passes. Take the DLF IDP league for instance, the top cornerback in the league last season was Casey Hayward. He ranked as the 145th highest ranking player in the league and only five cornerbacks even cracked the top 200! The IDP format deserves better!
To remedy this issue, I studied lots of IDP scoring formats. What I found was that tackles play the biggest part in the scoring of most cornerbacks but tackling is a secondary function of the position, just as you wouldn’t primarily score wide receivers for how they blocked. What needs to be changed is how we score cornerbacks, placing a premium on how they defend the pass. To do this we would need to implement the following changes, or variations of these changes, to IDP scoring.
First, defensive targets would be penalized at -0.5 points. The reason for this is that if a quarterback feels comfortable enough to target a receiver then the cornerback isn’t doing his job.
Second, credit must be given to cornerbacks who stay on the field no matter what substitution package is in place. Just as a WR3 sees less snaps and less point production than his WR1 and WR2 counterparts, a CB3 who only comes on the field for specific circumstances should be valued less than his CB1 and CB2 counterparts who are on the field at all times. To achieve this, cornerbacks should be given 0.1 points per snap. This is similar to how many leagues now reward running back carries with points. It’s no coincidence that running backs, another position undervalued as of late, is brought back into alignment using a similar approach.
Third, Yards After the Catch (YAC) by the receiver should negatively impact cornerback scoring. If a receiver is targeted, makes the catch and then moves the ball further downfield then this is a clear indication that the cornerback failed at his duties.
Fourth, touchdowns scored by the offense and attributable to a cornerback should be heavily penalized. If a cornerback is surrendering a touchdown then he should be penalized at the same point level as a receiver who scores a touchdown, heavily targeted cornerbacks would effectively become liabilities as opposed to players that IDP owners would seek to acquire.
Now for the moment of truth. In the original scoring format, the top cornerback was the 43rd overall defender. After the scoring change that same player became the seventh overall defender. Additionally, averaging the top 10 cornerback points when using the original scoring you find that the average score falls as the 53rd overall defender, in the new scoring the average falls as the 38th overall defender, a substantial and marked increase of 15 spots!
IDP enthusiasts must work towards enacting this change in scoring to truly make the format accessible to those not yet familiar with it. I believe that part of the slow growth in IDP is attached to this very issue. Fantasy players are hard-wired to connect on the field production with fantasy production. If they are introduced to a format that follows this logic only part of the time then most will reject it. However, by providing this alternative, the format becomes much more appealing to the common player as the logic falls in the same vein as its traditional, offensive only, sibling. IDP players must acknowledge that the format needs to be fixed and then must commit to doing so. I’ll leave you with the following quote which couldn’t describe the current state of IDP any better:
If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.
-Jim Rohn
Thank you for reading. Support IDP!
