You down with PPR? Yeah you know me.

I hope all of you got the Naughty by Nature joke in the title. If not, your old school hip hop game needs work. We are about three weeks away from the start of the NFL season and for me, that has everything to do with fantasy football and much less to do with how the NFC West will shake out or just how many times we will ask, “Wait, Kelly Jennings is still alive?” this season for the Seahawks.

He's like Oscar the Grouch level of garbage

Fantasy football is something very near and dear to my heart, like Katy Perry or my 10th grade health teacher. God bless Ms. Buehler. I have been playing fantasy football since I was in the fifth grade. My brother who is ten years older than myself got me into it and I have been hooked ever since. I have won my brother’s league twice, amassing over 3,000 US dollars in earnings from that league ever since owning my own team when I was 12. I am also the commissioner in two more leagues and participate in my co-author’s league as well. But I don’t like that league as much, and I will explain why in this post. Every league that I play in except for his uses what is called a PPR scoring system. PPR stands for Points Per Reception. Normally, a fantasy football league uses what is called a standard scoring system. Points are awarded for the following statistical benchmarks:

1 point per 10 yards rushing/receiving and 6 points for a rushing or receiving touchdown.

Boring. PPR injects more scoring into this standard system, but for a legitimate reason. PPR gives out one point per reception that an offensive player makes. Let’s look at this scoring system in practice. We are going to compare Arian Foster of the Houston Texans week 6 statistics against the Chiefs to Michael Turner of the Atlanta Falcons week 7 statistics against the Bengals.

Foster: 71 yards rushing, 2 touchdowns, 6 catches for 26 yards.

Turner: 121 yards rushing, 2 touchdowns, 2 catches for 23 yards.

In a standard league, Foster would have scored 7.1 points from rushing yards, 12 (2×6) points from touchdowns, and 2.6 points from receiving yards-bringing him to a total of 21.7 points. Turner would have scored 12.1 points from rushing yards, 12 (2×6) points from touchdowns, and 2.3 points from receiving yards-bringing him to a total of 26.4 points. In theory, Turner had the much better game; outscoring Foster by 4.7 points. But inject a little PPR into this bad boy and the fun begins. Foster would gain an extra 6 points into his total for his 6 catches to bring his total up to 27.7 while Turner gains 2 points for his 2 catches, pulling him to 28.4 points. Turner still had the better game, but Foster’s feat of hauling in six catches is rewarded and enhances his scoring total closer to someone who only caught two passes. Standard leagues ignore an important statistic in receptions. PPR values the athletic feat that catching a pass is, just as running for yardage and scoring touchdowns is rewarded.

You can’t tell me that doesn’t deserve a point. In my opinion, PPR respects the entirety of a player’s performance, not just part of it. Stanton’s fantasy league plays with standard scoring, and I openly hate it because of everything I have mentioned. When you are watching ESPN on Sunday night and you see Andre Johnson had 10 catches in a game and he’s on your team, I want you to be stoked, not disinterested, that he did that and you can add 10 points to your team’s total. So if you are in a league, suggest PPR to your commish, link him this article if you need to. You won’t be disappointed.

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