FLOF 2010 Scoring Changes

Well, here's some meat we Rules Committee geeks have been chewing on: scoring.

Here's the quick and dirty:

• Thrown INTs now penalize 2 pts instead of 3
• Sacks taken by an offensive player (most often the QB) penalize 1 pt
• A FG is now worth 4 pts if made from 45+ yards, previously 40+
• Tackles by offensive players will now be counted.  (Not really a rule change, more an emphasis for 2010)
• Any fumble by a player penalizes 1 pt.  This replaces the rule that penalized 3 pts for a lost fumble.

A word about that last one.  First, these are what we think of as offensive fumble.  Players putting the ball on the ground.  The change is that while we used to penalize you 3 points only if a fumble was a lost fumble, we will now penalize 1 point for any fumble, lost or not.  So we dropped the penalty and increased the frequency.

Want to know what we were thinking?

The idea behind the fumble change is that there have been some studies done that show that whether a fumble is a 50/50 proposition and is essentially random.  The event that was more in the player's control was the fumble itself, not whether their team recovered it or the other team did.  I also felt that this would spread out the penalty.  Particularly for WRs or the occasional defensive player, a fumble lost could completely erase an otherwise average showing.  A WR could have a 60 yard receiving day then lose a fumble and net 0 pts for the day.  This way, they would most likely lose 1 point, but it would also likely happen a little more frequently.

The tackles issue is not really a rules change as noted above.  Theoretically, we should be counting tackles made by a QB, RB, WR, or K but we just never did because it was a pain in the but.  But we're going to officially commit to doing that now.

Moving the threshold for a 4-pt FG was mostly a kickers aren't real football players thing as far as I could tell.  Actually, the argument was made that FG accuracy has improved and a 40 yd FG isn't what it used to be and that we should move that back to 45.  We also debated adding a second threshold at 50 yds, but did not.

Sacks taken have been added as a stat because I've read some studies suggesting that sacks are much more QB dependent then perhaps previously assumed.  The studies looked at QBs who changed teams and saw that their sack rates tended to stay the same even with completely different offensive lines and schemes.  So we will now penalize (mostly QBs) 1 pt for each sack taken.

Some similar research I've seen shows that INTs are much less QB driven then previously assumed.  The some studies looking at QBs moving teams found that INT rates can change drastically when a QB moves teams.  Some arguments were made for dropping INTs thrown to a 1 pt penalty but it was decided that the INT was still an important event that needed to be scored accordingly.  So -2 carried the day.  This should also help balance out the negative impact the sack scoring will have on QBs.

Generally, none of these mods should have much impact on scores generally.  Although it is likely to drop K scoring a bit.

The committee also debated bringing back the safety as a scored event but couldn't come to agreement on how to score it.  We also debated changing other fumble related scoring on the defensive side of things, but did not get any traction on that.