Are you ready for the next level of fantasy football? Tired of being bored in those 6-3 Defensive showdowns on Thursday night? Frustrated with streaming DSTs weekly and losing from an opponent’s lucky pick-six?
IDP – Individual Defensive Player – is the solution for your fantasy teams. You can find a multitude of tools and resources on TheIDPCenter.com for both newcomers to IDP and grizzled IDP veterans.
What is IDP?
IDP or Individual Defensive Player is where you play each individual player on defense as opposed to the team DST. Instead of drafting the Cowboys DST, you might take Micah Parsons, Trevon Diggs, or other star defensive players. IDP stats are of course very different than offense. It is a very crude comparison, but as a general concept, offense rushing yards can roughly be compared to IDP tackles, offense points per reception (PPR) to IDP tackles for loss or passes defended, while offense touchdowns are similar to IDP turnovers or sacks. The IDP Center has a full suite of guides and resources for those new to IDP and hosts Intro to IDP free bestball leagues for curious managers to give it a try!
The Struggle of New IDP Managers
IDP is a more niche area of fantasy and can be very overwhelming to try to tackle for a newcomer, trying to learn almost double the fantasy relevant players overnight. At the IDP Center there is a series of guides to help you ease into the world of IDP. Furthermore, they host their Intro to IDPC bestball leagues, which are free to join and only play with certain position groups. For example their Intro to IDP 1 league played with offense and Defensive line only, whereas Intro to IDP 3 uses offense, defensive line, and linebackes. At last count, their first 3 Intro leagues this summer have already been filled, and Intro to IDP 4 is now recruiting, which can be joined via their discord.
IDP Scoring and Relevant Rankings
If you are new to IDP, or an IDP veteran, there’s a big problem with IDP resources right now. If you are in a league that uses FantasyPros IDP scoring compared to Big3 or even sleeper123, with 3 IDP starters versus 12, the value of IDP players vary dramatically. TJ watt might be worth the same as Justin Jefferson in one league, but no more than Devin Singletary in another. This makes most IDP resources very hard to use
for most IDP managers where rankings may not correlate to their league, which makes IDP a lot less attractive and cumbersome. FantasyPros ECR is only useful in high tackle scoring games, while Sleeper projections do not account for Tackles for Loss nor Quarterback Hits, both of which are commonly used stats in most IDP leagues.
The IDP Center is a fantasy football site, with great resources that fix this issue, with tools that can be used for ANY type of IDP scoring. The IDP Center breaks down IDP scoring and depth into 9 simple categories, shallow, standard, and deep based on the number of IDP starters, and for each depth into three scoring categories. These three scoring categories are tackle heavy (similar to FantasyPros IDP scoring), balanced (similar to sleeper123 scoring), and impact heavy (similar to Big3 scoring). This allows their IDP trade value chart to be the only one in the industry useful to managers regardless of league and format. As an added advantage, these values of the IDP trade value chart use the same scale as their Offense trade value chart, allowing you to see what IDP player values are compared to their offense counterpart.
The IDP Center
Overall, The IDP Center has a wide variety of fantasy football resources, particularly focused on IDP, to help lower barriers of entry and make playing fantasy football with IDP easier and more fun. Their discord is already home to over 400 fantasy football managers, complete with advisors and analysts to answer questions specific to your league and team. The IDP Center hosts startup dynasty leagues, redraft leagues, veteran money leagues, and free bestballs for all members of the fantasy community. Take a look at TheIDPCenter.com and join their discord!
