College football eligibility used to be a simple sentence: four seasons of competition within five calendar years. It hasn’t been simple in a while. Between the four-game redshirt rule, the medical hardship waiver, the COVID-19 blanket year, the transfer portal, the graduate transfer exception, and a wave of lawsuits over junior-college years, the question “how … Read more
Intentional grounding is the penalty for a quarterback throwing the ball away to avoid a sack when he isn’t allowed to — and the definition of “allowed to” is where the NFL and college football part ways. Both rulebooks agree on the principle: a passer facing pressure can’t just fling the ball into the dirt … Read more
A touchback is what happens when a kick, punt, or turnover ends in the end zone without a return: the play is dead and the receiving team takes over on its own side of the field. It’s one of the most common outcomes in football and one of the least understood, because the spot where … Read more
The fair catch is one of football’s oldest and simplest rules — a returner waves an arm overhead, catches the ball, and the play is dead where he caught it, with no contact allowed — and yet it has become one of the sport’s most consequential, because kickoff and punt rules have changed so much … Read more
Every NFL team’s 17-game schedule is decided long before the schedule release show in May — in fact, 14 of the 17 opponents are locked in the moment the previous season’s standings are final. That’s because the league uses a fixed rotation formula: who you play is determined by your division, a rotating cross-divisional cycle, … Read more
Total QBR — usually just “QBR” — is ESPN’s quarterback rating system, introduced in 2011 as an answer to everything the traditional passer rating leaves out. Where passer rating looks at four passing stats and nothing else, QBR tries to measure a quarterback’s total contribution to winning: passing, rushing, sacks taken, fumbles, penalties drawn, and … Read more
PPR stands for “points per reception,” and it’s the scoring wrinkle that reshaped fantasy football over the last 15 years. In a standard league, a player scores for yards and touchdowns. In a PPR league, he also earns a point every time he catches a pass — a full point in full PPR, half a … Read more
Passer rating is the NFL’s official quarterback statistic — the number that shows up in every box score, on every broadcast graphic, and next to “158.3” whenever someone has a perfect game. It has been the league’s standard since 1973, and it remains the most-cited single measure of passing efficiency even though nearly everyone agrees … Read more
Every fantasy football expert publishes rankings, but the sharpest drafters don’t draft off a numbered list — they draft off tiers. Tier-based drafting groups players of roughly equal expected value together and separates the groups where real drop-offs occur. Instead of asking “who is the 14th-best running back?” you ask “how many running backs are … Read more
If you’ve opened a fantasy football draft room in the last decade, you’ve seen ADP — Average Draft Position — sitting next to every player’s name. It’s the single most-used number in fantasy drafting, and one of the most misunderstood. ADP is not a ranking and it’s not a projection. It’s a market price: the … Read more