The Big Ben-Brown fantasy fight going on during the Ravens/Steelers game last night made me wonder what the difference is in points awarded to QBs and receivers in our league for touchdown passes. One team has the QB, one team has the star WR - if you have the QB in that situation, and they have to throw a TD to that particular receiver, is it better if it’s a 1-yard toss or an 80-yard screamer?
I compared the points a QB and the TD-catcher receive for a 1 yard touchdown pass, all the way up to a 100-yard receiving TD. The results are shown, points-wise, in the graph below, alongside a selected portion of the data.
| Yards | QB pts | Receiver pts | QB % | Receiver % | Pts gained for receiver’s team |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4.04 | 6.6 | 37.97% | 62.03% | 2.56 |
| 5 | 4.2 | 7 | 37.50% | 62.50% | 2.8 |
| 10 | 4.4 | 7.5 | 36.97% | 63.03% | 3.1 |
| 15 | 4.6 | 8 | 36.51% | 63.49% | 3.4 |
| 20 | 4.8 | 8.5 | 36.09% | 63.91% | 3.7 |
| 30 | 5.2 | 9.5 | 35.37% | 64.63% | 4.3 |
| 40 | 5.6 | 10.5 | 34.78% | 65.22% | 4.9 |
| 50 | 6 | 11.5 | 34.29% | 65.71% | 5.5 |
| 60 | 6.4 | 12.5 | 33.86% | 66.14% | 6.1 |
| 70 | 6.8 | 13.5 | 33.50% | 66.50% | 6.7 |
| 80 | 7.2 | 14.5 | 33.18% | 66.82% | 7.3 |
| 90 | 7.6 | 15.5 | 32.90% | 67.10% | 7.9 |
| 100 | 8 | 16.5 | 32.65% | 67.35% | 8.5 |
The receiver always gets more points than the QB, and this would still be the case if we awarded 6 points instead of 4 for a QB touchdown pass. The longer the pass, the bigger the difference. A 10-yard reception will give the owner of the receiver a 3.1 point gain on their QB-owning opponent. A 30-yarder ups that to a 4.3 point gain.
It’s not just the actual point difference that increases - the percentage of the total points up for grabs given to the receiver of the pass actually gets bigger, too. For example, the QB receives nearly 38% of the point haul for a 1 yard TD pass (4.04 points for the QB, 6.6 for the receiver - total points dished out: 10.64), but under 35% for a 40 yarder (5.6 QB points compared to 10.5 to the receiver).
The underlying reason for all of this is the difference in points per yard for each position: 0.04 per QB passing yard, 0.1 per receiving yard.
So, it may be obvious, but if you’ve got the receiver in a matchup against their QB, then you want long TD passes, and lots of them.
Britannia Bowl latest score: Gateshead Spartans 115.1 - 123.4 Coventry Eagles. Only one player is left to play: the Spartans’ Golden Tate, in the early hours tonight. It’s gonna be mighty close.