There's a short answer and a long answer to the question, "What is 'The Mark'?" The short answer will let you move on. The long answer will explain the theory and background.

The short answer

For those of you new to IDPBlitz.com, "The Mark" is associated with our premium Starter Advice service. It's a measure of how many points a player should score to be considered a productive fantasy player that week. The number varies in Tackle, Big Play and Balanced leagues, which are described in Standard Scoring Systems.

The long answer

"The Mark" is a way to measure consistency in fantasy football players. A few other sites and magazines have latched onto the idea that consistency is important when fielding a fantasy team. "The Mark" was born in 2002 from an observation I made about my fantasy team's performance in a certain league.

I started noticing that if my team scored X number of points, it had about a 70% chance of winning. This really shifted my thinking. First, instead of worrying about my opponent so much, I focused on how to maximize my chances of hitting X points with my team. Then, as my thinking and experience with that idea developed, I started figuring out how many points each position would have to contribute in order to achieve the total of X points.

I figured out what a "reasonable good game" was for each position. These numbers are tweaked over time. On the IDP side of the lineup, I noticed that the numbers for DL, LB and DB contribution were not significantly different from each other, at least for that particular league. So as I have built the concept of "The Mark" into IDPBlitz.com, I've used the same targets for DL, LB and DB, but the targets change for each league. You could certainly argue with that decision, as most people lower their expectations for DLs in particular. But because IDPBlitz already talks about 3 kinds of leagues and 3 kinds of scoring systems, I decided to eliminate 1 level of complexity from the system!

Consequently, you'll see "The Mark" tossed around quite a bit. You'll find that, at IDPBlitz, we most highly prize those players who score highest in "The Mark" over the course of a season. An example from 2005 was Jeremiah Trotter. While he did not score in the top 10 in any system in total points, he was in the top 10 in every system in "The Mark."

• In tackle leagues, Trotter was 12th in total points, 7th in consistency.
• In big play leagues, Trotter was 24th in total points, 9th in consistency.
• In balanced leagues, Trotter was 19th in total points, 7th in consistency.

Therefore, Trotter was the guy you wanted in your lineup week in, week out. There are some players who are the opposite: inflated point totals, but poor consistency. They have huge weeks, then they zero out. The problem was these guys is that they won't be in your lineup during the week they break out. Then you'll get excited, plug them in, and score a zero with them the next week.

That's one reason why IDPBlitz is so valuable. Having a system that helps you win, week after week, trumps the total points system most of the time - 70% anyway!