NFL DFS: What You Should Know About FanDuel's Updated Scoring for 2024

There's just nothing quite like daily fantasy football.

Yeah, we all love drafting our season-long teams in August or at the last minute in September, negotiating trades, and making starting lineup decisions.

But there's just something different about drafting a new team each week based on the salary cap and matchups.

And for 2024, there's especially something different for NFL DFS on FanDuel: the scoring.

For the most part, the scoring is the same half-point-per-reception (half-PPR) format that we've known for a while now, but new in 2024 are bonuses for reaching certain yardage thresholds.

These aren't the only ways to score (or lose) FanDuel points (for the full list, head over to FanDuel to learn all about daily fantasy football scoring).

However, these are the primary ways that skill position players (quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends) will accrue fantasy points.

With bonuses in play now, we should think about how each position is impacted ahead of 2024.

Let's dive in.

Positional Threshold Frequency

How Often Do Quarterbacks Have 300+ Passing Yards?

Since 2016 (among quarterbacks who played on at least 75.0% of their team's offensive snaps in a game), 23.3% of them threw for 300-plus yards, making this bonus quite attainable.

That number is 24.0% if the snap cutoff is 90.0%.

How Often Do Quarterbacks Have 100+ Rushing Yards?

Keeping the 75.0% snap rate for QBs, we see just a 0.7% rate for hitting the century mark on the ground. It's still only 0.8% with a 90.0% snap rate threshold.

With that said, Lamar Jackson has done this in 20.5% of his games since 2016, making him one of two QBs -- Justin Fields (13.9%) and Colin Kaepernick (9.1%) -- over the 4.0% mark.

How Often Do Running Backs Have 100+ Rushing Yards?

For running backs with at least a 50.0% snap rate, they have netted 100+ rushing yards 16.8% of the time since 2016.

If we increase that snap rate cutoff to 60.0%, the frequency is 20.8%.

With a 70.0% snap rate baseline, the number jumps to 23.4% before hitting 25.7% at 80.0%.

How Often Do Running Backs Have 100+ Receiving Yards?

Among the sample of backs with a 50.0% in-game snap rate, only 0.9% of them have reached 100 receiving yards since 2016.

At 70.0% of the snaps, we still see just a 1.2% 100-yard game rate.

How Often Do Wide Receivers Have 100+ Receiving Yards?

Again, going back to 2016, let's check out the 100-receiving-yard game frequency from WRs based on certain snap rate thresholds.

• 50.0% of Snaps or More: 11.4%
• 60.0% of Snaps or More: 12.5%
• 70.0% of Snaps or More: 14.1%
• 80.0% of Snaps or More: 15.6%
• 90.0% of Snaps or More: 17.9%

How Often Do Tight Ends Have 100+ Receiving Yards?

In total, there have been just 186 100-yard games by tight ends since 2016. That's around 23.3 per season (including playoffs). For what it's worth, 42 of these 186 have come from Travis Kelce.

Since 2016, this works out to a 6.9% 100-yard rate among TEs with an 80.0% snap rate.

Quarterback NFL DFS Scoring

Naturally, every position's baseline scoring will go up because there are simply now more ways to add FanDuel points.

In 2023, quarterbacks who played at least 75.0% of their team's offensive snaps averaged 17.4 FanDuel points per game in the old scoring system but would've averaged 18.1 in the new system with bonuses.

Let's look at the weight of each passing stat in terms of its impact on FanDuel points now among these qualified games (75.0% of snaps or more in-game).

We see a few things here: namely, passing yardage becomes more important than it used to be by 1.7 percentage points. Yards and the bonus potential comprise 56.9% of FanDuel Points from QBs in these qualified games.

As a tradeoff, we see a dip of 1.3 percentage points from passing touchdowns alone.

This isn't to say that TDs aren't important any longer, but a 300-yard passing bonus nets us 75% as many FanDuel points as a passing touchdown does now.

This helps to level out the performance for a QB with a big passing day who just didn't happen to toss too many scores.

Pocket Passers Will Benefit

Here's a glimpse at the passers who would've benefitted the most (in terms of added fantasy points per game) among those with at least eight qualified games in 2023.

This tracks.

As we laid out, QBs are substantially more likely to throw for 300-plus yards (23.3% of the time in qualified games) than to run for 100-plus yards (0.7%), so the majority of QBs netting bonuses will be pocket passers who log more yardage.

Only two QBs (Jackson and Fields) had a 100-yard game on the ground last season, but 34 QBs had a 300-yard passing game.

We'll loop back to the impact of stacking later on.

Running Back NFL DFS Scoring

With the yardage bonuses for running backs in play since 2016, we would've seen a jump of 0.74 points per game among backs with at least a 70.0% snap rate, 0.65 points per game among backs with at least a 60.0% snap rate, and 0.53 among backs with at least a 50.0% snap rate, which tracks because volume is required to surpass any yardage bonuses.

When using a 60.0% cutoff, here's a snapshot of how the bonuses would've changed scoring weighting since 2016.

Notably, every non-rushing yards stat sees a decline in weighting for running backs, so now, rushing yards should account for more FanDuel points among the RBs we're considering drafting (i.e. those playing at least 60.0% of the snaps) to our teams each week.

Featured Backs Will Benefit

While we may think that traditional running backs (i.e. those who rack up carries but don't get a lot of targets) will benefit a lot, it's primarily the featured backs who get even more of a boost -- even though only rushing yards count for the rushing bonus.

There have been 775 games of 100-plus rushing yards by RBs since 2016, and of those 775, 653 (or 84.3%) came when the RB had at least a 50.0% snap rate.

That number jumps to 95.2% (or 738) if you drop the snap threshold to 40.0%.

Now, I think it's fair to follow-up with a question about backs who play roughly half of their team's snaps but may not have a claim to all the receiving work.

Put another way, "What about those early-down backs who play 45% of the snaps and have 17 carries per game?" You know -- those types of RBs.

What about those RBs with a 40.0% to 60.0% in-game snap rate? That's a sample just shy of 3,000 individual games since 2016.

As a group, the hit rate of a 100-yard rushing game is only 7.5%.

So, take a random back with a 40.0% to 60.0% in-game snap rate since 2016, and you have less than a 10.0% chance that that particular RB goes over 100 yards on the ground.

That 100-yard game frequency bounces up to 19.1% if looking at 1,860 RB games with between a 60.0% and 80.0% snap rate -- the more featured backs (but still cutting off the truly elite standouts above an 80.0% snap rate).

Let's do one more bit of analysis.

Maybe snap rate alone isn't the best way to describe workload, so let's look at in-game rushing attempts.

Here's the 100-yard rate based on buckets of in-game rushing attempts.

(Because I know you're curious, the 0.02% on 5 or fewer carries came solely from Nick Chubb, who put up 102 yards on 3 carries in 2018.)

Let's put a bow on this and bring it back to snaps.

Of the 727 games where a back has had at least 21 carries (where the 100-yard odds really spike), 690 (94.9%) played at least 50.0% of their team's snaps that game.

Only 3 RBs (0.4%) to net 21-plus carries had under a 40.0% snap rate since 2016.

Wide Receiver NFL DFS Scoring

With TDs scarcer at WR than at RB and TE and with the chance to rack up big plays quickly through the air, do we see a big shift in wide receiver scoring based on the bonuses?

Not quite.

Among WRs with a 80.0% snap rate or better, they would increased their FanDuel by just 0.47 points per game since 2016 given the bonus opportunity.

For the following FDP weighting analysis, I'll rely on that 80.0% snap rate cutoff just mentioned.

Here is how the yardage bonus alters the FanDuel point distribution.

Yardage (plus the bonus) becomes more of a portion of the output for WRs, now accounting for nearly 60.0% of all FanDuel points (again, among players with at least an 80.0% snap rate).

High-Volume Wide Receivers Will Benefit

We've already hashed out the probability of a 100-yard game for WRs (which is relatively low even among players with a 90.0% snap rate).

When we look at workload not as snaps but as targets, we -- naturally -- see a heavy relationship with volume and 100-yard odds.

While this isn't groundbreaking, I think it's important to remember that there really isn't a "it only takes one" type of archetype at WR when the criteria we need to hit is 100 yards.

Put more clearly, WRs racking up 100 yards on 5 targets because they're all-or-nothing looks just don't really exist at a bankable rate.

Tight End NFL DFS Scoring

I'll keep this section shorter because it doesn't really need as much discussion as the other positions.

The key reason for that is that 100-yard games from tight ends aren't that common.

In 2023, only 11 different tight ends recorded a 100-yard game, and only four of them -- George Kittle (3), Travis Kelce (2), Trey McBride (2), and David Njoku (2) -- did it more than once in the regular season.

In total, there have been just 186 100-yard games by tight ends since 2016. That's around 23.3 per season (including playoffs). For what it's worth, 42 of these 186 have come from Kelce.

Let's take a snapshot of the new distribution of FanDuel points at TE (including games since 2016 with an 80.0% snap rate).

At the end of the day, receiving yards still account for the majority of FanDuel points at tight end. There is an increase on yardage now due to the bonus (as expected -- because yards are the only boosted stat with the new scoring).

But with the lack of 100-yard games at the position, there's not a lot we can do with the new scoring unless we aim to prioritize the high-ceiling tight ends in hopes they eclipse the 100-yard mark.

Yardage Bonuses and Stacking

Stacking in daily fantasy football is a staple, but there might be even more reason to be sensitive to pairing teammates now with yardage bonuses.

300-Yard Passers Stacked With Teammates

Since 2016, when a quarterback has played at least 75.0% of his team's offensive snaps in a game, here are some trends to know.

• Across the full sample, qualified QBs have a 100-yard pass-catcher in 32.0% of their games.
• In games when the QB throws for fewer than 300 yards himself, there's been a 22.4% chance that a teammate of his hit the 100-yard receiving mark.
• But in 72.2% of games when the QB has thrown for more than 300 yards himself, he had at least one 100-yard pass-catcher.

Getting a pocket passer over 300 yards and a pass-catcher of his over 100 yards means 6.0 added FanDuel points from yardage bonuses -- equivalent to a rushing or receiving touchdown.

Naturally, we see a relationship with teammate rushing yards when a QB goes for 300-plus or not.

• Across the full sample, qualified QBs have had a 100-yard rushing teammate in 18.2% of their games.
• When falling short of 300 passing yards, the odds they had a teammate over 100 rushing yards goes up to 20.0%.
• When racking up more than 300 passing yards, the odds they have a teammate over 100 rushing yards plummets to 10.6%.

Historically, cases to be made for pairing QBs and RBs were interesting (such as getting a piece of virtually every touchdown that a high-scoring offense with a featured back would accrue). Now, from a ceiling standpoint, it's harder to justify.

100-Yard Rushers Stacked With Teammates

When an RB goes for 100 yards in a game, we've already seen that it typically stems from heavy volume and snaps. That usually means fewer pass attempts for his team.

This is true, but it's not nearly as obviously linked as we see with QB production.

In games since 2016 in which an RB has played at least 60.0% of his team's snaps, here's the data to know.

• Across the full sample, a qualified RB is 33.4% likely to have a 100-yard receiving teammate.
• In games where the RB went for under 100 rushing yards, that frequency climbs to 34.6%.
• In games when the RB goes for over 100 rushing yards, that frequency drops to 29.0%.

There's still a correlation, but again, it's not as drastic as we see with QBs and pass-catchers.

FanDuel NFL DFS Scoring Takeaways

The bonuses added to FanDuel scoring shouldn't totally change the way we break down daily fantasy football. However, a few things jumped out here.

• Pocket passers are now more interesting, especially when they are in good matchups with yardage potential.
• For the most part, running backs still need a huge workload to hit the bonus, and because that's generally who we are targeting at the position anyway, it doesn't change things too much.
• At WR, 100-yard games are generally coming from the studs, but the yardage bonus will help level out a big game without TDs.
• Tight ends rarely eclipse 100 receiving yards, and non-elite TEs almost never do it.
• Stacking a 300-yard passer and 100-yard receiver will net 6.0 extra FanDuel points now, and there's a strong relationship between those two occurrences.
• While 100-yard rushers and 100-yard receivers can still hit for the same offense, we should be mindful of stacking teammates if seeking to maximize the bonus potential.

Gear up for NFL season! Customers who bet $5 will get a free trial of NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube & YouTube TV! This promo expires September 22nd. See here for full terms and conditions.

Looking for the latest NFL odds? Head over to FanDuel Sportsbook and check out all of the NFL betting options.

Sign up for FanDuel Sportsbook and FanDuel Daily Fantasy today!

The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.