Tomlinson pushed many teams to fantasy titles.

Bill Simmons wrote about LaDainian Tomlinson last month and called him the best fantasy football player of all-time. “Greatest ever” debates are always subjective, but at least when it comes to fantasy football, we can get pretty close to declaring a definitive answer. Joe Bryant’s landmark “Value Base Drafting” system explained that the “value of a player is determined not by the number of points he scores, but by how much he outscores his peers at his particular position.” Bryant came up with the concept of calculating a ‘VBD’ number for each player to measure their value.

A player’s VBD is easy to calculate. Each player’s VBD score is the difference between the amount of fantasy points he scored and the fantasy points scored by the worst starter (at his position) in your fantasy league. A player who scores fewer fantasy points than the worst starter has a VBD of 0. There is no standard scoring system for fantasy leagues, so a player’s fantasy points total will depend on the specific league’s scoring rules. ^[1]I’ve decided to use a blend of the most common scoring options: 1 point per 20 yards passing, 5 points per passing touchdown, -2 points per interception, 6 points for rushing/receiving … Continue reading And, of course, his VBD score will change depending on the number of starters at each position in the league. ^[2]Again, I’m using a blend here, but for baseline purposes I’m using QB12, RB24, WR32 and TE12, since the standard 12-team league starts 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2-3 WRs and 1 TE.

That said, once you pick a scoring system and a set of rules, it’s easy to calculate career VBD scores for every player since 1950 ^[3]I’ve pro-rated production for those players who were part of seasons when the NFL did not have a 16-game schedule; I also changed the baseline numbers depending on the number of teams in the … Continue reading. Let’s start with the quarterbacks:

Peter Read Miller won the Dave Boss Award of Excellence for the 2005 Action Photo of the Year with this outstanding photo of Tomlinson.

On the eve of LaDainian Tomlinson’s retirement announcement, SI’s Peter King named his top-five most versatile runners of the last 30 years. Declaring Walter Payton just outside the time period, King selected Marshall Faulk, Tomlinson, Thurman Thomas, Darren Sproles, and Marcus Allen as his most versatile running backs since 1982.

There are many ways to quibble with his list, but let’s turn this into a bit of trivia. Defining versatile is subjective, but for purposes of this trivia question, I’ll define versatile as any season by a running back where he:

• Caught at least 50 passes

• Gained at least 1400 yards from scrimmage

• Averaged at least 4.5 yards per carry

Tomlinson (4), Faulk (3) and Thomas (2) each had multiple seasons where they reached all three bench marks. Marcus Allen did it once, in 1985; Sproles has never done it (he had only 1313 yards from scrimmage last year, a career high).

Tomlinson ranks 2nd over the past 30 years in most “versatile” seasons. But one running back reached all three benchmarks in six different seasons. Can you guess who?