[anshuman]

As I am new to this sport,I want to gather some information on what actually IDP league is all about?

[Aargyle]

Individual Defensive Players (?) I've always assumed is what it means.

Instead of a standard league where you take some combination of offensive players (QB/TE/WR/RB/K) and a whole teams defense (Steelers - Def), you pick individual players. So when I run my broncos homer team I go something like:

DB (Corner or Safety, so Bailey)
DB
LB (Linebacker, inside/middle/outside)
LB
DL (Defensive line- either ends or NT)
D (Flex, any of the above)

>Here< is the homers league thread, the only IDP I've ever played. About half-way down I start asking should we change the Defensive settings, and it's a good place to see what other people play both as far as players and points. One part in there I give Yahoo point totals to give you an example of defensive points:

Tackle solo 1 (same)
Tackle Assist 1 (lowered to .5)
Sack 2 (changed to 4)
Interception 2 (changed to 4)
Forced fumble 0 (changed to 2)
Fumble recovery 2 (same)
D TD 6 (same)
Safety 2 (changed to 5)
Pass Defended 0
Blocked Kick 0

I imagine there are as many variants of number and type of positions, as well as scoring types, as there are for offensive fantasy football numbers.

Having never played a season with a real IDP team, I can't tell you where to draft D players. I think in mocks I've done they start going after the 5th round, so O players are worth "more", but players with great Defensive teams and weaker O teams will still have a great chance to win.

Why you don't see many (this is the first thread this year, I think there was one last year?) is the reason some like them: you need to know a ton about players, and keep track of many more individual players (basically double, now really track raiders D players besides normal fantasy relevant O players). That's a pretty big time/mind commitment, from what I've seen.