Here are two 2025 running backs. One rushed for 1,595 yards and 16 touchdowns. The other rushed for 1,350 and 8. On the ground that is a landslide, and it is not close.
The first is Derrick Henry. The second is De'Von Achane. In a full-PPR league this site has Achane finishing 2025 on 322.8 fantasy points and Henry on 279.5. The back who ran for 245 fewer yards and half the touchdowns scored 43 more points. Switch the league to standard scoring and it flips: Henry 264.5, Achane 255.8. Same two seasons, same box scores, different winner.
The whole difference is 52 catches. That is the article. The rest is why it works out that way, and what to do about it in three weeks when you are on the clock.
A catch is worth a full point
Full-PPR scoring pays one point for a reception. Half-PPR pays half a point. Standard pays nothing for the catch and only scores the yards and the touchdown after it. That single setting is the largest scoring difference between two leagues that otherwise look identical, and most people never check which one they are in until the numbers stop making sense.
Here is how large. Take any pass-catcher's PPR total on this site and subtract his standard total. The number you get back is his catch count, exactly. Amon-Ra St. Brown caught 117 balls in 2025 and finished on 324 points in PPR and 207 in standard. That gap is 117, to the point. Ja'Marr Chase caught 125 and the gap is 125. In half-PPR the gap is exactly half the catches. There is no modelling in that, no projection, nothing to argue with. A reception is a point or it is nothing, and your commissioner already decided which.
Achane and Henry are the same argument twice
Achane caught 67 passes in 2025. Henry caught 15.
In PPR, those 52 extra catches are 52 points that land in Achane's column before you count a single yard, and they are most of why he finishes 43 clear of a back who ran for 245 more yards and eight more scores. In standard, those 52 catches are worth zero, Henry's rushing does what rushing does, and he comes out ahead by nine. Neither number is wrong. They are answering two different questions, and the question is set by your league, not by the players.
So which back is better? In my main league, which is PPR, it is Achane and it is not particularly close. If you had asked me the same question about the same two seasons in a standard league I would have said Henry, and I would have been just as sure. That is the part that trips people up. They carry one ranking into every draft and never notice that the ranking was built for a format they might not be playing.
The position it hits hardest is tight end
Trey McBride caught 126 passes in 2025. That is a wide receiver's volume from a position most people draft last and think about least.
In PPR it made him a 315.9-point player, inside the top handful at any position. In standard it made him a 189.9-point player, which is fine and unremarkable. The 126-point swing between those two numbers is the same swing as everywhere else, catch for catch, but it lands on a position where a high-volume tight end is the exact profile a standard-league drafter should fade and a PPR drafter should chase. The catches did not change. The league changed what they were worth.
The part that should keep you honest
None of this is "draft the pass-catchers and stop thinking". In a standard league it is the reverse, and Henry over Achane is the correct call, not a contrarian one. The catch is only a point if your league awards it, and a back who piles up dump-offs in a blowout is banking checkdowns, not proving anything about next year.
There is also a limit I keep running into and cannot fully close. Volume in one season does not promise volume in the next, and a receiving role can vanish when a coordinator or a quarterback changes. The catches were real. Whether they repeat is a different bet, and the projections already fold your format into their totals if you set it, so when this site's ranking and your gut disagree, the ranking usually knows something about the exchange rate that your gut has not counted.
How I use it on draft night
I check the league format before I look at a single player. In PPR I move the pass-catching backs and the target hogs up and let the pure runners slide. In standard I do the opposite and stop apologising for taking the guy who scores touchdowns. If two players are close on this site's rankings and one of them caught seventy passes last year, the format tells me which way to break the tie before I have thought about anything else.
All of these numbers were read on 19 August 2026 from this site's own player pages, which update most nights, so by the time you read this they will have moved a little. The shape will not. A catch is worth a point or it is worth nothing, and the only thing you have to know first is which league you are in.