In this system, Team B has a modest victory. This difference in outcomes is largely due to the touchdown discrepancy, as Team A's players lucked into 15 scores (an extra 88 points) compared to Team B's only finding paydirt three times (16 points). In standard scoring, this TD deficit between Team A and Team B represents a 72-point discrepancy, but in the EPA format, it's only a 9.4-point difference.

To illustrate how hollow some of Team A's TDs were, take C.J. Anderson, who got a handoff at first-and-goal from the 1 (5.96 EPA situation) and converted for the score (now 7.00 EPA - 0.34 EPA for the Bengals after kicking off). This 1-yard rush represented a mere 0.70 in EPA, and Anderson had done nothing earlier in the drive to get the Broncos to that point of the field, the vast majority of EPA instead coming from Omar Bolden's 77-yard return to start the drive (4.51 EPA).

Not all of Team A's short TDs were as worthless as Anderson's, though. The Eagles were at 3rd-and-goal from 3 (4.56 EPA situation) when Riley Cooper caught a 3-yard TD (7.00 EPA - 0.34 EPA for the Redskins after kicking off), meaning his 2.10 EPA TD was worth triple Anderson's, though still worth the equivalent of only 30 receiving yards (compared to 60 yards in standard scoring).

Team A also had some truly valuable TDs, such as Odell Beckham Jr.'s 80-yard bomb from 3rd-and-10 from the Giants' 20 (-0.57 EPA situation), which increased the Giants' EPA to (7.00 EPA - 0.34 EPA for the Rams after kicking off), making his TD worth 7.23 EPA, roughly 3.4x the value of Cooper's score and 10.3x as valuable as Anderson's. These long, valuable TDs are relatively rare, though, as the average distance of TD-scoring plays is only 15.6 yards, meaning most TDs are of the short, not-so-valuable Cooper/Anderson variety.

Could this actually work?

Again, it's important to note that, unlike the EPA values for the TDs described here, our EPA conversion chart at the top of this post is absent from context and does not take into account the length of the play or the down. It is simply a rough average of all plays. But if a fantasy provider were to come along and run with this idea, it would be relatively simple to license stats from Advanced Football Analytics— Brian Burke already publishes the top performers by position each week—or create an approximation of its own.

The other major EPA scoring discrepancy stems from the fact that fantasy football only uses count rather than rate stats, so players like Asiata who are terribly inefficient but rack up a ton of touches aren't penalized for repeatedly running into the line for no gain and stalling drives. In Week 16, this was most evident for Marshawn Lynch, who had four such no-gain carries, which totalled to -2.51 EPA, a penalty that severely hurt the Seahawks but would go unpunished in standard scoring fantasy systems. (And to be fair, this was largely overshadowed and more than made up for his 79-yard Beastmode run.)

The stuff you'd end up losing is the wild swings on fluke players grabbing a few garbage touchdowns, or someone like Ben Roethlisberger beasting out for 45 points—a figure that would come down significantly if pegged to actual EPA. Overall, would make for a game that is more realistic, but perhaps also less exciting, which could be a tough sell—especially with interest in full-season fantasy waning in favor of one-week games like Draft Kings. Then again, given the colossal value of touchdowns now and they way they immensely shape matchups, watching games purely from a standard scoring fantasy perspective can be somewhat unexciting if your players are at midfield or in their own territory, far away from the lucrative six-point end zone.

Fantasy football is already a game that depends very heavily on luck, and using such a grossly inaccurate point system only amplifies that randomness. Whether that randomness is good for the game or not is another question.

Jim Pagels is a regular contributor to Forbes. You can follow him on Twitter at @jimpagels