After seven long months without football, the National Football League schedule commences this weekend. And with the beginning of a football season, millions of Americans across the nation are getting back to the fun-loving grind that is Fantasy Football.

Though there are some versions of Fantasy Football applied to NCAA football, its a pastime almost exclusively focused on pro ball. Certainly, scoring high school football games by NFL-style Fantasy metrics is not all that common.

But why not award NFL-style Fantasy points to great offensive performances in high school football games? If it’s just for fun and meant to reward local high school players for sterling games on the gridiron, what’s the harm in it?

So that’s what we decided to do here at the Summit Daily with the recent history of the Summit Tigers varsity football program.

We looked at each of the games since Tigers head coach John Shirkey took over the program leading into the fall 2016 season. Since then, the Tigers have played in 22 total games with a myriad of offensive skill position players racking up impressive statistics.

Through the website MaxPreps.com, individual game statistics were submitted for all but three of the Tigers 22 games under Shirkey. Diving into each of those 19 games, we crunched the numbers for the 68 top individual offensive performances. These games included strong outputs from such current and recent Tiger football players as quarterback Brendan Collins, wide receiver Eddie Jain and running back Matt Francomano.

Once we had all of those different offensive numbers — such as total yards and ouchdowns for passing, rushing and receiving statistics — we multiplied each individual’s total yardage and touchdown numbers by the standard amount of Fantasy points each respective stat is awarded in the NFL.

For example, when Tigers running back Dylan Lane posted the top Fantasy performance we analyzed, he did so by rushing for 83 yards and three touchdowns. He received 8.3 Fantasy points for the rushing yards, as NFL Fantasy standards award one point for every 10 rushing and receiving yards. He also received 18 points total for the three rushing touchdowns because the NFL Fantasy standards award six points for every rushing and receiving touchdown. Lane went on to total 30.8 total Fantasy points for that 2017 game at Clear Creek thanks to a further 45 receiving yards which earned him 4.5 points.

The second best hypothetical Fantasy showing came from recent Summit graduate wide receiver Vale Hildebrand when he was a senior. Hildebrand went off at Glenwood Springs as a junior in 2016, reeling in 142 receiving yard (14.2 Fantasy points) and one receiving touchdown (6 Fantasy points) to pair with 52 rushing yards (5.2 Fantasy points). In all, Hildebrand tallied 25.4 Fantasy points on that day, and showed up in our top-10 Fantasy games for the past 22 Summit games a program-high four times.

The only current Tigers football player to make the top-10 list for the past 22 games was sophomore running back Noah Martens. Last year at Eagle Valley, Martens tallied 25.2 Fantasy points on the strength of 144 rushing yards, 48 receiving yards and one rushing touchdown.

As for the best Fantasy game from a Tiger quarterback in that span, it came from 2018 graduate Jake Gillum at Niwot last year. NFL Fantasy standards award four points for every passing touchdown and a point for every 25 yards passing. Against Niwot, Gillum threw for 216 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 17 yards and a score to tally 24.34 Fantasy points for that day.

As part of our process, we also factored in kickoff-return, punt-return and turnover-return touchdowns into our formula, each counting for six points a pop. Of the top-10 Summit Fantasy games of recent, it was Hildebrand who scored 22.8 Fantasy points at Palisade last season on the strength of two return touchdowns.

For this fall’s Summit football season, the Tigers (0-2) return to action Friday at 7 p.m. on the road at Battle Mountain (2-0). Then they’ll open up their 2018 home slate next Friday at 7 p.m., hosting Eagle Valley (0-1) at Tiger Stadium.