All About the Solo: Week One

Eric Olinger

worrilow

One of the more frustrating things in IDP leagues is seeing your stud linebacker fly all over the field on game days only to see the home score keeper dilute his performance by divvying up his tackles as an assist. On the flip side, if your league doesn’t score solos and assists too differently, you’ll have a better idea of what teams hand out assists like candy. Not everyone knows this, but the NFL does not recognize a tackle as an official statistic. Tackles are scored by the home team’s official score keeper and those are the stats you see on the news and websites. The league made an effort to standardize what is and isn’t a solo tackle back in 2007 when they sent a video to all NFL teams, but it still the discretion of the scorekeeper. There is a still a large discrepancy from team to team and week-to-week. I will be tracking this throughout the season to give you a better idea of what to expect when choosing your IDPs each week.

Here are the results from week one:

[am4show have=’g1;’ guest_error=’sub_message’ user_error=’sub_message’ ]

idpchart

idpchartone

There are a couple of surprising names on the list of top tacklers this week, specifically Uani Unga, the middle linebacker from the New York Giants who is filling in for Jon Beason (knee). I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about Unga here because we have a featured article exclusively about him today. You’ll have to check it out if you want to know more about him.

The other somewhat surprising name on here is Adam Jones – a cornerback with ten solo tackles isn’t normal. When you take into account the Raiders only had 46 offensive plays where a tackle was even possible and Jones’ 21.7% tackle rate raises even more eyebrows. Even though I know he’s not going to keep this pace up, I’m still going to add him in leagues requiring I start a cornerback.

It’s nice to see Brian Cushing healthy and on this list after returning from left leg and wrist injuries. He is going to produce as long as his body holds up. The Dolphins have three players on this list with at least 11 total tackles, a product of the Redskins producing 58 tackle possible plays. This defensive unit is going to be good.

Follow me on Twitter @OlingerIDP

[/am4show]

eric olinger
Latest posts by Eric Olinger (see all)