All About the Solo: Week Six

One of the most 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 assists. On the flip side, if your league doesn’t score solos and assists too differently, you’ll have a better idea of which 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 is still the discretion of the home score keeper. Even after this effort 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.

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I know in some leagues solos and assists aren’t scored that differently. In most cases I think it’s a 2:1 ratio but it makes me sick to see a linebacker have 14 and 13 total tackles only to see over 75% of them were assists. I mean, what was really going on there? Was the score keeper just feeling generous that day and giving anyone near the pile an assist or was the linebacker a step late and pile diving?

The Seattle scorekeeper was off his/her meds this weekend, scoring 29 solo tackles and 60 assists for the Falcons and 25 solos and 42 assists for Seattle. Bobby Wagner definitely benefited on the stat sheet. Coming into the week Seattle was scoring roughly 56% of their tackles as assists. Week six saw that percentage jump all the way up to 65%. It’s definitely something to keep in mind when the Seahawks are home.

The Patriots have played four of six games at home this season and leading up to this week the tackle scoring had been lopsided to awarding more assists to the visiting team, roughly 53% for the visitors and 34% for the Pats. This week 42 of the 78 tackles were assists for the Patriots, or about 54%. Dont’a Hightower was the main beneficiary here, with ten of his 13 total tackles being assists. Hightower was a beast on Sunday though. Not only did he rack up the tackles he also sacked Andy Dalton 1.5 times. It was a good day to have Hightower in your lineup. Speaking of players we were happy to have in our lineups, Jatavis freaking Brown! That’s his actual middle name too. I Googled it. Since Manti Te’o went down in week three, Brown has been fantasy’s LB1. This week’s game against the Broncos was pretty awesome and his best all-around game to date. He finished with 13 solo tackles, an assist, a sack and a forced fumble while playing 100% of the defensive snaps.

Zachary Orr continues to be another impressive player. He added a fumble recovery to his nine solos and four assists. He and C.J. Mosley look like the duo the Ravens had hoped for. Nick Bellore appears to be the guy to own in San Francisco…for now. I think I’ve said that about Gerald Hodges, Ray-Ray Armstrong and Michael Wilhoite and we’re just six weeks in. Truth be told, who knows what Chip Kelly is doing out there? Bellore has been a top ten fantasy linebacker the last two weeks and as long as he’s playing all the snaps he deserves to be in our lineups. This defense is junk and sees a lot of playing time.

Landon Collins is currently the DB1 in fantasy leagues and is the Giants premier run stopper. His 41 solo tackles are 11 more than any other player on the team, Jonathan Casillas is second. Casillas is leading the team in total tackles with 52, but he has 22 assists to Collins’ eight, which slightly inflate his numbers. Collins is locked into the top three of the dynasty safety rankings and you could argue he deserves to be the top overall choice.

Follow me on Twitter @OlingerIDP.

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