Ten IDP Fantasy Football Stats You Need to Know after Week Five
We’ve got a load of information in the bank now and hopefully your defense is scoring well, but we IDP fans know that you can never sleep. Injuries happen every week and viable scorers emerge every week. Here are some numbers that can help make your team even better.
1. Colts LB Zaire Franklin leads the NFL in total tackles with 64
He also leads all linebackers in snaps, with 362 played so far. This is due to the fact that the Colts lead all NFL defenses with 369 snaps so far. These things are all connected.
Franklin had a productive IDP season in 2022 because he played a huge amount of snaps. So far, he’s scored brilliantly in 2023. But there’s a disconnect there. No one who drafted him so high did so with the certain knowledge that the Colts would play so many snaps or that Franklin would again stay healthy (so far). Right now, it’s a happy accident. But please, please do not mistake that for accurate foresight.
2. Henry To’oTo’o leads all linebackers with 11 missed tackles so far
He’s just 36th in LB snaps, so that’s not a great ratio at all, as you can see in this chart:
Whenever a rookie LB gets some playing time and starts to score points everyone gets excited in the dynasty world. You have to brace yourself against all the “I liked him coming out!” comments.
But make no mistake; To’oTo’o has played fairly poorly so far. He’s missing tackles, missing run assignments and getting exposed in coverage – none of which is a surprise for a rookie.
Just don’t get carried away.
3. TJ Watt is seventh among edges with 25 pressures but top in sacks with eight
The mathematicians among you will have worked that out as a 32% finisher ratio.
64 edges this season have at least ten pressures. Among those (excluding Watt), the average finisher ratio is 19%, which is in line with what we see year after year. About one pressure in five turns into a sack.
But Watt is running at one pressure in three.
Long-term readers will know that finisher ratio is not a skill or ability that belongs to pass rushers. For Watt’s career, his ratio is about 24%. If you take out his 2021 when he racked up 22 sacks, it drops to 22%.
So clearly 32% is anomalous. It’s extremely likely to drop. So expect to hear frustrated cries when he goes a few weeks of playing well, but not quite getting the sack.
4. TJ Watt has recorded just seven tackles
62 other edges have recorded more tackles than that. He has four solos and three assists according to Pro Football Focus data. Stat crew tackles have him on 12 and three respectively which just shows you how different those unmediated crews can be.
142 other edges have a higher tackle efficiency than Watt’s 2.3%. The average for a top-32 edge (in total playing time) is 5.7%.
So, we’ve got a really weird Watt season so far. He’s clearly scoring well based on his sacks (see the point above). But that scoring is coming from lopsided production which is not that indicative of his actual play for multiple reasons.
Almost no one will question this. They just see Watt, sacks and points and think it’s perfectly normal. But the IDP world is about digging deeper to find out the reason for why things are happening so we can predict them going forward and not just accepting points as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
5. Jaguars corner Darious Williams leads all corners with seven combined defended passes and interceptions
His two interceptions and two of his five PDs have come in the last two weeks while playing in London, so clearly being in the greatest city in the world suits him.
This might not matter that much to you depending on your league setup and scoring, but one of the best ways to make IDP scoring reflect good corner play is to ramp up PD points to five or six. And if your league is scoring like that, Williams has been an excellent asset so far.
6. The Lions’ Cameron Sutton is the least-targeted corner in the NFL
You can see him on this chart as the blue dot:
The Lions defense is interesting. They’re a borderline top-ten unit. But it’s based mostly on their excellent run defense and pass rush. No one would accuse them of being a modern or innovative defense. So far, they’ve faced just 195 passes through five games (39 per game) which is fourth fewest in the league. And because they are fielding some really bad coverage players, a journeyman like Sutton ends up not getting as many looks as he otherwise might.
7. K’Von Wallace of the Cardinals leads all safeties with 185 snaps in the box
He’s played about 55% of his defensive snaps in the box, about 25% deep, and about 20% in the slot.
The overhang position is alive and well in the NFL. It’s just they get called safeties, because a modern safety is just a versatile athlete that lines up all over the defense.
Only five other safeties have more tackles than Wallace does at this point, and based on his alignment you can expect that to stay mostly true so long as he stays healthy.
8. K’Von Wallace also leads all safeties in missed tackles with eight
That’s certainly not good. But for context, this time last year, after five games Jalen Pitre had 15 missed tackles. He went on to set a record for missed tackles in a season for any safety.
Clearly missed tackles are no impediment to safeties for racking up real tackles that actually score. But it remains the most variable position in fantasy (along with corner). There is absolutely no such thing as a sure thing with safeties. And any time you think you may have found a guy you can trust you should immediately disbelieve yourself.
Reliability is a mirage at the position. Anything else is a pleasant fantasy you tell yourself.
9. Rookie Jalen Carter leads all interior linemen in pressures
He was close the last time he was mentioned in this column, just behind all-time-great Aaron Donald.
But as of right now, they are jointly top with 23 each. Carter has created pressure on 17.3% of his pass rush snaps. Donald has done so on 13.4% of his.
It cannot be overstated how hot Carter has been to start his career. There are only ever a handful of elite inside pass rushers in the sport, and in most IDP leagues those guys dominate scoring for multiple years. Unlike some positions, the repeat rate is actually really high because of the gulf between the elite and the rest of the field.
Carter will not be cheap right now. At all. But this is also likely the cheapest you’ll ever be able to get him and getting him on your roster is the sort of move that will pay back year after year.
10. Derrick Brown leads all interior linemen with 32 total tackles
Third and fourth on the list have just 21 each, so that shows you how far ahead of most of the field Brown is. He’s the light blue dot on the chart below.
That doesn’t mean Brown is especially amazing against the run of course. Tackles are just not that indicative. If offenses don’t run at the right gap, the interior lineman very rarely gets to tackle the ball carrier.
The red dot on this chart is Dexter Lawrence of the Giants. Who can justifiably claim to be the best run-stopping interior lineman in football. His tackle rate is ahead of average, but it’s not stellar. Given how poor the Giants are this is a good opportunity to show again how little some defensive factors are related.
If you ask an average fan, they’ll likely tell you that bad defenses have to play the run a lot. And the “best” run-stopping linemen will therefore get loads of tackles. As you can, see that’s just not true. It doesn’t mean that good linemen on bad defenses amass low tackles. The factors are just not as linked as people assume they are.
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