Ten IDP Fantasy Football Stats You Need to Know after Week Nine
We’re about halfway through the regular season and your fantasy team is probably looking great for a high seeding in the playoffs. Grab a nice cup of team and enjoy some IDP stats that’ll help you in the home stretch of the regular season.
1 Jordan Hicks has doubled his tackle numbers after his rocky start to the season.
Through three weeks, Hicks recorded just 19 tackles (slightly over six per game). In the next six games he managed 66 tackles, an average of 11 per game.
Tackles are a product of volume, but it’s a noisy system and on small sample sizes (a game or three) you often see anomalous returns. This is why you stick with volume, and don’t look at tackles or IDP points.
2 Just three (high volume) linebackers have a tackle efficiency over 16%.
Remember at the start of the season a handful of guys were up over 20%? And this column told you it would not last? Well, it didn’t.
Foyesade Oluokun (16.8%), T.J. Edwards (16.8%), Zaire Franklin (16.4%) and Jordyn Brooks (16.5%) are all still up there. So far they’ve played good volume and maintained very high tackle efficiency. But please be wary. Tackle efficiency is ephemeral and untrustworthy. It can revert to average or below in a heartbeat.
3 Yannick Ngakoue remains the least efficient pass-rushing edge in the NFL.
He’s the orange dot in this chart. Honestly, this is embarrassing for everyone involved.
4 Harrison Phillips and Derrick Brown are in a class of their own as high-tackling interior linemen.
For whatever reason, Phillips and Brown are way ahead against their peers as tackle-gatherers this season. On the whole, tackles are a result of volume, and not player skill or defensive scheme, but every year we see a small handful of guys who buck that trend and damn well break the model.
You can see how Phillips and Brown are dominating on this chart.
5 Devin White is pretty average right now as a blitzer.
A few years ago, he was the top linebacker and IDP in ADP terms because he had so many sacks in 2020. People thought it was such a superpower that it would create scoring for years.
This season he’s still blitzing a lot, but he’s just about average against his peers in production terms. Never, ever trust pass-rush production from a player who is not a lineman.
6 Geno Stone is lapping the field in interceptions.
Good on him. I suspect he and his agent will turn it into a big payday because for some reason the NFL still thinks interceptions are a stat caused by defensive player excellence. That’s true on an individual play basis, but high pick numbers are caused by offenses throwing the ball at certain players. It happens. But it’s not sticky across years.
7 The Steelers (581) have played 126 more defensive snaps than the Browns (455).
Both defenses have played eight games, so we’re comparing apples and apples here.
The Browns are averaging just under 57 snaps per game and the Steelers nearly 73, while the league average is 66.4. So, the average team through eight games has played about 531 snaps.
Browns defenders are about 76 snaps behind that – equivalent to over a game of NFL-average volume. Steelers defenders are 50 ahead of it, the best part of a whole average game.
8 The average NFL defense has used 28 and a bit defenders so far.
When you’re poring over 53-man roster predictions and which players might make the roster next August just remember this. Churn is insane in the NFL because of injury and front-office moves. A huge part of winning in the NFL is the ability to continually find the right guys to come in and be part of your defense immediately. That’s arguably more important than scouting or drafting well.
9 The Eagles have allowed 79% of their yardage through the air. The Jets just 56%.
A lot of this is (of course) down to gamescript. Better teams (like the Eagles) are ahead, and so the opposition must throw more. Worse teams (like the Jets) are the opposite.
These tendencies tend to be overblown as data gets cherrypicked. For example, the (excellent) Chiefs are on the right of this chart. And the (horrendous) Bears are on the left.
But whatever the relationships and causes, right now the Eagles and Jets are huge anomalies in how they’re allowing offenses to move the ball on them.
10 Death, taxes and Maxx Crosby volume.
This column often cautions you to avoid believing in short-term, anomalous production.
But Maxx Crosby is not one of those. He just continually plays an enormous amount of football. At the same high level. He’s the red dot on this chart:
For whatever reason, the Raiders just let him go out game after game and play almost every snap. At a time when edges are rotating massively across the NFL.
It gives Crosby such a huge advantage over his peers. He’s not a bad player. Or even average. He’s really good. But his superpower as a scorer is his ability to play high volume and that makes him a stud IDP.
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