Ten IDP Fantasy Football Stats You Need to Know after Week 11
This season is a wild one, isn’t it? To keep you on your toes, this week’s column is a chart-free zone. People process information in different ways, and fantasy football is no different. So here’s one for you readers. Good luck to your teams!
1. Da’Ron Payne is the least effective interior pass rusher in the NFL
Payne has 394 pass-rush snaps this season – more than any other interior lineman. But that’s translated into just 22 pressures and three sacks. The average for the rest of the top ten in pass rush snap volume is 38 pressures and nearly six sacks.
This should not be a surprise. Payne is not a good pass rusher but his high sack season convinced many that he was something he is not. Remember, that season was one of these weird high-sack-low-pressure ones that we see.
This is yet another lesson in following predictive, reliable data points, not flashy, unreliable ones like sacks.
2. Over the month, DJ Reader has recorded fifteen pressures, but zero sacks
This is the flip side of the point above. Reader is not a great pass rusher either, but he’s getting lots of opportunity on this Bengals defense, and with their injuries on the edge he’s showing up and making a difference.
OK, he’s not actually putting the QB in the dirt which would be nice. But there’s a reason the Bengals are a bottom-five defense in the NFL.
Reader is a decent bet for teams that do not have one of the few elite interior linemen.
3. Kayvon Thibodeaux has recorded 11 sacks this year, from just 32 pressures
That’s a finisher rate of over 34%.
He’s 31st in edge pressures this season, and the average finisher ratio of the top 30 is 15%. So, he’s converting pressure into sacks at well over double the rate of the best guys in the NFL.
Needless to say, this is unsustainable. It’s just not a stat that is determined by the player – and if it was do you really think Thibodeaux has a special skill that the likes of Myles Garrett (18%), Nick Bosa (16%), and Micah Parsons (17%) do not?
Expect Thibodeaux to come down to earth a bit.
4. Through the last four weeks, Harold Landry has more tackles than any other edge in the NFL (bar Maxx Crosby)
Early in the season, Landry looked like a shadow of his pre-injury self. This columnist openly wondered if it was something he could come back from fully. He’s still not back to the player he was, but there are at least signs of life.
In that period, he’s played 193 snaps (ninth most among edges) and tackled well.
His pass-rushing is well below average still (34 other edges have more pressure in the period) but the tackles have been nice.
5. Devin White has a tackle efficiency of just 8.8% this season
He’s 12th in defensive snaps among all LBs right now (with 654), and just 44th in total tackles (with 59).
Among the rest of the LBs to have played 500 or more snaps (there are 35 of them) the average total tackles is 84. White is performing significantly less well than you’d expect purely on averages.
Not so long ago, White was the clear number one LB in dynasty, and therefore the top IDP too – because so much of the IDP world is still in LB-heavy leagues due to using scoring where positions are not scored differently.
He’s still a good blitzer, and only one other LB has more pressures, but he has two sacks this season, clearly not enough to come close to replacing the huge number of tackles that he’s left on the table.
Whether you think his poor tackle numbers are due to luck, poor play, or something else they are a noteworthy outlier. And at this point, it’s highly unlikely he can get back to anything like average for the season.
6. In the last month, Foye Oluokun has three sacks from just five pressures
Oluokun has put up some big numbers due to those sacks, which is always nice to see. But it’s not reliable. In these four weeks, he has rushed the passer just 15 times (27th most among LBs).
It’s not like he’s a reliable, high-volume, or elite pass-rusher. He’s just got three sacks in four weeks.
Obviously, Oluokun is a good IDP. He’s reliable and a good tackler. But just don’t get carried away that those sacks mean anything they don’t.
7. No corner has missed as many tackles as Byron Murphy’s 13 this season
The Cardinals’ defense is obviously horrible and they’re playing a lot. Only one other defense has played more snaps this season, and their average snap count is eighth among all teams. Murphy himself has played 715 snaps, which is fourth among corners.
All of this makes him look like a good IDP bet. But his missed tackles are holding him back. Although he’s fourth in volume, he’s just 26th in tackles, 13 behind the corner in fourth place, which is equal to the 13 tackles he has missed. What a coincidence.
8. In the last four weeks, Tavierre Thomas has led all corners in tackles
OK, he’s only one ahead of Mike Hilton. But top is top.
Thomas is a really good slot DB. He’s played well throughout his career as a Brown and a Texan, and those are franchises where it’s historically hard to attain national attention and respect.
He’s had plenty of injury issues, but he’s back in the last four weeks and playing consistently. As a slot DB, he’s not a full-time player (217 snaps in those four weeks from 258 Texans snaps) but slot DBs have a higher tackle efficiency than outside corners which tends to make up for the volume hit.
All corners are fundamentally fungible as fantasy assets, but Thomas is a good one to cheer for.
9. Jalen Pitre has the 75th-highest tackle efficiency of safeties with a hundred or more snaps
As a rookie in 2022, Pitre tore up IDP leagues with a huge number of tackles, even with him missing a record number of tackle opportunities as well. He instantly leaped to the top of safety rankings and ADP by a clear margin. “He did this as a rookie, he can only get better!” went the narrative.
In 2023 he was injured in week one and missed the next two games. But he’s played virtually every snap since week four and has been distinctly average. For the season, he’s 48th among safeties in snaps and 51st in tackles. Since his return in week four, he’s 16th in snaps and 24th in tackles.
This is what happens with safeties. Unless there is some specific reason for why a safety is recording high tackle numbers (mostly usage/scheme), it’s normally just some quirk of statistics. And liable to regress to average.
Pitre supporters, including those who invested heavily into him this off-season, will of course claim that his injury has robbed him of his normal ability, and he’ll be back to elite next season. That is because optimism fuels this game, and it’s easier to jump onto an injury narrative than admit a mistake. Good luck with that.
10. Through the last four weeks, Xavier McKinney has recorded 34 solo tackles. No other safety has more than 26
McKinney has had a rollercoaster career as an IDP. He was highly drafted which always gets people excited about a dynasty prospect (in the face of evidence). But he played only ~200 snaps as a rookie.
Then he had a standout 2021 when he played over 1,100 snaps and turned that into IDP points. That got him ranked as one of the top IDP safeties for 2022, when he promptly played under 600 snaps due to injury and was worthless.
This sounds wild, but it’s totally normal for safeties. It’s brilliant that he’s having such a good period right now, and he’s been a reliable starter, but his whole career is yet another reminder that even in the dynasty world, long-term value for safeties is a mirage.
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