Ten IDP Fantasy Football Stats You Need to Know after Week 16
Happy holidays to you all. And I hope you’re celebrating this week in the football world.
1 Elandon Roberts leads all relevant LBs with a tackle efficiency of 17.8%
Relevant here means with 500 or more snaps.
The average for the top 36 LBs (in tackle numbers) is 13.4%. So, Roberts really is pretty far ahead of the curve.
He’s not been a reliable IDP, because of his part-time role. He’s averaged just 37 snaps per game this season, and only hit 50 snaps five times.
2 83.3% of E.J. Speed’s tackles have been solos
This is the highest figure among all LBs with 500+ snaps. The average is 72.2% for the position.
This is just a statistical quirk. There is no good reason for why certain LBs get more solos/assists as a ratio. It just happens. In the many LBs that play in the NFL (62 have played 500+ snaps this season) you always see some weird numbers come up.
But given the discrepancy of tackle scoring in IDP (there is no real good reason that solos are mostly twice assists) it does lead to serious scoring implications.
3 Just 62.2% of Devin White’s tackles have been solos in 2024
This is the lowest of all LBs with 500+ snaps.
OK, that’s a lie, Josh Woods is actually slightly lower. But no one cares about Josh Woods. He’s never been the clear top IDP by ADP.
As with Speed above, this is really no indictment of White. But he’s been a fun name to drag through the mud this season as a guy who was previously drafted super-high in dynasty formats as a super-stable long-term investment, who has fallen off a cliff.
Please, please remember how his career as an IDP has gone when you look back at this season’s top IDP scorers.
4 Zach Cunningham has played a huge 67% of his defensive snaps in coverage
The average for all LBs is just 44%. It’s 52.8% for LBs with 500+ snaps.
In raw numbers, Cunningham’s 461 coverage snaps are significantly behind the leaders such as Roquan Smith (604), Patrick Queen (594) and Fred Warner (593). And obviously the Eagles game scripts are part of this.
But still. It’s noteworthy to see that Cunningham has been asked to play so much in space because as we know, coverage snaps are the most efficient for IDP scoring.
5 Ernest Jones leads all LBs in pass-rush snaps (117) and pressures (30)
No other off-ball LB has more than 24 pressures, so he has a sizeable lead on his peers.
Ask your friends to name the top blitzing LB in the NFL and it’s highly unlikely Jones’ name will be mentioned. But he’s right there at the top of the charts.
Admittedly, his finisher ratio of just 16.66% has meant his blitzing has not really come through in sacks and IDP scoring, but that’s the game for blitzers. When it pans out it’s amazing. But it’s not reliable at all. In general, the net loss of tackles due to the blitzing hurts scoring.
6 Three of this year’s top interior pass-rushers have notably low finisher ratios
Dexter Lawrence (5.4%), Quinnen Williams (7.4%) and Roy Robertson-Harris (3.8%) are all well, well below the average rate of around 15%.
These three have been excellent at getting after the QB this season, but also not managed to record the sacks they ‘should’ have got.
Lawrence has six, Williams four, and Robertson-Harris just three. Doubling those numbers would not look out of place for how they’ve played.
7 Only ten edges in the NFL have as high a tackle efficiency as well as pressure rate as Carl Granderson
Five of those guys have played under 70 snaps, and none of them have played 600 or more, while Granderson himself has played 790.
He’s been really efficient as both a tackle-gatherer and a pass-rusher. I strongly suspect he will still not be given full respect as an IDP in the off-season, but he’s earned his spot over time and consistent play at various volume levels. He’s a quality player.
8 Kenny Moore leads all ‘corners’ in solo tackles as well as assists
Note the inverted commas around the position, because Moore is very much a slot specialist and our system of grouping slot DBs in with outside corners and rating them on how they gather tackles is inherently flawed.
Nevertheless, it’s impressive to lead both categories. Even if assists are a bit of an afterthought stat. Moore has just 16 assists for the season – one per game. That’s using PFF data. PFR currently has him down for 25. This just shows you how much home stat crews love to hand out assists for their favorite players.
9 Antoine Winfield Jr has five sacks this year, from just 17 pressures
That number has been bandied around this week as some sort of amazing achievement. In conjunction with a couple of other random stats. You know the sort; “Smash McDestruction is the only player to ever record 4.5 sacks, 31 assists, four fumbles recovered and 17 parking fines in a season!”.
It’s great to see Winfield do well. He’s a classy player. But please, please do not look at sacks as reliable for safeties. That 29.4% finisher ratio is super-high. 50 different safeties have three or more pressures this season, and the average finisher ratio (excluding Winfield) is 15%.
In Winfield’s 2021 season, he managed just one sack from five total pressures. In 2020 Jamal Adams recorded 11 sacks from 34 pressures. He has zero sacks since.
10 The Seahawks (1,049) have played 129 more defensive snaps than the Browns (920)
Wow. Remember, the average defensive snaps per game in the NFL is between 66-67 every season. It’s 66.3 this year which is slightly low. Probably a result of there being fewer OT games than normal. Regardless, Seahawks players have had access to the equivalent of about two more games than the Browns, which is an enormous advantage in IDP.
Let’s look at that in player terms. Boye Mafe has played 682 snaps this season. 65% of available snaps. Myles Garrett has managed 741 (80.5%). Garrett is one of the premier edges on the sport, and Mafe is basically just a guy. But Mafe (36) has way more tackles than Garrett (26) because tackles are a volume stat. They have very, very little to do with player quality.
In tackle-heavy leagues (and if your league scores all positions the same way, it’s a tackle-heavy league) p[layer quality is much, much less important than you probably think it is.
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