Ten IDP Stats You Need To Know After Week 11
Quite a long column this week, so strap in. The last item of the ten is particularly interesting, so stick with it through to the end. Good luck with your leagues!
1 The Jaguars have played ~100 snaps more than the Texans – in the same number of games
Early in the season, tracking team volume can seem useless and of minor importance. But it starts to add up.
The picture is a bit confusing because we’re still in the middle of bye weeks, but even discounting that differences are clear. In the following chart teams that have played ten games so far are in light grey. Eleven-game teams in dark, with a few highlighted in team colors.
Note that the Jaguars lead the NFL with 790 defensive snaps (72 per game). Just ahead of the Colts and Ravens on 764 each (just under 70 per game).
While the Texans and Commanders lag far behind on 692 and 691 respectively (just under 63 per game), so the difference between the Jags and Texans/Commanders is about 100 snaps. That’s a game and a half. Which is a huge amount given that most defensive stats are volume metrics.
2 The Panthers remain on course for historically poor pass rush totals
Currently, the Panthers have created 104 pressures from a combined 1,567 pass rush snaps in ten games. And they’ve turned that pressure into 13 sacks.
That’s about ten pressures and 1.3 sacks per game.
Of the 544 defenses from 2007-2023, only eight of them managed less pressure per game than that. And only two of those came in the last decade (the 2022 Bears and 2018 Raiders). And only seven defenses in that time period recorded fewer than 1.3 sacks per game. In 2023, the NFL averaged three sacks per game as a benchmark.
The Panthers aren’t just a bad pass-rush team, they are historically awful. And given the talent pools and pressing needs on the team at other positions, it’ll be interesting to see how they address it after mostly ignoring it in recent off-seasons.
3 The Broncos have the best pass rush in the NFL – but no star rusher
At the other end of the spectrum, the Broncos are just (arguably) the best pass rush defense in the NFL. They’re recording just over 20 pressures per game and turning that into 4.0 sacks per game. That sack number in particular is right up with elite defenses in the modern era.
Here are some examples as a comparison:
2013 Seahawks 3.1
2019 Patriots 3.1
2017 Jaguars ` 4.0
2021 Bills 2.6
2023 Ravens 3.8
Clearly, this Broncos pass rush is exceptional. However, they’re doing it without an obvious star player on the line. Quick: who’s the best pass rusher on this team?
It’s not obvious, is it? This column has shown that Zach Allen is piling up numbers via huge volume. While Jonathan Cooper, Nik Bonitto, and John Franklin-Myers are all really solid players. But stars? That’s tough to argue.
4 The Ravens have the most lopsided pass/rush splits in the NFL
If you ask a random not-obsessed-by-defense NFL fan about the Ravens you’ll get a stock answer; their defense is awesome. Try it.
It’s easy to see why you get that response. The team is traditionally very strong defensively, last season they had one of the best defenses in the NFL, and this year they’re a really good team.
But the truth is more complicated than that. They’re a below-average defense overall. Their exceptional run defense is more than counterbalanced by a horrendous inability to stop passing attacks.
And that results in a really weird split. The chart below shows how often each NFL defense has faced passes and rushes this season. As you’d expect there’s a general inverse trend, with 31 teams vaguely close to the line of best fit.
And then you’ve got the Ravens who are out on their own having faced 44 more passes than any other defense but rank just 25th in rushes faced. It’s clear that opposing offenses understand this Ravens’ defensive weaknesses much more than the average fan does. And they’re attacking accordingly.
5 DeForest Buckner leads all interior linemen in tackles over the past three games
Buckner has had a quiet season due to injury. Missing a streak of games means he’s currently played just 263 total snaps, which ranks him 79th at the position. But since he came back he’s been on a tear in tackle terms as you can see here:
With those monster tackle numbers banked, Buckner currently ranks 25th in tackles at the position. And remember he’s just 79th in volume.
6 In the last three weeks, Matthew Judon has sixteen pressures, but zero sacks
This column often talks about the poor relationship between pressures and sacks, which is hugely frustrating for IDP fans.
Matthew Judon has been an extreme victim in recent weeks. His sixteen pressures in three games is an exceptional number, among the best in the NFL. But he’s turned them into absolutely no sacks. And therefore, no IDP points.
A lot of people are probably benching him just looking at the points, but that’s not how IDP works. You don’t chase last week’s points. And you also don’t avoid last week’s lack of points.
7 Ernest Jones was the Seahawks’ only full-time LB last week
Way back in week one, the Seahawks rolled with Jerome Baker and Tyrel Dodson as the only LBs who saw the field. Clearly the new head coach has certain standards though, and now neither of those players is on the team.
Which leaves Ernest Jones (63 snaps last week) and Tyrice Knight (51) as the two guys owning jobs.
Given what we’ve seen, it’s hard to have much confidence in anyone here until we see what they do in the offseason, but for now, Jones and Knight (with lower confidence) can be started.
8 The Browns have the most muddled linebacker situation in the NFL. Again
Even with those ruthless in-season changes, at least we know the Seahawks favor two (pretty much) full-time LBs. That’s not the case for the Browns. And has not been for years. Injury is obviously a factor, but this team are just not strong believers in the old notion of full-time LBs. In the last seven weeks, a Browns LB has hit 60 snaps just twice. Scroll up, and you’ll see that Seahawks LBs over that period have hit that number eleven times.
9 Elite corner Jalen Ramsey has an average tackle rate
Jalen Ramsey is PFF’s top-graded cornerback this season (excluding tiny sample size anomalies). He’s recorded 38 total tackles from 591 defensive snaps. That’s a bang-average 6.4% tackle efficiency.
Clearly the old idea that good corners don’t get tackles is false.
It can be true in isolated cases (Sauce Gardner has a very low tackle rate) but it’s not true all of the time. Or even most of the time. Which makes it useless as a concept.
10 Jeremy Chinn leads all safeties in tackles over the past three games
Safety tackles have been dominated by Nick Cross and Budda Baker this season for different reasons (please refer to past columns this season for more information) but Jeremy Chinn is coming up fast after posting some huge numbers recently. You can see how much he’s out-tackled his peers in that period in this chart:
And that begs the question “So why isn’t he at the top of the charts with Baker and Cross?” It’s a good question. First let’s look at his weekly tackling this season:
Low-tackling early on. High-tackling in recent weeks. Our lizard brains look at a chart and think “What changed? Something must have caused that!”, but there’s not really. As the chart shows he’s played a few more snaps, but that’s just because the Commanders have played more snaps in those weeks. And Chinn has been used proportionally in the same areas of the field, doing the same things. It’s just that things like this happen when you’re dealing with large sample sets. In a thousand IDPs, some dudes are going to have weird runs of data like this.
And that brings us to bigger sample sizes. The next chart is Chinn’s volume and tackles over his career:
Obviously not including 2024 so far, because comparing full seasons to part-seasons is not good.;
Again, our lizard brains see a chart like this and think “Aha! Continual decline”, but that’s just looking at four data points (one of which is very limited volume) and leaping to conclusions. The truth is that tackle efficiency can vary enormously for an individual over weeks or seasons, even when it’s not driven by obvious factors like alignment or a coach’s trust.
You don’t need to make sweeping judgments like “Jeremy Chinn is getting worse at tacking every year” or “the Commanders have figured out how to use him”. You just need to keep watching closely for trends and reacting to what is happening faster and smarter than your league mates.
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