Cliff Avril’s Contract Demands: is His Production Worth the Money?

Cliff Avril is holding out. According to an NFL.com report, Avril is seeking about $42 million dollars over four years, with about half of that guaranteed. Per that same report, the Lions are looking to pay him closer to $8M per year, and there the two sides sit.

Is Avril worth that kind of money?

Allow me to quote the defensive end Old Mother Hubbard:

Bottom Line: Cliff Avril, in this system, plays like a top ten defensive end. If he is not re-signed, his production and playmaking ability will not be easily replaced—and his production and playmaking ability is essential to the success of the defense. His re-signing must be the Lions’ top priority.

The answer, for the Lions, is “yes.” Avril is (at this point in the offseason) irreplaceable, and they would need to replace him with a top-flight pass rusher in the 2013 offseason. But is he producing like the kind of ends already making that kind of cash? Let's look at some analytics:

	Overall	Rush	Cov.	Run	Pen.	PRP	+EPA	+WPA	SpY	SB	$M/PRP
Calais Campbell	34.1	23.5	7	1	2.6	6.6	54.4	2.17	$11.0	$15.0	$1.67
Jared Allen	35	18.9	3.5	12.6	0	9.8	80.5	2.06	$12.2	$15.5	$1.25
Cliff Avril	6.6	11	5.5	-2.5	-7.4	9.6	45.10	1.45	$10.0	-	$1.04
Julius Peppers	28.3	19.5	2	6.3	0.5	10.3	52.1	1.35	$14.0	$6.5	$1.36
Mario Williams ('10)	18.3	18.5	0	0.5	-0.7	10.8	29.8	1.13	$16.7	$19.0	$1.54
Trent Cole	40.4	35.2	0.5	10.3	-5.6	14.9	32.30	1.00	$9.9	$8.0	$0.66
Dwight Freeney	5.8	15.5	0	-7.5	-2.2	9.4	27.5	0.85	$12.0	$15.0	$1.28

The chart above is the usual set of Old Mother Hubbard data, with a few new additions:

Pro Football Focus Overall: The player’s overall grade, as measured by PFF.

Pro Football Focus Rush: The player’s PFF pass-rush grade.

Pro Football Focus Coverage: The player’s PFF coverage grade.

Pro Football Focus Run: The player’s PFF run-stopping grade.

Pro Football Focus Penalty: The player’s PFF grade for incurring penalties (snap count is accounted for).

Pro Football Focus PRP: PFF's pass-rush rate stat. Weighted amount of sacks, QB hits, and QB pressures divided by charted pass rush attempts.

Advanced NFL Stats +EPA: The amount of positive-impact production the player had, as measured by Advanced NFL Stats.

Advanced NFL Stats +WPA: The impact the player had on his team’s chances to win games. The table and chart are sorted by this stat.

SpY: Salary per Year. The player’s total contract value, divided by contract length. Data from Spotrac.com.

SB: The player’s signing bonus.

$M/PRP: The number of salary millions paid per year, per point of PRP.

First, a reminder: this is a selection of the highest-paid and most-productive defensive ends in football. The idea is to see if Avril’s production is in their elite company, not to see if he’s good or not—we know he’s very good.

Second, caveats: Calais Campbell is a 3-4 DE, so he gets a lot more tackles than a typical 4-3 pass rusher. This explains his lackluster PRP, but outstanding PFF grades and solid +EPA. Mario Williams’ data is from 2010, the last year he played as a 4-3 rush end.

The chart is a little helter-skelter but you should be able to see Cliff’s line quite clearly. As before, his PFF Overall grade is very low relative to the other DEs. He’s right at about the NFL average. This is mostly due to his 11 assessed penalties; Avril’s play is quite good but he was flagged constantly.

Avril’s pass rush grades were better, above average, but still well below NFL leader Trent Cole, and DEs like Jared Allen and Mario Williams. Remember, this PFF pass grade is an accumulated, normalized measure of “how good” every down’s performance was.

Avril led the 4-3 DEs in PFF Coverage grades, trailing only Calais Campbell (which, again, “good coverage” from a 3-4 DE is a different standard than “good coverage” from a 4-3 DE). Against the run, Avril was comparable to Williams and Campbell, but well behind Allen and Cole, both of whom were in the top ten run-stoppers.

Avril had the second-worst penalty grade of any 4-3 DE last year.

Here's where it gets interesting. Pass Rush Productivity is a much more refined version of what I've been doing, dividing snap counts by sacks-plus-hits-plus-pressures. PFF is putting together a weighted total of sacks, hits and pressure then dividing pass rush attempts by that figure. This gives a true picture of how often these pass rushers are getting to the quarterback.

Avril’s is a very respectable 9.6. That’s tied for 10th-best in the NFL with Baltimore’s Terrell Suggs and New England’s Andre Carter. In fact, it’s just behind Allen’s 9.8. Trent Cole led the NFL with a ridiculous 14.9. For the record, Kyle Vanden Bosch registered a 27th-best 7.3 . . . as I hinted before, that’s half as effective per-snap as Cole.

Ready to have your mind blown? When I drop the qualifying snap percentage from its default 50% to 25%, The Great Willie Young is 3rd in the NFL with 13.7. Lawrence Jackson comes in 26th with 8.8.

When it comes to +EPA, Jared Allen laps the field. His positive production was 2nd in the NFL with 80.5. Campbell and Julius Peppers nearly tie for second in this group, and Avril’s right behind them with 45.1. Cole, who’s been blowing all these metrics away so far, has only 32.3 +EPA.

In terms of +WPA, Avril’s 1.45 was 7th-best in the NFL. Campbell’s 2.17 was 2nd-best, and Allen’s 2.06 was 3rd-best. Again, Cole’s monster productivity only netted him 1.00 +WPA; either his massive pressure didn’t come when the Eagles needed it, or the Eagles were going to lose whether he got there or not. Maybe a little of both? Either way, Avril’s solidly above-average production clearly made a big difference in the Lions’ bottom line.

So we know Avril’s a very good defensive end, arguably one of the ten best 4-3 DEs in the NFL. We also know he’s worth more to the Lions specifically, right now, than he is in a “relative to the rest of the league” way. But look at those salary figures.

If the Lions gave Avril the $10M/year he’s asking for, they’d be paying less relative to his pass rush production than any of the measured DEs, save Trent Cole—who had the most productive year of anyone in the NFL while playing on a rookie contract.

To justify this money, Avril must cut down on the penalties without cutting down on his production. But unlike Corey Williams, whose production was partly due to snap timing, Avril's penalties are often post-play; the kind of thing he should be able to eliminate by keeping his head.

But outside of that, given his knowledge of the system, his production within the system, and that production’s importance to the system, Avril’s clearly worth $10 milion a year to the Lions.

Read more...

Old Mother Hubbard: The Defensive Ends

From last year’s Old Mother Hubbarding of the Lions defensive ends:

Cliff Avril was pigeonholed by most as a 3-4 ROLB, and I’m certain he could shine in that role. But he’s developed into the fast, athletic 4-3 rush end Rod Marinelli thought he could be. Avril will never be a 270-plus-pound, two-way monster—but he’s already an impact defender, top-flite pass rusher, and a huge part of this defense going forward. Signing this RFA to a long-term deal must be a top priority.

Kyle Vanden Bosch is the ultimate leader, a consummate professional—and as a player, the yang to Cliff Avril’s yin. Had he stayed healthy, he would have had seven sacks and fifteen QB hits, more than acceptable standalone production, besides the undeniable halo effect. Unfortunately, he’s 32, and recovering from a major neck injury. The Lions need to find a starting, impact, two-way end to replace him by the 2012 season.

Lawrence Jackson produced like an above-average starter in heavy rotation, and fron Week 10 on was one of the better 4-3 DEs in the game. I’ll hold off on anointing him the starter of the future for now, because I’d like to see more consistency—but there’s no doubt he’d be the perfect physical fit for the void KVB will eventually leave.

Willie Young is a developmental prospect with a very lean frame, a long way to go, and an undeniable knack for playing football. I hope he has a place on the roster for next season.

And then, the shopping list:

The Lions will need to find an impact two-way defensive end, ready to replace KVB as a starter by the 2012 season. Lawrence Jackson has the potential to be that end. Cliff Avril is an RFA who must be re-signed to a long-term deal. The Lions may look for a developmental speed-first end behind Avril, especially if Willie Young does not take major strides in the offseason.

It's important to restate the design goals of the Lions defensive line: to get consistent, excellent pressure from the without assist from the blitz. To have a pair of bookend DEs rushing from wide alignments, fast enough to turn the corner and strong enough to set the edge against runs and screens. To have two defensive tackles who can rush the passer up the middle of the pocket, one of whom can also collapse the running lane between himself and the nine-technique DE. Most importantly, to have depth all across the line, making sure the above design requirements are fulfilled for four quarters each of sixteen (-plus) games.

Now, that in mind, let’s look at the data:

For the second straight year, Philadelphia’s Trent Cole is the highest overall PFF-graded 4-3 DE. With the #1 overall pass-rush grade of +40.4, and the 11th-best run-stopping grade at +10.3, Cole fulfilled his responsibilities in the Eagles’ own wide-9 alignment perfectly. His two-way dominance was so complete, he kept his top overall mark despite being called for seven penalties in 640 snaps. Interestingly, Cole’s 1.00 +WPA is only ranked 23rd, and his 32.3 +EPA is 27th. For all his consistently positive play, Cole didn’t help the Eagles win much. May have something to do with the rest of the defense behind him.

Bringing up the rear is the New York Giants’ Dave Tollefson, whose –9.4 rush grade and –5.5 run-stopping grade put him at the bottom. His 0.36 and 10.0 +WPA and +EPA rank him 79th and 86th, respectively, out of 125 defensive ends ranked by Advanced NFL Stats.

Important note: Pro Football Focus separates linemen into DT/NTs, 4-3 DEs, and 3-4 DEs. Advanced NFL Stats has one bucket each for DTs and DEs. The two sites do not always agree on who is what.

Cliff Avril is another example of why I added+WPA and +EPA to these radar charts. When you add up all his positive, negative, and nothing-in-particular plays, he’s an average NFL defensive end. His +6.6 overall PFF grade almost exactly matches the NFL average of +6.5. That includes a pretty heavy ding for 11 assessed penalties, but a major boost from his linebacker-like coverage skills (+5.5). His pass rush grade is solid, ranked 19th overall at +11, but confusingly low for a guy who had 12 sacks, 8 hits, and 37 pressures on 822 snaps (one of those pass rush events per 14.7 snaps, 15th-best rate in the NFL).

For comparison, Trent Cole had 11 sacks, 11 QB hits, and 44 pressures on 640 snaps, one every 9.55 snaps (2nd-best). For further comparison, Jared Allen had 24 sacks, 8 QB hits, and 34 pressures on 1044 snaps—one every 15.8 snaps. Just putting that out there.

So from looking at just the PFF grades and stats, we’d mark Avril down as an average overall defensive end, pretty good at rushing the passer but otherwise mediocre. Then, we look at the +WPA and +EPA and whoa.

Avril’s +EPA is an excellent 45.1, 11th-best in the NFL; that’s well ahead of Cole’s 32.3 (Jason Pierre-Paul’s is tops at 83.4).  His +WPA is an outstanding 7th overall, at +1.45. The discrepancy comes from his impact plays: 4 passes defensed, 6 forced fumbles, 7 TFLs, and an interception. In terms of +WPA, it’s his knack for making big plays at the right times. He helped the Lions’ win-loss bottom line 45% more than Trent Cole helped the Eagles’.

Just as with the defensive tackles, we see Lions defensive ends—as a rule—make big plays when they matter most, far out of proportion to the rest of their production. Avril, though, takes that to the extreme. Keep in mind, he’s doing it from the left side, too: going against bigger/stronger right tackles and often in the quarterback’s field of vision. Imagine if he were working the blind side . . .

Bottom Line: Cliff Avril, in this system, plays like a top ten defensive end. If he is not re-signed, his production and playmaking ability will not be easily replaced—and his production and playmaking ability is essential to the success of the defense. His re-signing must be the Lions’ top priority.

Willie Young, a.k.a. The Great Willie Young, might indeed be the son of a panther god. His +11.7 overall PFF grade would be the highest of any Lions DE, if his 259 snaps weren’t just a few too few to qualify. His +10.2 pass rush grade is just behind Avril’s +11.0, and his run-stopping grade is far superior, +3.7 to –2.5. In a huge surprise, the not-as-spindly-as-he-used-to-be Young’s run defense was better than all but Lawrence Jackson’s.

Again, this is on limited snaps—and that cuts both ways. Young makes fantastic plays whenever he’s in the game, but he’s in the game most often when the situation is ripe for him to make plays. His 3 sacks, 4 hits, and 19 pressures put his snaps-per-pass-rush at 9.96 which would be third-best in the NFL if he’d played just thirty or so more snaps.

I believe that’s at least part of Trent Cole’s story above: he played 182 fewer snaps than Cliff Avril, and I’d be willing to bet a good chunk of “negative” plays were eliminated because of it. It’s a lot easier to be great against the run when you only have to do it on 2nd- and 3rd-and-long . . .

Still, Young’s +11.5 EPA and +0.47 +WPA speak to just how effective he was when he was in. The average +WPA for qualifying DEs was 0.61, meaning that in just 259 snaps Willie Young helped the Lions win almost as much as an average starter. Nobody put much stock in a sub-260-pound all-legs-and-no-torso seventh rounder developing into a vital contributor, but Young’s already there in just his second year. How much better can he get?

Bottom Line: Willie Young has proven his worth as a rotational end, and should be a big part of the picture for 2012, his make-or-break year. If he can shoulder an increased workload without his rate stats falling off, he’ll be every bit the player Cliff Avril has been. That is an enormous “if.”

Lawrence Jackson had an outstanding 2011, producing at the same level as Avril and KVB when he got reps. The natural big-bodied run-stuffer Avril isn’t, he seemed destined to take over on the left side as Avril transitioned to the right rush end spot.

Instead, Jackson played almost exclusively on the right side, in relief of KVB. He struggled against Tampa Bay, but had strongly positive games in Weeks 2-5. His season crescendoed on Monday Night Football, with a +3.4 overall grade (1 sack, 1 hit, 2 pressures on just 31 snaps). After that game, however, Jackson had three flat games before Week 10—where he graded out very well and suffered a deep thigh bruise that would bench him until Week 16.

You can’t help but feel like Jackson missed his opportunity to stake his claim as the Lions’ third-now-and-second-soon DE. However, Jackson’s 18.4 +EPA is a very positive sign; he nearly matched the NFL average of 21.07 with just 341 snaps. His 0.71 +WPA is an even better one: with less than half the snaps of a typical starting DE to work with, Lo-Jack contributed more to the Lions’ winning games than some other teams’ starters . . . unfortunately, that includes the Lions’ Kyle Vanden Bosch.

Bottom Line: Lawrence Jackson had a chance to prove to the Lions they were set at this position for years to come. Instead, his deep thigh bruise—and midseason lull—leaves us no closer to knowing if he’ll be ready to step in for KVB as a full-time starter when the time comes. However, he also flashed enough of that Secret Superstar form to prove he can play as well as anyone in the NFL when he’s “on.” Like Willie Young, 2012 will be his make-or-break year.

Kyle Vanden Bosch had a fantastic bounceback year, right? With 8 sacks, 6 QB hits, and 26 pressures, this was his best statistical year since the glory days of 2008. Unfortunately, he had a beefy 777-snap workload, meaning he only generated pass rush on one of every 19.4 snaps—35th-best in the NFL and below the 19.0 NFL average.

Vanden Bosch's -11.3 overall PFF grade is absolutely mortifying; it's the fourth-worst in the NFL. He was graded at –1.9 in the pass rush, definitely below the NFL average of +2.5. His run-stopping grade, however, was through the basement: –7.9, worse than everyone but St. Louis’s Chris Long. We saw this time and time again in the games: Vanden Bosch overpursuing like a maniac, and opposing teams scheming to take advantage.

Vanden Bosch improved in this area throughout the season. He got dinged with strong negative run-defense grades in Weeks 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7, but only once more after that. Unfortunately, that coincided with a huge dropoff in his pass-rush productivity. He had only one negative pass rush grade in the first ten games, then was in the red for Weeks 12, 13, 15, and 16.

KVB is the only Lion DE not to add Win Probability far beyond what his snap count and production would project: Despite those 8 sacks, he almost exactly met the NFL average with 0.58 +WPA. His 26.30 +EPA is solidly above-average, but that just highlights the fact that he got it done more often when it didn’t matter than when it did.

Bottom Line: Kyle Vanden Bosch’s time as a premier two-way defensive end is over. His heart, desire, toughness, and leadership are unquestionable, but he’s simply not getting it done as well or as frequently as the rest of the defensive ends. Without finding the fountain of youth, he cannot start and play the majority of every game in 2012 or the defense will suffer for it.

SHOPPING LIST: The Detroit Lions have some serious decisions to make at the Defensive End position, and have little information to go on. Kyle Vanden Bosch must recover his youthful form or play a reduced role in 2012. Cliff Avril is a proven game-changer but not under contract. Willie Young and Lawrence Jackson have played extremely well in limited time but are not proven full-time performers.

If the Lions have complete faith in Young, Jackson, or both they are set for defensive ends. If not, they need to acquire a defensive end who can step in and play at least as well as Vanden Bosch, if not better, in 2012.

Read more...

Old Mother Hubbard: The Defensive Ends

The Old Mother Hubbarding of the DTs got a bit of attention; I was even linked by ProFootballTalk. I’ve been a dedicated PFT reader for, like, ever, and secretly I’m over the moon about that—but I’ve decided to act like I’ve been there before.  So.

The Pro Football Focus data I’m using is widely misunderstood, so let me explain a couple of key points. First, the PFF data doesn’t measure pure talent. The final grade doesn’t mean that one player is “better” than another, just that they turned in a more effective performance, on a down-by-down basis. Second, PFF weighs penalties in the final grade—so Sammie Hill, who didn’t commit a penalty, graded out higher than Corey Williams, who was more effective, but flagged a ridiculous number of times.

Second, it’s my observation that PFF’s system rewards consistency. A player that repeatedly makes a positive impact (and is rarely a liability) will have a much higher final grade than a player who “swings for the fences,” makes a few spectacular plays, and is otherwise often ineffective . . . even if those few spectacular plays change the outcome of the game. Watching at home on TV, at full speed, we tend not to notice line play unless the results are spectacular—so a player who is always a little more effective than you think (like Sammie Hill) is going to grade out surprisingly well. Meanwhile, the home run hitters (like Ndamukong Suh) are going to grade out surprisingly poorly, since every time you notice them, they’re doing something awesome.

Sometimes, this leads to counterintuitive results. However, a lot of what’s really happening on the field is counterintuitive from a fan perspective. I’ve said before that watching film is the “red pill of fandom;” if you start doing it you learn the truth about what’s happening on the field . . . and you realize just how wrong most of the national football groupthink is. PFF is a group of dedicated football fanatics (like you and I) who spend outrageous amounts of time popping red pills like candy. If you and were committed enough do to what they do, we’d likely get the results they’re getting; that’s why I’m using their data. So, with all that in mind . . . to Wonderland.

Just as before, I’ve included the top-graded 4-3 DE, the Eagles’ Trent Cole, and the bottom-graded 4-3 DE, Kentwan Balmer of the Seahawks. The thick black line represents the average for 4-3 DEs who saw at least 25% of their team’s available snaps.

Just a week ago, I wrote that Cliff Avril was one of the two Lions who had the most to prove in 2010; boy, did he ever prove it. Avril was massively improved over 2009, and finished as PFF’s 11th-best graded 4-3 DT. He was 7th-best in the pure pass rush grading, and 4th-best in coverage. His athleticism, and linebacker pedigree, shows through in those grades. The question mark with Avril is his ability to anchor against the run; he grades out below-average there, but was far from a liability.

Avril was the Lions’ best defensive end, by a long shot, and a true difference-maker for the defense. He saw an average of number of snaps, fewer than most of the other top-ten-type—but that was due to injury, not lack of use. If he was healthy, he was in there. By my calculations, Avril was behind only Ray Edwards and Dwight Freeney in pressures-per-snap—he had a truly outstanding year applying heat to the quarterback. When Kyle Vanden Bosch was hurt, Avril not only didn’t wilt under the pressure, he took the reigns and ran with them, handing in better grades as the season went on. Food for thought: he turns 25 next month.

Interestingly, Avril only had two QB hits all season, far fewer than most with his kind of sack and pressure numbers. My guess is that he’s relying on pure speed to get around right tackles—then either getting there and flushing/sacking the QB, or not. I wonder if pass rushers the QB can see coming don’t get as many hits . . . an interesting project for another time.

Bottom Line: Cliff Avril was pigeonholed by most as a 3-4 ROLB, and I’m certain he could shine in that role. But he’s developed into the fast, athletic 4-3 rush end Rod Marinelli thought he could be. Avril will never be a 270-plus-pound, two-way monster—but he’s already an impact defender, top-flite pass rusher, and a huge part of this defense going forward. Signing this RFA to a long-term deal must be a top priority.

The centerpiece of the Lions’ free-agent additions, Kyle Vanden Bosch had a lot to prove, too: namely, that he could still get to the quarterback like he used to. In his first game, it seemed like he answered those questions in style; I said it was “one of the most amazing individual performances I’ve seen.” KVB poured his heart and soul out into that game, trying to will the Lions to victory. He was sideline-to-sideline, or as much so as a defensive end can be.  He put up a truly dominant PFF grade that week, too: a +6.1.

Unfortunately, KVB was inconsistent the rest of the season. He turned in very solid games against the Giants and Redskins, but was negatively, or neutrally, graded in every other game. He was graded well below-average in pass rush; negative in five of eleven games. He was the 46th-best pass rusher out of 65, and had less than half the pressures Avril did—yet, KVB had five sacks and ten quarterback hits in just eleven games. His sack-and-hit per-snap rate was 25th-best in the NFL. This suggests that he was “saving it up” for critical moments; generally just below average except for several plays a game.

However, all of this does an injustice to KVB’s contribution. He was the bell cow for the defensive line, the tone-setter; he pushed every single Lion on the line to practice at full speed, to workout like you practice, to push, to go to the limit and then realize it’s not really the limit and keep going. Avril, Suh, Hill, all the young linemen repeatedly pointed to KVB’s leadership as a major factor in their progression; he was a catalyst, and without him I doubt the others take the strides they did.

I had really good seats to the Jets game, and seeing KVB in action live was something else. He never missed an opportunity—before, during, or after the snap—to remind the Jets that he was there. That he was fighting. That they needed to keep their head on a swivel. That they needed to watch their ass. Vanden Bosch and the Lions out-Jetted the Jets on that day, mostly thanks to KVB and his leadership. PFF graded him at a –2.1 on the day, but I know he had a positive impact.

Bottom Line: Kyle Vanden Bosch is the ultimate leader, a consummate professional—and as a player, the yang to Cliff Avril’s yin. Had he stayed healthy, he would have had seven sacks and fifteen QB hits, more than acceptable standalone production, besides the undeniable halo effect. Unfortunately, he’s 32, and recovering from a major neck injury. The Lions need to find a starting, impact, two-way end to replace him by the 2012 season.

The most surprising line in the chart above is the red one, the one representing Lawrence Jackson. Jackson was the 25th overall pick in 2008, a four-year starter at USC. Lo-Jack is a 6’-4”, 270-pound two-way defensive end, the prototype end for this defense. He was the victim—and the Lions, again, the beneficiary—of “One Man’s Trash” syndrome. The Seahawks let a first-round pick two years into his career go in exchange for a sixth rounder, because he no longer fit their system. To replace Lo-Jack, the Seahawks traded their own sixth-rounder to the 49ers for . . . Kentwan Balmer, picked just a few spots after Jackson in the 2008 draft. Balmer, for the Seahawks this year, was the worst-graded DE in football (see chart).

Jonah Keri just wrote a whole book on how the Tampa Bay Rays went to the world series by making these kind of deals, over and over again. By trading one commodity for another, similar commodity, and getting a 2% edge, over time it really adds up—and at some point, you’ll get a few surprise deals where the edge is way more than 2%. In this case, the Seahawks essentially traded Lo-Jack for Kentwan Balmer. The difference, as you see above, is way more than 2% . . . and where did the benefit go? To the Lions.

Lo-Jack was not a terrifying speed rusher at USC. He had 30.5 sacks in four full seasons: 6, 10, 4, and 10.5, in order. But with size, strength, and attitude sharpened by life in hardscrabble Inglewood, Jackson was a force in both dimensions of the game; in his senior year he paired his 10.5 sacks with 60 tackles—a prototypical Schwartz/Cunningham defensive end.

When injuries hit the defensive line, Jackson answered the bell in a big, big way. Getting a steady diet of snaps from week 10 on, Lo-Jack had a huge (+5.0) game against Buffalo, at left end. He was flipped to the right when KVB went down, and was average against the Bears in his first game on that side. He was flipped back to the left against Green Bay, and had a very strong game, then back to the right against the Bucs and dominated (+4.5). He stayed on the right side the rest of the way out, struggling against Jake Long, but finishing strong against Bryant McKinnie.

Bottom Line: Lo-Jack produced like an above-average starter in heavy rotation, and fron Week 10 on was one of the better 4-3 DEs in the game. I’ll hold off on anointing him the starter of the future for now, because I’d like to see more consistency—but there’s no doubt he’d be the perfect physical fit for the void KVB will eventually leave.

Next, the ever-controversial Turk McBride. Controversial, because I repeatedly dismissed him in my offseason assessments last year, much to the chagrin of the commentariat. This season, the 6’-2”, 278-pound ex-Chief played about 40% fewer snaps than Avril or KVB, but about 40% more than Lo-Jack—exclusively at the left end until Vanden Bosch went down, then exclusively at the right end for the rest of the season.

The stats suggest that McBride was nearly as successful as Jackson; McBride had five sacks to Lo-Jack's eight. The second Green Bay game sheds some light on why they graded out so differently, though. By PFF’s reckoning, both McBride and Jackson had two sacks, yet McBride’s grade for that day was –0.3, and Jackson’s was +2.1. Jackson is clearly having more of an impact down-to-down; Lo-Jack’s run support is much better than McBride’s, as well.

Bottom Line: McBride is an interesting case. Phyiscally, he’s a bit of a ‘tweener, and he did manage to get to the quarterback five times. However, I’ve never liked the cut of his jib for reasons I couldn’t fully explain. The PFF grades show why: when he’s not sacking the quarterback, he’s simply not a factor. PFF’s consistency/home-run bias may be coming into play here, but it supports my eyeball take: Lo-Jack has long-term starter potential here; Turk McBride does not.

There’s nothing that can be said about The Great Willie Young that Neil from Armchair Linebacker hasn’t already said (at breathtakingly profane length!), but I will say this: in only six snaps, he was graded at a +1.5 on the season. He also impressed during the preseason.

Bottom Line: Willie Young is a developmental prospect with a very lean frame, a long way to go, and an undeniable knack for playing football. I hope he has a place on the roster for next season.

We’ve already talked about Andre Fluellen as a defensive tackle. He played 81 snaps there, as opposed to 72 at end, during the Avril/KVB injury phase of weeks 11-15. As a DE, he graded out as a below-average pass rusher, and a well-below-average everything else. I believe his future on this team is as a tackle.

Bottom Line: At 6’-2”, 302, Fluellen is a defensive tackle. He should get this offseason to be developed and coached strictly within that role, rather than being moved all over the line. Instead of frantically gaining and losing weight to fit immediate need, the Lions should develop him this year as strictly a three-technique DT.

SHOPPING LIST: The Lions will need to find an impact two-way defensive end, ready to replace KVB as a starter by the 2012 season. Lawrence Jackson has the potential to be that end. Cliff Avril is an RFA who must be re-signed to a long-term deal. The Lions may look for a developmental speed-first end behind Avril, especially if Willie Young does not take major strides in the offseason.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,team needs,nfl draft,cliff avril,kyle vanden bosch,lawrence jackson

Read more...

Kyle Vanden Bosch: Music With What We Have Left

I named this post after a beautiful--but apocryphal--story about violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman finishing a concert after breaking a string.  Perlman, so the story goes, snapped a string very early in the performance—and forged ahead, using alternate fingerings, different voicings, even detuning strings (!) on the fly to complete the piece without missing a beat.  Perlman, who was stricken with polio as a youth and so walks with crutches, then quieted the enthralled audience and (allegedly) said, “You know, sometimes it’s the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with with what you have left.”

Again, as I said, it didn’t actually happen, as far as anyone can tell—the story appeared in the Houston Chronicle six years after the concert supposedly took place, doesn’t jibe with Perlman’s known performance schedule from the time, and nobody who saw him perform around then reported anything like the above . . . but it is a good story.

Today, Kyle Vanden Bosch was placed on the Reserve-Injured list, ending his first season as a Detroit Lion.  A captain, and the unquestioned heart and soul of the defense, KVB finished with 33 tackles, 11 assists, 4 sacks, 2 forced fumbles, and a pass defensed.  This included a monster 10-tackle tour de force in the season opener; one of the greatest individual performances by a Lion in recent memory.  We’re told not to worry, the bulging disk will be easily corrected, and KVB will return to play “at a high level.”  I’d be inclined to question The Grandmaster on this one, except he was right about how much KVB had left in the tank to begin with . . .

So what’s left?  A freshly-broken-out Cliff Avril, Turk McBride, Lawrence Jackson, and (the Great) Willie Young.  If Avril can keep up his dominant play, this group won’t be too shabby—especially if the tackles continue to play as they have.  However, that’s a pretty big “if;” KVB’s leadership inarguably inspired Avril and the rest of the line to play as they have—will they keep it up in his absence?  In a way, KVB’s absence will allow us to judge his off-field impact on the team, just as much as his presence allowed us to judge his impact between the lines.

Moreover, it’ll be a stern test of just how far the defense has come under Schwartz and Cunningham: can they keep this group motivated and productive without the man they desperately courted in the offseason?  Knowing KVB would be the catalyst for great improvement on the defensive line, will the reaction keep going now that the catalyst is spent?  Can Guntherball keep playing the offense like a fiddle, calling just the right blitz at just the right time, now that a string has snapped?  We’ll get to see just how much music he can still make with what he has left.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,jim schwartz,gunther cunningham,kyle vanden bosch,cliff avril

Read more...

One Roster, Well-Scrambled

In the past two days, the Lions have:

• Placed Jordon Dizon on Injured Reserve, ending Dizon's season and leaving his future in doubt.
• Cited the strong performance of seventh-rounder Willie Young—and the chance to catch on somewhere else—and released last year's part-time starting DE, Jason Hunter.
• Citing a need at DE (?), signed 236-pound(!?) DE Korey Bosworth, nephew of Brian Bosworth, a.k.a The Boz (?!??!??!?!!).
• Placed TE Richard Dickson on the waived-injured list.
• Put Jonathan Wade's broken finger in a weird soft cast/hard glove hybrid.
• Re-signed MLB Lee Campbell, presumably to replace Dizon, and CB Jahi-Word Daniels, presumably to fill in for Wade.  Word-Daniels immediately went down with a hamstring injury.
• Waived Word-Daniels, poor guy, and K Aaron Pettrey, then signed CB/KR T.J. Rushing, and claimed ex-Falcons kicker Steven Hauschka.

Got all that?  No?  Don’t worry, neither did I.  The most significant move is the release of Jason Hunter, a young guy who contributed significantly last year.  As a perfect physical fit for the Lions’ intended scheme, Hunter was a low-cost, high-upside player.  However, Willie Young looked great against Pittsburgh, and there are only so many long-term developmental DEs you can carry on a roster.  With no future in Detroit, the Lions did the stand-up thing and let Hunter go while he can still catch on somewhere else.

The confusing thing was that they turned around and signed Korey Bosworth.  Bosworth is a DE/OLB ‘tweener, a guy who’d be a great fit at 3-4 OLB—and in fact, had been a camp invitee of the Broncos.  I immediately presumed he’d be slotted as an OLB in the Lions’ system, given that he’s the exact same height and weight as Zack Follett, and about thirty pounds lighter than the just-released Hunter.  But, quoth the Grandmaster, Jim Schwartz:

“We had a need at defensive end,” Schwartz said. “He’s a guy that we had interest in from college scouts, a guy that was able to get here and looked like he was in shape and would be able to give us some work.

“He’s a tough guy, plays hard, he’s got a good opportunity here. I mean we threw him right into the fire. He got reps right away."

Last season, the acquisitions all fit the long-term picture—but Hunter is a guy who could have helped if he’d stuck around, and Bosworth flatly has no place in a scheme that requires the ends to contain the run on the outside.  Let’s change perspective for a moment: if Willie Young is now the developmental end, the long-term picture doesn’t have a Jason Hunter in it, does it?  Kyle Vanden Bosch, Cliff Avril, Jared DeVries, Willie Young . . . no, no Hunter. 

Knowing that Hunter's long-term future is elsewhere, they let him seek it.  But, just carrying your top four ends through half of training camp is going to work them too hard—the Lions needed a fifth body out there to burn reps.  They asked the scouting department for the next best DE on the list, and the scouts said “Korey Bosworth.”  So, Bosworth is here, and Hunter is not.

Let’s hope that the injury bug takes no more bites out of the roster, and the panicked acquisitions stop.  There’s a long way to go, though, before the Lions get down to 53 + practice squad—and of course we know that Martin Mayhew never stops churning the bottom of the roster, never stops scouring the waiver wire, never stops looking for the diamond in the rough.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,training camp,korey bosworth,jason hunter,cliff avril,willie young

Read more...

The Defensive Line and the Secondary, Part III

Throughout the offseason, it’s been speculated that the Lions’ woeful pass defense will get a boost from the revamped defensive line.  With Kyle Vanden Bosch and developing Cliff Avril on the ends, and Corey Williams and Ndamukong Suh joining Sammie Hill on the inside, the pass rush should be greatly improved.  This should, in turn, take pressure off the unproven secondary . . . right?

I set out to investigate this in part one, using the NFL’s league-wide data over the past two decades or so.  I tried to find correlation between seasons when sacks were up, and seasons when passing offense was down.  I think I learned more from the comments about how statistics and regression analysis work, than I did about the correlation between pass rush and pass defense—but my early results suggested that there is not a correlation between pass rush and pass defense.

I tried again with part two, blending pro-football-reference.com’s official and official-derived data for 2009, with profootballfocus.com’s manually film-reviewed defensive stats and grades.  I came up with a stat I called “pass rush rate,” which was opponent pass dropbacks (attempts + sacks) divided by cumulative sacks, hits, and pressures.  Then, I ran a simple correlation between every team’s pass rush rate for 2009, and their yards-per-attempt allowed.  The correlation was weak, –0.152. When squared to get the effect size, it was a negligible .023.

Importantly, the real-world analysis bore this out: the Jets had an extraordinary pass defense, by far the best in the NFL.  While their pass rush was solid, ranking 9th of 32 in pass rush rate, it was just that—solid, not phenomenal like the overall pass defense was.  Amazingly, the Cleveland Browns generated pressure on the quarterback more often than every team except Dallas and Minnesota—and yet, they were the fifth worst pass defense in the NFL!  Pass rush alone doesn’t make a defense effective.

For this installment, I wanted to get even more specific: I wanted to isolate defensive line pass rush from everything else.  After all, the idea is that getting an effective rush with just the front four will allow much greater flexibility in coverage and blitzing.  I aggregated the stats of just the defensive linemen, and compared them to what I already had.

Now, let me tell you a legendary tale . . . or, well, I guess, just a legend:

• Name: The name of the team.
• A: The primary defensive alignment.
• Pass Rush Rate: The percentage of opponent dropbacks (Attempts + Sacks) on which the defense achieved a pressure stat (Sacks + QB Hits + Pressures + Batted Passes).
• DL Pass Rush Rate: The percentage of opponent dropbacks (Attempts + Sacks) on which the defensive line achieved a pressure stat (Sacks + QB Hits + Pressures + Batted Passes).
• % of rush from DL: The percentage of defensive pressure stats (Sacks + QB Hits + Pressures + Batted Passes) generated by defensive linemen.

NAME	A	Pass Rush Rate	DL Pass Rush Rate	% of rush from DL
Dallas Cowboys	3-4	48.2%	18.2%	37.8%
Minnesota Vikings	4-3	47.7%	38.9%	81.7%
Cleveland Browns	3-4	44.0%	19.1%	43.4%
Miami Dolphins	3-4	43.3%	36.0%	83.1%
Philadelphia Eagles	4-3	43.1%	35.4%	82.2%
New York Giants	4-3	43.0%	35.3%	82.0%
Atlanta Falcons	4-3	42.9%	35.1%	81.8%
Green Bay Packers	3-4	41.6%	13.5%	32.5%
Pittsburgh Steelers	3-4	41.3%	10.1%	24.4%
Houston Texans	4-3	41.2%	32.7%	79.4%
New York Jets	HYB	40.3%	19.3%	47.9%
Denver Broncos	3-4	39.7%	13.1%	33.0%
Tennesee Titans	4-3	39.6%	36.0%	90.9%
San Francisco 49ers	3-4	39.4%	16.5%	41.9%
Washington Redskins	4-3	39.2%	29.2%	74.5%
Carolina Panthers	4-3	39.2%	35.4%	90.3%
Arizona Cardinals	3-4	38.5%	18.7%	48.6%
New England Patriots	HYB	37.8%	18.8%	49.8%
Chicago Bears	4-3	37.3%	29.9%	80.1%
San Diego Chargers	3-4	37.3%	12.5%	33.5%
Kansas City Chiefs	3-4	37.1%	12.8%	34.5%
St. Louis Rams	4-3	37.0%	28.7%	77.5%
Oakland Raiders	4-3	36.6%	30.5%	83.3%
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	4-3	36.3%	29.6%	81.6%
Indianapolis Colts	4-3	35.8%	33.2%	92.8%
Baltimore Ravens	4-3	35.6%	25.2%	70.7%
Seattle Seahawks	4-3	34.2%	27.2%	79.4%
New Orleans Saints	4-3	34.2%	23.6%	69.2%
Buffalo Bills	4-3	32.5%	27.6%	84.9%
Cincinnati Bengals	4-3	32.2%	26.2%	81.3%
Detroit Lions	4-3	29.2%	23.5%	80.2%
Jacksonville Jaguars	HYB	27.9%	10.3%	37.0%

We can see a few things in action here.  First, the Lions were terrible: second-worst in the NFL in Pass Rush Rate.  Second, the numbers get more wildly varied from left to right.  Most teams generate a pressure stat on 30-40% of the time their opponents drop back to pass, with the extremes at 27.9% and 48.2%.  Most teams generate pressure from the defensive line between 15-35% of the time, with extremes at 10.1% and 38.9%.  The percentage of the pass rush that comes from the defensive line is all over the board, from 92.8% all the way down to 24.4%.  What does this mean?

Given the amazingly wide range of percentage-of-pass-rush-from-defensive-line stats, and the zero (okay –.120, R-squared .014) correlation between them and Pass Rush Rate, I knew that scheme was a major factor.  The Colts generated almost all of the pass rush from the defensive line, just as a Tampa 2 is supposed to.  Their two ends, Robert Mathis and Dwight Freeney, accounted for 24 of Indy’s 33 sacks, 23 of 45 hits, 78 of 139 pressures, and 1 of 4 batted balls.  That’s right, Mathis and Freeney were fifty-seven percent of the Colts’ pressure statistics; they were the Colts’ pass rush.  Meanwhile the Steelers, despite having one of the league’s better pass rushes, got only 24.4% of their rush from their line.

  I separated the teams out by scheme, grouping 4-3 teams together, and 3-4 and hybrid teams together.  Since the Lions are a 4-3 team, and that’s what this exercise is all about, I discarded the 3-4s and the hybrids, and set about correlating PRR with Y/A, for just 4-3 teams:

Okay, so these are the 2009 4-3 defenses, and their overall Pass Rush Rate regressed against opponent Yards per Attempt.  Look at the R-squared; there is literally zero correlation between these two statistics.  Okay, we expected that to an extent—but what if we do it for just defensive line?  If the rush is getting there without blitzing, that should make coverage better—so, we should see a tighter correlation when we regress DL-only Pass Rush Rate against Y/A Allowed:

That’s a little itsy bit better, but there’s still no real correlation happening here.  Okay, what if we do it for percentage of pass rush that comes from the defensive line?

Okay, we’re making tiny, tiny incremental progress, but this is still nothing we can call correlation.  Yards per Attempt, my favorite measure of per-play passing effectiveness, is completely disconnected from pass rush, DL-only pass rush, and percentage of pass rush generated by the DL.  But we know for a fact that teams with good pass rushes have good defenses, right?  I mean, the Vikings have a good defense, right?  Right.

Okay, now we’re talking.  In all of my pass rush data mining, the strongest meaningful correlation I could find was between what percentage of pass rush comes from a 4-3 defensive line, and how many points that defense surrendered on the year.  As I said way back in part one:

We're left with the depressing conclusion that the only good pass defense is good pass defense. However, that's not really the case, either. Sacks and interceptions, though they don’t affect the interplay of pass offense and pass defense outside of themselves, are still extremely important in terms of total defense. Stopping drives and preventing scoring is the primary job of a defense; a third-down sack or a red-zone INT can erase sixty or seventy yards’ worth of Montanaesque passing effectiveness.

So again, as I’ve been saying: an improved pass rush won’t improve a team’s pass defense—but it will improve the team’s scoring defense.  Here’s the second-strongest correlation I found: percentage of PRR from a 4-3 DL regressed against Passing 1st Downs Allowed:

Okay, again, this makes sense: the more pass rush you can generate from your 4-3 defensive line, the fewer passing first downs you allow . . . but we’re not done yet.  I calculated the simple correlation factors for every offensive stat I thought might be illuminating.  Note that these are NOT the R-squared effect sizes you see in the charts above—since that eliminates the direction of the correlation, which is important here.  To get those effect-size figures, square the amounts in this table:

Category	%DB/P	%DB/DLP	%P/DL	Att/PD
points	-0.133	-0.360	-0.547	-0.237
total first downs	-0.007	-0.210	-0.431	-0.262
passing first downs	-0.015	-0.241	-0.482	-0.132
running first downs	-0.187	-0.257	-0.232	-0.114
yards per attempt	-0.064	-0.139	-0.190	-0.062
yards per completion	-0.147	-0.316	-0.418	-0.293
completion percentage	0.135	0.269	0.325	0.356
interceptions	-0.133	-0.081	0.037	0.165
touchdowns	0.175	0.205	0.123	0.134
passer rating	0.156	0.148	0.049	0.012

Look at completion percentage: there is a weak, but positive correlation between PRR, defensive line PRR, and percentage of PRR from DL and completion percentage.  So, as the defensive line gets more pressure, generally quarterbacks complete more of their passes—but, at what cost?  Look again at yards per completion; there’s a moderate negative correlation between increased DL pressure and average completion length.

There is a definable “cringe effect!”  When the defensive line generates more pressure, offenses generally tend to complete more and shorter passes—“going into a shell,” as it’s called.  It’s this mechanism, completing more passes for fewer yards, that explains why yards-per-attempt allowed doesn’t change as the pass rush rate increases.  Teams will dink-and-dunk in the face of the rush—meaning they convert fewer third downs, and score fewer points.

So.  How much better will the Lions’ defensive line have to be?  Well, as we saw, their pass rush numbers are terrible.  In order for the Lions to improve their Pass Rush Rate to the league average, they’d have to increase it from 29.2% of snaps to 37.7%.  To increase DL PRR to league average, they’d have to increase it from 23.5% to 30.7%.  The percentage of PRR from the DL is about right, 80.2% versus 81.3%.

The league average team faced 567 dropbacks last year, compared to the Lions’ 571, so I’ll normalize the Lions’ pressure stats to 99.3%: 22.83 QB sacks, 34.76 QB hits, 100.29 QB pressures, and 7.94 batted passes.  I’ll do the same for the DL pressure stats, from 18 to 17.86, from 26 to 25.82, from 82 to 81.43, and from 8 to 8.94.  Now, to compare to the NFL average, find the difference, and voila:

Team/Data	%DB/P	%DB/DLP	%P/DL	QBSk	QBHt	QBPr	BP	DLSk	DLHt	DLPr	DLBP
Detroit Lions (normalized)	29.2%	23.5%	80.2%	22.83	34.76	100.29	7.94	17.86	25.82	81.43	7.94
NFL Average 4-3	37.7%	30.7%	81.3%	33.00	52.00	118.00	10.00	25.00	40.00	98.00	9.00
Delta (absolute)	8.5%	7.2%	1.1%	10.17	17.24	17.71	2.06	7.14	14.18	16.57	1.06
Delta (percentage)	29.1%	30.6%	1.4%	44.5%	49.6%	17.7%	25.9%	40.0%	54.9%	20.4%	13.3%

We can conclude that, in order to bring their pass rush up to NFL average levels for a 4-3, their defensive line will have to increase their sack rate by 40%, their hit rate by 54.9%, their pressure rate by 20.4%, and their batted-ball rate up by 13.3%—and they’ll need a few more sacks and hits from the linebackers and secondary, as well.  I’m still working on projecting all that data out into points allowed, first downs allowed, etc., but there you have it.  If the Lions face the same number of dropbacks in 2010 that the average NFL team did in 2009, the difference between KVB/Avril/Williams/Suh and Avril/Hunter/Cohen/Hill will have to be worth an improvement of 7 sacks, 14 hits, 17 pressures, and 1 batted ball over 2009’s 18, 26, 82, and 8 to get back to average.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,ndamukong suh,kyle vanden bosch,defensive line,statistics,sacks,analysis

Read more...

The Defensive Line and the Secondary, Part II

When I first delved into the connections between pass rush and pass defense, I came away conclusions fueled partly by data, and partly by ignorance.  They were:

We have found that there is no inverse correlation between that pass rush effectiveness and passing effectiveness; on plays where a sack does not occur, per-play pass yardage is unaffected.

We have found that there is no inverse correlation between interception rate and passing effectiveness; on plays where an interception does not occur, per-play pass yardage is unaffected.

These may have been exaggerations.  Commenters, emailers, and strangers on the street have since filled me in.  The correlation coefficients looked dismissible to my amateur eyes, but weren’t—not entirely, anyway.  There was a –.068 correlation coefficient between “dropbacks per sack” and “raw yards per attempt”.  Essentially zero, I thought, but it’s closer to –.1 than to zero—and that’s more than nothing.  Not much more, but more.

The correlation coefficient between "attempts per interception" and "yards per attempt" was –.091.  That’s still only approaching .1; a weak correlation at best.  Still, my two statements above aren’t entirely accurate.  Over the past 20 years of NFL data, there has been a very mild inverse correlation between sacks, and pass effectiveness on non-sack downs (and the same goes for INTs).

This all implies that the pass rush might indeed affect offense even when it doesn’t hit home—but I couldn’t prove it with the data I had.  I’d been working with the 50,000-foot-view: year-over-year leaguewide NFL trends; he low resolution of this data may have blurred the very effects I’m hoping to measure.

As I said in my “parallel efforts” post last week, the Mathlete, of MGoBlog fame, did some of that further research.  As the Mathlete compared sacks, picks, and overall performance, he found:

Not entirely surprisingly, the better a defense is at producing sacks and interceptions, the better it is on downs where neither occur. For every point per game that a defense generates due to sacks, the overall pass rush generates 1.2 ppg of additional value. Interceptions are also powerful, but not as much so. Each ppg of value a defense generates through interceptions is worth 0.9 ppg of additional value.

This relies on “expected points,” here explained by Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats.  EP is a way to recognize the reality that four yards gained on 3rd-and-3 are not nearly as valuable as four yards gained on 3rd-and-8.  By finding the historical likelihood of scoring on a given down and distance from a given field position, Burke has created baseline EP values.  By finding the difference between the EP values from before a play to that play, you can gauge what that play is worth (in EP Added, or EPA).

Using EP allowed the Mathlete to quantify exactly what sacks—and the associated pass rush on non-sack downs—are worth.

From 2006-2009 in games between two D1 teams in competitive game situations (the “universe” for this and most of my analysis) the average defensive unit produced 2.3 ppg worth of sacks and 2.0 ppg worth of interceptions.

So, an average defense produced 2.3 ppg worth of sacks, and gained 2.76 ppg worth of “footsteps effect” from the pass rush.  Likewise,  the average defense snared 2.0 ppg worth of interceptions, and 1.8 ppg worth of “dink-and-dunk effect”.  Mathlete concluded that all he found was the dog wagging the tail: sacks and picks are merely indicators of good defensive performance, not the other way around.

However, this is all still limited to sacks, and attempting to derive the “cringe effect” on non-sack plays.  However, I’ve pulled down data from ProFootballFocus.com. They use film review to grade individual performances, as well as capture unofficial or untracked stats—like QB hits, and QB pressures.  Rather than attempt to measure the size of the tyrannosaur by the size of the ripples in the water cup, I’ll look at the actual data.

The data I’m using is PFF’s player data for the 2009 season, aggregated into team numbers.  A caveat, these numbers do vary from the official NFL totals, especially with subjective stats like sacks, half-sacks, and tackles.  From what I’ve seen, the differences are small, but it’s worth getting out there.  Anyway, the first order of business: test my assumption that pressures correlate with sacks.

Result?  “Yes,” but not as strongly as I’d assumed.  The correlation coefficient was .584, quite strong.  But as an anonymous commenter noted:

One of the best indicators of nature of the relationship is the effect size calculation. You can obtain an effect size by squaring your correlation coefficient. This will tell you the amount of variability the variables contribute to each other. There's a lot of noise in NFL data so an effect size will tell you how much unique data is explained by the correlation alone.

Rule of thumb for effect sizes: small .2; medium .5; large .8

The effect size here is displayed in that graph as R-squared: 0.3413.  It’s far from one-to-one, but it’s safe to say that teams that get lots of pressures tend to get lots of sacks, and vice-versa.  For what it’s worth, the best “finishers” are the Redskins, getting 43 sacks to 109 pressures.  For academics’ sake, the Falcons were the other way around: 160 pressures to only 31 sacks.  The Lions were . . . well, terrible: 23 sacks, and 101 pressures.

Next up, let's take that “hit” and “pressure” data out for a spin:

This is the total yards per attempt allowed, regressed against the percentage of dropbacks where “pass rush” was generated.  Dropbacks are “attempts + sacks”, and I’m dividing that number by cumulative sacks, hits, and pressures.  The resulting correlation is weak, –0.152, and when squared to get the effect size, it’s a negligible .0232. 

So, once again, we’re seeing no real connection between pressure and good pass defense.  You see the most interesting data point?  Yeah, that one—the one where they’re allowing three-quarters of a yard less per pass attempt than the 2nd-best team.  That’s the New York Jets; they allowed a miniscule 4.91 yards per pass attempt, while finishing 19th in PFF-scored sacks, and 9th in per-dropback “pass rush” rate.  So, the Jets had a good pass rush, but nothing that correlates to the incredible per-play passing effectiveness seen here.

Secondly, my eyes were drawn to the third-rightmost data point, and how we’d have to scrape it off the Yards-per-attempt ceiling.  That would be the Cleveland Browns, whose 47 sacks, 42 QB hits, and 139 pressures generated pressure on 42.93% of dropbacks.  That pass rush rate is third-best in the NFL, behind only Dallas (46.91%) and Minnesota (44.77%).  Yet, Cleveland’s pass D was flat terrible: it allowed 7.44 yards per attempt, ahead of only Oakland, St. Louis, Miami, and, yes Detroit (7.80). 

Things are not looking great for our thesis.  If the Lions improved their 2009 per-dropback pass rush rate to match Cleveland’s, from 27.85% to 42.93%, we’d certainly expect a better improvement in allowed Y/A than 7.80 to 7.44.

Last time, passes defensed were to coverage what sacks were to pass rush; I presumed that in years where passes defensed were up, “coverage” was better.  In this case, though, I have Pro Football Focus’s “thrown at” and “reception allowed” figures.  Again, let’s dispense with trying to derive the whole picture from one rare subset of outcomes.  FYI: Total TAs don’t equal attempts, and total receptions allowed don’t equal total receptions.  I presume the discrepancies are from uncatchable passes, screen and swing passes that aren’t thrown “into coverage”.

I’ll divide total per-team receptions allowed by total per-team TAs to get a per-team Percent Caught, as PFF does on a per-player basis.  This should be an actual measurement of the quality of pass coverage.  Let’s regress it against Y/A:

Bingo.  There’s as strong of a correlation between percent of catches allowed by coverage and yards-per-attempt, as there is between pressures and sacks.  Oh, and who’s that team with the astonishingly low percent-caught, and correlatedly low Y/A?  Yup, it’s the Jets.  The evidence is mounting: pass rush doesn’t equal pass defense, pass defense equals pass defense.

But, that’s not the whole story, is it? After all, isn’t the magic of a 4-3 defensive line supposed to be that it can generate pressure without a compromising coverage?  Won’t there be great improvement in a 4-3 that generates pass rush from the line, without having to blitz linebackers and DBs?  Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure!

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,defense,sacks,interceptions,statistics,analysis

Read more...

Meet the Cubs: Willie Young Scouting Report

7.6, 213: Willie Young, N.C. State DE

Willie Young is the most intriguing pick of the Lions' 2010 draft class.  At 6’-5”, 251 pounds, Young is the only selection with no obvious niche in the roster cut out for him.  Every defensive end brought in by the New Lions has been around 270 pounds; then again the New Lions have never drafted a defensive end.  As you can see, Young’s very lean.  With that frame, he should be able to get much bigger—but adding 20 pounds of lean muscle?  When he’s already 24 years old?
It’s confusing.  Young seems to be cursed with Cliff Avril’s build; why add another project who’ll need years to build both body and technique in order to contribute?  In a word, BATFAN.
Young came out of Palm Beach Gardens, FL, with some academic problems--but that didn't keep Florida, Georgia, and Ohio State from offering him a scholarship anyway.  He chose N.C. State over all of them, though, even staying committed after his recruiter there, Doc Holliday left for Florida($).  Presumably, the way that N.C. State developed DEs like Mario Williams and Manny Lawson was a big draw.
Manny Young was Scout.com's #34 overall defensive end; a high three-star recruit.  Rivals had him ranked even higher; Young was Rivals’ #14 weakside DE and a low four-star.  The “book” on him was the same everywhere: great speed, tremendous first steps, extremely long legs and arms, not really so much size, weight, bulk, strength, or run-stopping ability.  But blazing edge speed, and a knack for getting to the quarterback?  Check, and check.
After prepping a year at Hargrove Military Academy, he redshirted in 2005, finally getting back on the field in 2006.  He wasted no time making an impact, playing in every game and starting the final four.  He didn’t have any sacks, but according to the N.C. State website Young had 15 QB pressures, more than double anyone else on the team.  He also had one INT, which he returned 34 yards for a touchdown.
In 2007, he started 8 of 12 games, notching 5 sacks, 16 tackles for loss, and had 24 QB pressures.  That pressures tally was the second-best ever for an N.C. State sophomore, and even one higher than Mario Williams’ sophomore mark.  He also broke up six passes, third-best on the team (!). He started full-time in 2008, leading the team in TFLs (12.5) and sacks (6.5).  He also added an INT, and 26 QB pressures, to his increasingly-impressive career stats.
In 2009, the expectations were really on him: Phil Steele and Athlon Sports named him to their preseason second-team All-ACC squads.  He delivered, notching 54 tackles, 14 TFLs, 8 sacks, and another INT—earning him actual second-team All-ACC honors.  His 20 1/2 career sacks put him sixth in school history, and his 45 TFLs are second only to Mario Himself.  Here’s a Scout.com article about Young ($) with some good quotes from his opponents, including C.J. Spiller, Christian Ponder, and Maryland QB Chris Turner:

Every week when you go in the film room there are certain guys you have to game plan for, and he's one of those guys. Whether you double-team him or just try to contain him with one guy, you have to know where he is.

Unfortunately, his very lean build and his lack of strength almost certainly doom him to a situational role in the NFL.  SI.com grades Young as a 2.27, a top practice-squad type.  They, however, are the most pessimistic I’ve found.  Sideline Scouting grades Willie Young as a 5th rounder, New Era Scouting had Young as the #160th overall prospect, and Scardraft had Young going in the 4th to New England as a 3-4 OLB.  However, there’s a common, disturbing, thread I’m following.
SI.com:

Considered a "me" sort of player . . . will be a bargain if he decided to play within the team concept and dedicate himself.

Sideline Scouting:

Has been benched for inconsistent effort.

. . . and then, the ever-excellent NFL Draft Scout gives us hope:

Intangibles: An admitted free spirit who reportedly struggled initially adjusting to the coaching staff's old-school mentality, he was benched last season due to inconsistent effort and undisciplined play.  Improved as the season went on and represented NC State at ACC Media Day.

You know what it's time for: YouTube highlight reels! Here's the aforementioned Media Day appearance:

Oddly, almost all of the rest of the videos I can find on him are postgame interviews . . . I guess people knew where to go for a quote.

Here, though, is the NFL.com clip of all of Young's combine performances; especially note the crazy jumps, and the stiffness/slipping in the change-of-direction drill.  Finally, here's some actual footage of him playing football--unfortunately, it’s from his days at the military academy, and the film looks like it was shot with authentic 1960's satellite spy camera technology.
So where does Willie Young fit in with the Lions? Some have suggested that Young is Gunther Cunningham's Secret Outside Linebacker, but according to John Niyo and Tim Twentyman of the Detroit news, Young immediately shot that down:

"I will be playing defensive end with my hand down," said Young, who also said he could easily gain 10 pounds and not lose any speed or agility.

Even so, Willie has a long way to go before he'll be able to play DE in the Schwartz/Cunningham system.  Cliff Avril has taken this long to get his body to the point where the Lions are happy with it, and Young might never get there.  Even so, he just represented too much value at the top of the seventh round to deny. 

I mean, Willie Young was a player that, when we drafted, was a lot higher on the board and really didn't go into the draft anticipating taking a defensive end, but he was there and it made sense at that point. He was sort of too good a player at that point to pass up. He brings some really good pass rush to the table.

That pretty much says it all.  Best available player that fits a need: developmental defensive end.  Interestingly, though, that quote proves that the Lions truly are satisfied with Cliff Avril’s development.  Neither Jared DeVries nor Jason Hunter represent excellent long-term solutions, so if they weren’t looking to draft a DE this year, Avril’s spot must be secure. That having been said, welcome to the roster, Willie Young.

Technorati Tags: nfl.nfl draft,detroit lions,willie young,scouting reports,n.c. state

Read more...