*Comparing Defensive Players Across Positions

[mithrandir]

I was on the ISFL awards committee last season and I am very proud of the ballot we gave the General Managers. Perhaps we missed one or two picks but overall we put the best players on the ballot. One area which I felt we did not handle well was comparing players with different roles or positions on defense. The two main difficult positions to assess are the nickelback and middle linebacker positions. Both put up very large tackle numbers, while their counterparts (strongside linebacker and cornerback) often put up the much flashier numbers; i.e. sacks and interceptions. The committee was criticized for leaving Honda Edmond off the ballot, a middle linebacker with 135 tackles. Other linebackers such as Mike Hockhertz and Stanislaw Koniecpolski also had a great volume of tackles and added other stats to help their cases. Ultimately, the committee decided on five strongside linebackers for the ballot, namely, the five linebackers with the most sacks, and impressive PD and forced fumble numbers as well.
Essentially, there are two types of defensive plays: a stop (i.e. tackle, tackle for loss, or pass deflection), and splash plays (i.e. a sack or takeaway). I have been pondering how to give credit where it is due to the players who are elite play stoppers rather than elite play makers. Both are incredibly important to the success of a defense. I turned to something that I often rely on: a spreadsheet. Numbers are so comforting when we talk about awards. We compare stats of players and decide which numbers in which columns we like the best. Rather than do this intuitively as we often do, I created a Spreadsheetwhich weighted the significance of each play for a defense. This hopefully equalizes the play stoppers and the play makers somewhat. Admittedly, I used a totally arbitrary formula but I think that it gives some insights into who is playing well, regardless of position.
Here is the formula:
1 pt per tackle
1.5 pts per TFL
3 pts per FF
3 pts per FR
2 pts per sack
5 pts per INT
1.5 pts per PD
5 pts per safety
7 pts per TD
4 pts per blocked punt

I don't claim that this formula is perfect or even good, but I found that it produced satisfying results, especially for the linebacker group. Here's what I found:
Top 25 Players by Overall Score


Thoughts:
This seems to acknowledge the best play stoppers, like Quenton Bode, who is tied for the league lead in tackles, and nickelback Tyron Shields. Both have made big splash plays to add to their high volume, separating themselves from high volume play stoppers like Mike Hockhertz and Magnus Valdyr who lack the big plays.

I further separated the score into two other scores to evaluate players by: the playmaker score, which is the part of the score which counts sacks, forced fumbles, fumble recoveries, interceptions, safeties, blocked punts, and touchdowns scored. This shows who the biggest playmakers in the league are. The play stopper score adds the tackles, plus one and a half points per tackle for loss and pass defended. This shows who the most consistent stoppers are.

Top 25 Playmakers


Top 25 Play Stoppers


Thoughts:
I really like the playmaker score as a tool. I think it really accurately represents who are making plays at every level. It represents a wide variety of players: people with high sack totals, those with lots of takeaways, those with touchdowns, and those with well rounded numbers.
The play stopper score has much less variety of represented players, with no defensive lineman in the top 25. In fact, the top 25 is only linebackers and nickelbacks.

Positional Scores
Top 25 Safeties

Top 10 Playmaker Safeties

Top 10 Playstopper Safeties


Thoughts:
The overall score seems to skew a little too much in favor of nickelbacks since the difference in tackles between nickelbacks and free/strong safeties is quite wide. However, if you filter out the players with a playmaker score less than 5, you get a pretty solid list of the best safeties in the league this year. Blaylock is having a spectacular year, and overcame the huge tackle boost of the nickelbacks with a nice combo of very strong playmaker score and 96 tackles from the FS spot.

Cornerbacks:
Top 25 Cornerbacks


Top 10 Playmaker Cornerbacks


Top 10 Playstopper Cornerbacks


Thoughts:
If safety was bad, this was way worse. The overall score is pretty much a list of tackle leaders. Tackles are generally not looked on favorably for CBs in awards discussions, but then again, nickelbacks deserve some credit for their play. Perhaps a modified ranking for cornerbacks would nerf tackles and up the value for PDs, a much more important "play stopper" result for a defensive back. A value of 0.3 for tackles and 2 for PDs would result in this top 25 list that is still imperfect but a little more palatable:


Linebackers:
Top 25 Linebackers


Top 10 Playmaker Linebackers


Top 10 Playstopper Linebackers


Thoughts:
While admittedly flawed for defensive backs, I think the overall score methodology fits so well for linebackers. Those players who are both great playmakers and playstoppers score well on this list.
Galf Wilf is having an absolutely monstrous season and looks like the easy favorite for LB awards. His playmaker score crushes the competition.
Shout out to Quaid, Dissector, Bode, and Mango-Panda, who show up on both top 10s.

Defensive Ends:
Top 25 Defensive Ends


Top 10 Playmaker Defensive Ends


Top 10 Playstopper Defensive Ends


Thoughts:
Interestingly, there are a lot of names at the top of both top 10 lists, and they dominate the overall rankings. Defensive linemen are always tough to evaluate. Do you just look at TFLs and sacks? How should tackles factor in? Thanks to my methodology, you now know.

Defensive Tackles:
All 22 Defensive Tackles


Top 10 Playmaker Defensive Tackles


Top 10 Playstopper Defensive Tackles


Thoughts:
Shane Masters is dominated the field at defensive tackle. No one has more tackles, tackles for loss, or sacks than him at the position. In fact, the only DT who is beating Masters in any single defensive stat reported by the sim is Magnus Rikiya with one blocked punt, a feat Masters has not accomplished this year.

Conclusions:
In the past, tackles were not appropriately weighted in the equation for awards considerations. My methodology effectively evaluates a player's strength as a playmaker and a playstopper on the defensive side of the ball, and attempts to quantify those qualities in order to compare against and across positions. It is especially effective, in my opinion, for comparing strongside linebackers with middle linebackers, a shortcoming of the awards committee in the past.

Word count: 1074 measly words, lots and lots of spreadsheet work.

[The_Kidd]

As someone who played Slot Corner last season, it does not reflect an actual slot CB role of matching against team's strong 3rd WR. Instead, slot cb in the sim seems to operate as a 3rd LB. If you're player has an advantage over the usual weak 3rd WR, then we don't see many throws our way.

Our biggest role is to stop outside runs and chase down loose ball carriers on pass plays. I had 115+ tackles last season, but at least half of those tackles were on run plays. Seemed that half of the panel of the DSFL thought I got torched all season, when it was not the case. I only had one interception, and few FF along with a handful of PD's ---- but I did not face as many throws my way.

I know in the NFL, completion % against, splits stats when guarded by "X" vs. not guarded by "X", and net rating/on-off rating for said player helps create a bigger picture. I know everyone doesnt have time to deal with that but I think at least looking at the missed tackles stat in the sim files would help, as well as checking box score stats when said player guarded the potential pro-bowl offensive skill players would help erase the stigma of more tackles being an indicator of bad defense.

I always bring up the stipulation, would you rather have a boom or bust type like De''Angelo Hall or a more fundamental type like Jonathan Joseph?

[Memento Mori]

Hey I’m the top playmaking corner, that’s pretty cool.

I know that DDSPF20 has more advanced defensive stats, hopefully this time they implement some of the features we need and we can make the switch. IRL, deciding (particularly defensive) awards nominations and votes based on season stats without context is often (rightly) criticised. Would love to have advanced ISFL stats available so we can have more nuanced discussions.

[speculadora]

while I think you're right on tackles traditionally probably being a little more dismissed in awards voting than is fair, I feel like you could tweak the relative weights of some of the stats and still accomplish this. for example, with tackles being worth a point each, that means that 2 tackles equate to a sack, or that 5 equate to an interception, neither of which feels quite right. not that there's a "right" way to do this of course, I'm just thinking out loud.

I'd also love to see these somehow normalized for the number of plays run against a team's defense, but that would be a pain in the ass. I'm just thinking for example, that the Hawks probably have one of the higher average time of possessions in the league based on their run/pass split. So when we look at De Ville's 113 tackles and 8 sacks, it's probably actually a bit more impressive than it seems on the surface if the Hawks do a good job of keeping their defense off the field. It probably shakes out pretty similarly in the end, just something that might be interesting.

[HENDRIX 2.0]

Galf Wilf is having an absolutely monstrous season and looks like the easy favorite for LB awards. His playmaker score crushes the competition.

Nobody has ever had 1 safety + 1 DTD + 1 block season. Props to Wilf for an epic season.

[ddrector]

It is unfortunate that the sim doesn't keep track of how many times we are targeted and how many catches we give up.

[Ben]

I see Tu'inukuafe at the top of a list, I upvote

[mithrandir]

It is unfortunate that the sim doesn't keep track of how many times we are targeted and how many catches we give up.

Indeed. There is still no good way to evaluate CBs, but I think I've started down the path of figuring out evaluating linebacker play

[.Laser]

IMO a stat that tracks how many times a CB was targeted would be very helpful (but the sim sucks donkey butt). That would help in creating a good formula to track how good CBs really are. For example, true CBs (RCB or LCB in the sim) with fewer tackles means they were not targeted as much. Part of that has to do of course with the opponent's gameplanning, but it would be interesting to see a PD%, INT%, and TKL% alongside a CB to be able to truly grasp the talent of said CB. In my mind tackles have always counted against CBs as it means they typically gave up more catches, so personally for CBs I would count tackles as .5 per point and up the value of INTs and PDs for CBs due to the importance put on each stat.

[The_Kidd]

IMO a stat that tracks how many times a CB was targeted would be very helpful (but the sim sucks donkey butt). That would help in creating a good formula to track how good CBs really are. For example, true CBs (RCB or LCB in the sim) with fewer tackles means they were not targeted as much. Part of that has to do of course with the opponent's gameplanning, but it would be interesting to see a PD%, INT%, and TKL% alongside a CB to be able to truly grasp the talent of said CB. In my mind tackles have always counted against CBs as it means they typically gave up more catches, so personally for CBs I would count tackles as .5 per point and up the value of INTs and PDs for CBs due to the importance put on each stat.

I think their should be a coefficient for the average catch and run distance before said tackle. A CB can have 7 tackles but only yield 50-60 yards --- and if they are facing an elite WR, they will be targeted --- that's just how football works as coaches are going to constantly play the numbers game with their star WR's. If another CB only gets three tackles but has an interception, he still could have had a worse day if those 3 catches went for, say 96 yards. And he possibly could have blown a coverage and gave up a TD that won't be registered in the sim. The only way you could tell is by watching the game play out on the sim.

Bottom line we can all agree on --- the sim doesnt provide enough to properly grade CBs. And yielding tackles doesnt necessarily mean you were bad, in fact, if you're facing elite WR's --- some of those tackles could have been TD's or huge gains instead of an 8 or 14 yard catch.