What’s up everyone! I’m back with another stat based rankings. Since the last one was about corners and the fact that stats don’t always paint the best picture for defensive backs, I figured I would keep that going and rank safeties. For the sake of repetition, I decided to just combine both free safeties and strong safeties. I was considering combining all defensive backs, but I felt there was a big enough difference with cornerbacks to justify ranking them separately. Although I felt the roles were different enough to rank them separately, I felt there stats held the same value, so I kept the scoring scale the same.
Scoring Breakdown
Tackles: 1 Point
Tackles for Loss: 2 Points
Plays Defended: 5 Points
Forced Fumbles/Fumbles Recovered: 5 Points Each
Blocked P/XP/FG: 5 Points Each
Interception: 10 Points
Safety: 15 Points
Touchdown: 20 Points
One of the things I was most curious about when combining the two positions together I wondered if one position would be clearly more dominant over the other. From what we can see from the data, is that towards the top and bottom it seems to be even switching off from rank to rank. In the middle though you five free safeties in a row and then you get eight strong safeties in a row. I personally found this neat. It seems that free safeties ranked slightly better overall, but I don’t think one safety group is clearly better than the other based on just these rankings alone.
Scoring Breakdown
Tackles: 1 Point
Tackles for Loss: 2 Points
Plays Defended: 5 Points
Forced Fumbles/Fumbles Recovered: 5 Points Each
Blocked P/XP/FG: 5 Points Each
Interception: 10 Points
Safety: 15 Points
Touchdown: 20 Points
One of the things I was most curious about when combining the two positions together I wondered if one position would be clearly more dominant over the other. From what we can see from the data, is that towards the top and bottom it seems to be even switching off from rank to rank. In the middle though you five free safeties in a row and then you get eight strong safeties in a row. I personally found this neat. It seems that free safeties ranked slightly better overall, but I don’t think one safety group is clearly better than the other based on just these rankings alone.