Pass Rushing Productivity

Yesterday was all about awards at Pro Football Focus but today, for this piece anyway, we’re stepping away from that and instead we’re looking at one of the new statistics we’ve just added to our premium section.

Yes, after months of perfecting them, we’ve only gone and brought out signature stats for all defensive positions. So it’s only fair we celebrate that by picking one at random and exploring it, maybe even forcing a few of you to take the bait and sign up for full membership. In some respects we’re evil like that.

So let’s give you a glimpse at what is on offer by using some of our completely unique data to tell you which defensive tackles are the best pass rushers. This data involves sitting through each and every play, finding out who is on the field and who is rushing the passer. Yes, as strange as it may be, some defensive tackles will find themselves covering a zone. Those crazy defnsive co-ordinators.

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Earlier in the week you may have seen our Pass Rushing Productivity feature that looked at the success pass rushers were having relative to how often they were rushing the passer. It revealed that there simply isn’t a more productive pass rusher in the league than Carlos Dunlap right now, and added evidence to just how productive Von Miller has been.

So, getting into a bit more detail, it’s time that we looked at the best individual pass rushing performances of the season – the games that stood out, statistically speaking. If you want the best with added intelligence, take a look at the grading section in our premium area that takes into account how the pressure was achieved, but if you want raw numbers, it doesn’t get any better than this. Read the rest of this entry »

The sack stat. Also known as the bane of my existence.

Every day I get emails or tweets where someone references how many sacks a player has as the sole reason why they deserve recognition. It’s like a sack is the only way a pass rusher can impact a game, forgetting how pressure also impacts the decision-making and accuracy of a quarterback.

Now pressure doesn’t guarantee a negative play like a sack, but look at it this way: Aaron Rodgers completes 76.1% of passes when he isn’t pressured, and completes “just” 54.4% when he is. It’s a universal truth for all QBs that getting pressured makes them far more inaccurate.

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First and ten. The defensive end puts a spin move on the tackle, gets to the quarterback and you’ve got yourself a seven yard loss. The only problem being the offense recovers, picks up another first down and goes on to score a touchdown.
 
Third and five. Defensive end puts a spin move on a tackle, hurries the quarterback into making a throw when he’s not ready. End result an incompletion and the punt unit is coming onto the field.
 
You see pressure is always important, but never more so than in those get-off-the-field situations. So that’s why today we’ll be applying our Pass Rushing Productivity measure (hits and hurries worth three quarters of sacks, divided by the number of pass-rushing snaps and multiplied by 100) to passing plays on third and fourth downs. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve put the Pass Rushing Productivity formula to the test on edge rushers and inside penetrators, but those aren’t the only defenders that generate pressure. It also comes from those guys for whom it’s more of a secondary function, a bonus of sorts.
 
For them, pass rushing isn’t just pass rushing, it’s blitzing.
 
So up next – and what a great way to end the week – we’re going to look at who the best blitzing linebackers have been over the past year and over the past three years. Read the rest of this entry »

As you read here on Monday, our three-year Pass Rushing Productivity piece on edge rushers was due to be followed by a companion article focused on the men of the interior. So, on the heels of that look at defensive ends and outside linebackers comes this breakdown of those bigger guys working inside.
 
These Defensive Interior Pass Rushing Productivity ratings, like the others, are not just for 2010, but will also cover the past three years.
 
Same format, same simple formula: we take sacks, hits, and hurries (with weighting toward sacks) divide it by the number of snaps spent rushing the passer, apply a multiplier to tidy it up and that all spits out the PRP. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier in the year, we did a piece on Pass Rushing Productivity. Fearing it may have been lost amongst all the labor talk of the time, we’ve revamped it – cleaned up some data and added a few more years to the mix.
 
Pass Rushing Productivity is back and bigger than ever and today we’re looking at the edge rushers.
 
It’s as simple a formula as ever. You add up all the sacks, hits and hurries a defender gets and divide it by the number of snaps they spent rushing the passer (a stat only found at PFF), multiply it by one hundred and, suddenly, you have a nice, juicy, PRP number to get stuck into. Read the rest of this entry »

Not long after our Pass Rushing Productivity feature went out, I was doing my usual daily reading and saw ESPN’s always readable – though sometimes anti-Larry Fitzgerald (I kid) – Paul Kuharsky pose the question: “Who’s the best blitzing DB in the NFL?”

Yes! An article that practically writes itself. You see, here at Pro Football Focus, we chart every blitz by every defensive back on every passing play, so you don’t have to. It means we can present this information, for the purest of pure fans, in a simple feature.

Aren’t we great? Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, we earned ourselves a pat on the back for our proclamations of big things to come from Cameron Wake. In all honesty, we were just relaying what the game tape and numbers told us.

So, after scoring a spectacular bull’s-eye with that, we thought we’d leave ourselves open to more self praising by using our Pass Rushing Productivity research to name ten guys who could be primed to break out next year.

Feeble pass rushers need not apply. Read the rest of this entry »

So who do you think is the most productive pass rusher in the NFL on a per snap basis? Is it the master of the spin move, Dwight Freeney? Hard hitting outside linebacker James Harrison? Or maybe it was NFL sack leader DeMarcus Ware? Well they all featured near the top, but you’d be wrong if you answered any of them.

Now, if you had answered “Tamba Hali”, then you would have been the winner of this fun, but sadly prize-less contest. Yes indeed, the Kansas City Chief outside linebacker (who didn’t even make the Pro Bowl) tops our Pass Rushing Productivity chart. Hali follows in the footsteps of last year’s leader Freeney, and 2008’s top dog John Abraham. Read the rest of this entry »