By John Turney
We've also noted his sack totals and compared them to the best defensive tackles of all time and in his franchise's history. Here are the updates to those lists—
In this post we add one more chart. It is composed of recent All-Pro or near-All-Pro defensive tackles and their statistics in their first five years, noting that Donald still had four more games to go to finish his fifth season.
The highlighted number is the combined total of sacks and run/pass stuffs. Stuffs are tackles for loss, but counted the proper way, as Stats, LLC does it, not the NFL and Elias, which we feel is errant and does not measure anything.
In additions to being tops in stuffs and sacks, Donald is also first in forced fumbles. But we feel it is worth noting that he's 21.5 sacks/stuffs ahead of the next best on the list and 35.5 ahead of Warren Sapp and 40.5 ahead of John Randle, two Hall of Famers who were exclusive three-techniques, as Donald is.
Truly, Donald's performance has been rare.
Fantastic information, as always thanks for taking the time to compile this data. Do you think there is any utility in doing Stuffs + Sacks + Pds and looking at how things change? Or cobbling together any other set of stats? I casually follow baseball and they can get pretty creative building upon each other (batting avg -> on base percentage -> slugging % -> OPS %, etc). PDs are easily tracked and are often close to as valuable as a stuff.
ReplyDeleteWell, the NFL combines sacks and TFLs in run game, but then takes out any forced fumbles, so yeah, there is value in properly counting Stuffs and adding them to sacks (Stacks). It measures big plays in run and pass game, with the usual caveat that sometimes a guy gets a sack or stuff do to the effort of someone else, but that's the same for interceptions, and fumble recoveries, too
DeleteYes PDs have value, it's the same as a tackle for no gain. It has big value on 3rd down. Also, if there is a PD, then the DBs cannot commit pass interference, so there is a bit of extra value.
Deletehey John, just curious, how do you categorize quarterbacks that get tackled in the backfield for a loss on a running play like a draw or keeper? do you score that as a sack or TFL?
ReplyDeleteif it is a running play, and no attempt to pass, it's a TFL. Back in the day, especially guys like Bobby Douglass it's hard to tell. You make a judgment call, based on what scorekeepr called it
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