GridFe Hall of Fame Safeties

Defensive Backs, Hall of Fame August 16, 2018 Bryan Frye Leave a comment

Expectations for safeties have evolved as offensive trends philosophies have evolved. The earliest pure safeties lived up to their names, acting as safety nets deep behind the rest of their defense, combating the long ball tendencies of the day. As offenses became more sophisticated, roles on defense became more complex. Safeties now had to be able to cover most all areas of the field, as well as run and pass blitz, as well as their requisite support against the rush. The position has seen several…

GridFe Hall of Fame Cornerbacks

Defensive Backs, Hall of Fame August 13, 2018 Bryan Frye Leave a comment

Cornerbacks have one of the toughest jobs in football. Usually playing in a reactionary posture, they have to rely on technique and savvy to keep some of the most athletic people in the world from catching the ball. They have to do this on every play of every game. Okay, not every play. On running plays, they have to first respect the pass and then react to much larger men coming their way to clear a path for the runner. When they do their job…

QB Defensive Support: Part 2

Quarterbacks August 12, 2018 Adam Steele 1 Comment

Last week I outlined my methodology for measuring QB defensive support, and looked at the best and worst seasons using that metric. Today’s post will explore the career numbers for the 107 quarterbacks in my study. I originally planned to simply tally the seasonal numbers without adjustment, but that presented a problem: The top of the support leaderboard was disproportionately filled with QB’s who were exceptional at avoiding interceptions. This makes sense because throwing picks generally makes it harder to prevent the opponent from scoring,…

GrideFe Hall of Fame Outside Linebackers

Hall of Fame, Linebackers August 7, 2018 Bryan Frye Leave a comment

Even among contemporaries, outside linebackers are difficult to compare with one another. Those who excel in coverage tend to be overlooked for postseason honors in favor of pass rushers, and both (perhaps rightfully) overshadow the pure run pluggers. This problem is exacerbated when trying to assess the relative accomplishments of outside linebackers across different eras. How do you evaluate Dave Wilcox, a run stopping maven from the 1960s, against Seth Joyner, a hypertalented cover backer from the 1980s? And how do you measure either against…

QB Defensive Support: Part 1

Quarterbacks August 5, 2018 Adam Steele 2 Comments

I’ll start by stating the obvious: QB wins is a terrible metric for evaluating the performance of quarterbacks. But since this criteria remains at the forefront of the public discourse about NFL signal callers, I figured it would be worthwhile to provide some important context. The game of football is won and lost in three phases, two of which have very little to do with the QB. In this post I’m going to present a cursory analysis of which QB’s benefited the most and least…

GridFe Hall of Fame Middle Linebackers

Hall of Fame, Linebackers August 2, 2018 Bryan Frye Leave a comment

For a large portion of NFL history, middle linebackers have been referred to as quarterbacks of the defense, and they are expected to possess the football intelligence to match the title. Mike backers must have the ability to do a little bit of everything: make tackles sideline to sideline, stop runs up the gut, maintain coverage (usually on backs and tight ends), run and pass blitz, and get personnel into position and make necessary adjustments.1 With the wide array of skills needed to play at…

Championship Leverage Update

Data Dump August 1, 2018 Bryan Frye 1 Comment

Back in June, I wrote about Championship Leverage in the NFL. My particular interest was determining the value of a postseason game relative to that of a regular season game (and vice versa). In the original formula, I used a figure for wildcard games that was not intuitive to me. After careful consideration,1 I have tweaked the formula to change the 8.33% odds in the wildcard round to 6.25% odds. This means seasons since 1978 now have a higher weight for postseason games. Nothing else has changed…

GridFe Hall of Fame Defensive Tackles

Defensive Line, Hall of Fame July 31, 2018 Bryan Frye Leave a comment

Manning the interior line, defensive tackles tend to be the biggest and strongest players on the field. Their lower bodies must simultaneously be powerful enough to anchor against the run and quick enough to bypass blockers. Their arms must be both mighty and precise, in order to disengage linemen to make plays (or occupy linemen to allow others to make the plays). More so than their line mates on the outside, defensive tackles tend to have higher expectations to shut down rushing attacks and lower…

GridFe Hall of Fame Defensive Ends

Defensive Line, Hall of Fame July 26, 2018 Bryan Frye Leave a comment

The ideal defensive ends are immovable objects against the run and unstoppable forces against the pass. In reality, the best ends tend to be great at one or the other, or good at both, with a few extraordinary exceptions. As a committee, we strove to recognize those defenders who had few holes in their game, and we had an implicit preference for the guys who excelled in both areas. However, we recognize the importance of the pass relative to the run, and we honor those…

Championship Leverage

Data Dump June 18, 2018 Bryan Frye 2 Comments

Over the years, I’ve given much thought to the value (Championship Leverage) of postseason games relative to regular season games. Sabermetrics guru Tom Tango invented the Leverage Index to apply a value to the gravity of a given base-out-inning situation in baseball. Later, Neil Paine used the concept for basketball and, subsequently, football. I found his application of the concept to NFL quarterbacks to be particularly interesting, and I decided to go into more detail on Neil’s methodology and expand the findings back to 1936…