IDP Matchups and Stat Trends - Week 05

Photo: USA Today Sports

The Footballguys IDP Matchup Spreadsheet is used to track trends around the league to help with evaluating IDP matchups. I’ll use this article to call out some interesting numbers in the data each week.

You can find the tool HERE.

STAT CREW GRADES

Every NFL stadium has its own stat crew, who are responsible for assigning tackles and assists on each play. Generally, when a tackle occurs, the statistician can award one solo, two assists, or one solo and one assist. This tab measures the tendencies for each stadium and is broken up into three sections.

At the top, we look at Tackles vs Opportunity (TVO), which compares the total number of tackles awarded to the total number of tackle opportunities faced. Tackle opportunities here is defined as rush attempts (minus quarterback kneel-downs) plus pass attempts and sacks. Teams that rank highest are more likely to credit multiple players on a play so the overall tackle numbers will be inflated.

The next two sections look at Solos vs Opportunity (SVO) and Assist vs Opportunity (AVO), which make a similar comparison for solo tackles and assisted tackles. Stadiums that rank high in one typically rank low in the other, but not always.

These trends tend to be pretty consistent throughout the year, but there are times when they change from one season to the next. Looking at trends for the first four weeks of this year, stadiums like Pittsburgh, the New York Giants, and Minnesota remain among the most favorable crews in the league as they were a year ago. Similarly, crews in Baltimore, Washington, Tampa Bay, and Arizona have remained near the bottom as the least favorable crews. Buffalo has only had one home game, but their crew went from one of the most favorable last year to the least favorable crew this year.

It may be helpful to call out several contrasting teams to understand what this data tells you. For example, Pittsburgh ranks 1st in AVO and last in SVO. They have given out assists 64% of the time but also still award solo tackles 68% of the time. That suggests IDPs will get a boost in their tackle numbers when they play in Pittsburgh. Note that the Steelers travel to Buffalo this week, so if these trends hold up, we expect fewer tackles to be awarded for Steelers IDPs like Myles Jack and Minkah Fitzpatrick.

Consider Washington as a contrasting example. They have ranked among the least generous crews in the league and awarded just 106 total tackles in Week 1 on 97 tackle opportunities (1.093 TVO). This week, they are facing Tennessee, whose own crew currently ranks 8th in TVO and recently awarded 115 tackles on 92 opportunities (1.250 TVO). Therefore, we may want to expect some tackle regression from players like Kevin Byard and David Long who have collected most of their assists while playing at home.