In 2013, Footballguy Adam Harstad wondered how many weeks into the season would pass before to-date scoring became more predictive of year-end finish than preseason ADP. His analysis of the 2012 season and several subsequent seasons concluded that the answer is roughly four games.
Harstad conducted his analysis only for skill-position players. Average draft position for individual defensive players varies greatly from source to source relative to offensive players, so parallel analysis would be futile.
Week 4 might, therefore, be the last best chance to acquire a good player whose counting stats don't reflect his performance. Through three weeks, seven players have more than 3.0 quarterback sacks to their credit. Only two of them appeared among the top 100 players by average draft position in The IDP Show's IDP-only best-ball drafts that occurred throughout the offseason.
First-rounders Myles Garrett and Nick Bosa each have 2.0 quarterback sacks. A 26-year-old undrafted free agent from Indiana University of Pennsylvania matched this total in his NFL debut in Week 3. Dondrea Tillman does not even appear on the Broncos' unofficial depth chart at DenverBroncos.com.
Footballguy Matt Montgomery has concluded that Bosa should be demoted from the elite tier of IDPs for fantasy purposes. Bosa has collected 9 combined tackles through three weeks, right on pace for his career average of 3 per game. His tackle totals have always been more like ED3 numbers. His fantasy value is reliant on big plays. Based on his performance to date, should you, the fantasy football gamer, buy or sell Nick Bosa in your league's trade market?
Pass Rush Win Rate
It's time for the first win rate chart of the year!
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) September 26, 2024
Double team rate when pass rushing as an edge (x) by pass rush win rate at edge (y).
(ESPN Analytics / NFL Next Gen Stats) pic.twitter.com/1wdbcOgkKi
A confluence of events results in a quarterback sack. The quarterback must drop back to pass and hold the ball long enough for a defender to reach and tackle him. Good coverage helps. Good offensive-line play neutralizes pass rush. Some say, “A sack is a quarterback sack.” The aspect of the sack that the pass rusher can control is how quickly he beats the blocker who aims to impede his progress to the quarterback.
ESPN collects “pass-rush wins” from NFL Next Gen Stats. A pass rusher who beats the block within 2.5 seconds is credited with a win. ESPN then charts the rate of wins versus pass-rush attempts along with the rate at which the defender is double-teamed by blockers. If the opposite of a pass-rush win is a loss, the double-team mitigates the negative impact on the defense of the loss. Other defenders have fewer obstacles in their path to the quarterback.
Through three weeks, perennially underrated Trey Hendrickson has nearly broken ESPN's chart. Hendrickson has been double-teamed more frequently than any edge defender (qualifying with regular playing time) and has also achieved the highest win rate. He's tied with elite IDPs Myles Garrett and Aidan Hutchinson atop ESPN's leaderboard by winning one of every three pass-rush attempts.
Footballguys' Strength of Schedule tool identifies the remaining schedule of Hendrickson's Bengals as the league's most favorable for fantasy point production by edge defenders. Notably, the tool incorporates past production in run and pass defense. Hendrickson has never been a compiler of tackles, so gamers in tackle-heavy leagues must weather his lower floor. Hendrickson nevertheless has two quarterbacks as division rivals, Deshaun Watson and Justin Fields, who fuel the argument that a sack is a quarterback sack. Hendrickson is an ED1 in big-play scoring formats.
Trey Hendrickson is an absolute terror
— All-22 (@All22_PFF) September 15, 2024
pic.twitter.com/S4mxiqxQiV
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Rising Stars?
ESPN's leaderboard includes six young pass rushers drafted outside the top 50 IDPs, on average, over the summer. Five of them rank among the 18 highest-scoring edge defenders on Footballguys' leaderboard.
Boye Mafe was considered a raw, athletic prospect with high upside in the 2022 NFL draft. The Seahawks' second-round pick is rounding into form as an impact player.
Another second-round pick by the Seahawks, Darrell Taylor, might be breaking out in Chicago. His bookend, Montez Sweat, elevated his play after his midseason arrival ahead of the 2023 NFL trade deadline. However, the team that drafted Taylor in 2020 dealt him away for a 6th-round pick. He didn't play assignment-sound football under Pete Carroll, and the new coaching regime deemed him expendable last spring. Taylor will likely continue to rotate with DeMarcus Walker, who stands 10th in run-stop win rate. Lower snap counts will make Taylor a risky option for fantasy gamers.
Rookie Jared Verse is quickly emerging in Los Angeles. Tackle collection fueled both Rams' edge defenders to fantasy ED2 finishes in 2023. Tackles likewise fuel Verse's standing on the 2024 Footballguys' leaderboard through three weeks. Verse's remarkable 28-percent pass-rush win rate has translated to just one sack. Verse is a buy-high candidate in all formats.
Jonathon Cooper made the 2021 Broncos' roster as a 7th-round pick because he could set an edge. He's developed steadily and emerged as an ED1 in most formats last year. His modest (by fantasy ED1 standards) 8.5 quarterback sacks may have had fantasy gamers sleeping on him over the summer of 2024. He was the 41st edge defender off the board with an average draft position outside the top 100 IDPs. Cooper's development has done nothing but continue this season, helping restore a team pass rush that suffered from trading away Von Miller and Bradley Chubb.
For all of the Nix talk, @Nate_Tice and I agree: The Broncos' PASS RUSH is the story of their season so far.
— Mina Kimes (@minakimes) September 26, 2024
They rank 3rd league-wide in pass rush win + 4 man pressure rate!
We previewed NYJ DEN and every Week 4 game:
?: https://t.co/lOszPjfOsP
?: https://t.co/qtQxcPLSgh pic.twitter.com/RaC4lDIYvO
Baltimore's Odafe Oweh and David Ojabo are tied for tenth with a pass-rush win rate of 25 percent. Odafe famously collected no sacks in his last season in Happy Valley. The Penn State product earned first-round pick status in part on metrics like this. He was slower than many first-rounders to earn the trust of coaches, but he looks like he is breaking out in 2024.
Ojabo would also have been a first-round pick if not for an Achilles tendon tear during the predraft process. The Ravens' second-round pick in the 2022 NFL draft has played just eight career games, but it might just be a matter of time before he overtakes Kyle Van Noy as the second starter.
Fading Stars?
Fourteen edge defenders finished the 2023 season with a pass-rush win rate greater than 20 percent. Seventeen players are on that pace through the first three weeks of 2024. Four of them, all established stars, rank outside the top 30 on Footballguys' leaderboard of edge defenders. One, Von Miller is a situational pass rusher for the Bills at age 35.
The Texans' Will Anderson Jr. and Danielle Hunter duo join Nick Bosa as the other three. Anderson was last year's Defensive Rookie of the Year. Danielle Hunter finished third among edge defenders in fantasy points last year as a Minnesota Viking. In aggregate, the three have 6.0 sacks and 25 combined tackles.
Current Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans was Nick Bosa's defensive coordinator in San Francisco in 2021. The two defenses are similar in how they deploy their edge rushers. Contain is less important than reaching the quarterback. All three have high ceilings for sacks but lower floors as tacklers. Each of the three has made more tackles than Myles Garrett (6) or Trey Hendrickson (7). Hunter might seem the biggest disappointment since he has averaged more than 4 combined tackles per game across his 5 previous seasons.
Know Your Scoring and Settings!
The 49ers, Bengals, Browns, and Texans want their best pass rushers to get to the quarterback. Their defensive coordinators allocate resources behind them to compensate in run defense. This usage contrasts with players like Carl Granderson and DeMarcus Lawrence, who are more active as edge setters. The resurgent Lawrence and Granderson, the 2023 Saints' breakout defensive end, may each outperform the league's premier pass rushers in fantasy football formats that highly reward tackle compilation.
Nick Bosa's production is no different in 2024 than it was in 2023, when he was a fantasy ED2. The problem, to the extent that one exists, is the system, not the player. Bosa, like Anderson and Hunter, beats blocks and generates pressure often enough to score 15.0 sacks again. The prevailing IDP scoring system of tackles, sacks, and turnovers dates to the 20th century, when commissioners used newspaper boxscores to calculate fantasy scores.
Fantasy leagues seeking more certainty in production should consider rewarding tackles for loss. Tackles for loss are readily available, clearly measurable, and indicative of talent. A tackle for loss is always a tackle made behind the line of scrimmage. A sack is not. A player can earn credit for a sack by running a quarterback out of bounds or tripping him up for no gain.
The five edge defenders who made the most tackles for loss (TFLs) last year were Maxx Crosby, Danielle Hunter, Khalil Mack, T.J. Watt, and Micah Parsons. Most would agree they were some of the league's best players in 2023. Parsons, however, finished ninth at his position on the Footballguys' leaderboard, which incorporates no additional credit for TFLs.
Thanks for Reading!
Reading the Defense drops each Friday. Next week's edition will cover defensive tackles' performance and metrics. Edge defenders are to wide receivers what defensive tackles are to tight ends in fantasy football. The interior defenders collect stats at slower rates. A tackle like A'Shawn Robinson can pile up stats in a negative game script just as a tight end can in garbage time. A fourth week of statistics will add value to this analysis.
This column seeks to identify not only whom to target or fade but why. Analysis at Footballguys aims to equip fantasy gamers with the confidence to acquire players for their rosters and deploy them on Sundays. Readers are welcome to contact and follow this writer @DynastyTripp on the website formerly known as Twitter.
