As a group, defensive tackles are off to a slow start. Last year’s top two finishers are out with injuries. DeForest Buckner is expected back, but Derrick Brown is out for the year. Christian Barmore, another top-ten defensive tackle on Footballguys’ 2023 leaderboard, never started this season due to an unusual health concern.

Seven defensive tackles have collected more than 2.0 quarterback sacks through four weeks. Nearly twice that number of players cleared the same milestone in 2023. Keion White, the player atop the current Footballguys leaderboard, is a defensive end. It’s easier to score sacks from the edge because the rusher sees fewer double-teams.

Pass Rush Win Rate

Last week’s edition of Reading the Defense used “pass-rush win rate” to look for players whose performance has met their fantasy production. 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 tracks 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 to the defense of the loss. Other defenders have fewer obstacles in their path to the quarterback.

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.

Through four weeks, just two defensive tackles are credited with more than ten pass-rush wins. Only seven tackles are winning at rates greater than 15 percent of the time. In comparison, 15 edge defenders have more than 10 pass-rush wins, and 19 have win rates equal to or greater than 20 percent.

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.  

Early in the 2024 season, defensive tackles have fantasy gamers scratching their heads just as tight ends do. Buckner, Brown, and Barmore aren’t the only premium players missing in action. Quinnen Williams, Daron Payne, Jonathan Allen, and Jeffery Simmons, all DT1s in 2022, aren’t producing.

Christian Wilkins, Las Vegas

Christian Wilkins sits at 26th in fantasy points through four weeks. He has finished better than that in five straight years. He has been a top-five fantasy defensive tackle in each of the past three years. It may be tempting to fault his transfer from Miami to Las Vegas in free agency as a cause.

ESPN’s reports, however, identify Wilkins as one of three players on leaderboards for both pass-rush win rate and run-stop win rate. If not for Zach Allen, Christian Wilkins would lead the league in pass rush wins (14) by a wide margin (4). Wilkins’s success at the line of scrimmage simply hasn’t translated to the box score. As a pass rusher, Wilkins is facing double-teams more often this year than last (69% vs. 65%), but he’s winning at a much higher rate (19% vs. 13%). Statistical production is likely to come in time.

Zach Allen, Denver

Zach Allen is at the center of a surprisingly effective Broncos’ defense that held Aaron Rodgers and the Jets to 9 points last Sunday. Denver is leading the league in yards for play allowed and blitz rate.

Allen is in his sixth year, all under defensive coordinator Vance Joseph. Allen followed Joseph to Denver from Arizona, the team that drafted him. Allen entered the league as a 3-4 defensive end. Joseph developed him and is scheming him up as a pass rusher. Allen is double-teamed only about half the time as Joseph moves him around and brings extra rushers.

Allen’s 21 pass-rush wins rank second in the NFL, behind only Aidan Hutchinson, who’s on an All-Pro trajectory for the Lions. Allen’s average draft position last summer made him more of a DT2; however, he could emerge as a top-five defensive tackle in big-play scoring formats. With 2.0 sacks and 4 tackles for loss through four games, Allen’s on pace to easily clear his career highs (5.5 sacks, 10 TFLs).

Zach Allen! https://t.co/jif04pjPPK pic.twitter.com/u4cbf37IbW

— Nate Tice (@Nate_Tice) September 18, 2024

Rising Stars?

Three recent early-round draft picks have 3.0 sacks a piece. New Orleans’s Bryan Bresee, Green Bay’s Devonte Wyatt, and Chicago’s Gervon Dexter Sr earned more opportunities in 2024. Playing more than half their teams’ snaps for the first time affords them more opportunities to rush passers and collect sacks.

Of these three, Dexter is the player accumulating pass-rush wins – 9 in 54 pass-rush opportunities. The preseason version of this column touched on Dexter’s potential as a fast riser as the three-technique tackle keying Chicago’s pass rush. Footballguy Kyle Bellefeuil made the case for Dexter as a fantasy-relevant sleeper over the summer.

More Sleepers

The Houston Texans surprisingly signed Maliek Collins to a two-year $23 million contract in 2023. The deal was one of several huge cash outlays for defensive tackles that spring. Collins delivered 5.0 quarterback sacks for a resurgent Houston defense. Houston nevertheless deemed him expendable and dealt him and his $8 million dead-cap hit to San Francisco for a seventh-round pick.

Collins joined Javon Hargrave in the middle of the 49ers defense. With a four-year $84 million contract, Hargrave is among those handsomely paid defensive tackles from Spring 2023.

A torn triceps has ended Hargrave’s 2024 season. The 49ers will lean on Maliek Collins and reserve Kevin Givens for interior pressure. Givens has stepped up in the past, while Collins has outperformed his journeyman status as a pass rusher. Collins has ten pass-rush wins to his credit and ranks fifth in win rate at 17 percent so far this year.

Collins is a liability in run defense, but the 49ers’ penetrating defense will tolerate that if he can improve upon his 2023 season (13% pass-rush win rate ranking 12th among defensive tackles). He’s a boom/bust DT1 for fantasy gamers in big-play scoring formats the rest of the way.

Few drafters were on Collins over the summer. His ADP among defensive tackles was 59th in The IDP Show’s IDP-only best-ball drafts. Malcolm Roach, who has matched Collins’s ten pass-rush wins, was not drafted at all.

Roach made the Saints roster as an undrafted free agent and played a small rotational role for four seasons. The two-year $7 million contract he signed to join Vance Joseph, Zach Allen, and the Broncos flew under the radar. It’s not Hargrave money or even Collins money, but the sum indicates he has a clear role.

Roach’s snap share has fluctuated between 32 and 61 percent in four games. According to Pro Football Focus, he collected his first career sack last Sunday (officially 0.5). Roach is a plus athlete and just 26 years old in his fifth season playing for an effective team pass rush. He also ranks fourth in run-stop win rate, suggesting he’s fit for a larger role. Vance Joseph has successfully developed non-blue-chip pass-rush prospects like Allen and Jonathon Cooper.

Malcolm Roach is a DT prospect in the 2020 draft class out of Texas.

He posted a great #RAS with poor size, elite speed, great explosiveness, at the DT position.https://t.co/moLsI1zkFM pic.twitter.com/s8XmkRtNp2

— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) March 1, 2020

Could Roach become Joseph’s next gem? Fantasy gamers should speculatively add Malcolm Roach from the waiver wire in deep leagues requiring two defensive tackles in hopes that Roach’s statistical output starts to catch up to his success at the point of attack.

Thanks for Reading!

Reading the Defense drops each Friday. 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 @DynastyTripp on the website formerly known as Twitter.