Jonathan Bales is a special contributor to SportsDayDFW.com. He?s the founder of?The DC Times?and writes for?DallasCowboys.com?and the?New York Times. He?s also the author of?Fantasy Football for Smart People. He can be reached at jonathan@thedctimes.com.
You can follow him @BalesFootball.
Tackling is a vital and oft-overlooked aspect of playing defense. In my previous articles on why the Cowboys aren?t a poor tackling team and the team?s best and worst individual tacklers, I suggested that the popular notion of NFL teams as a whole getting worse at tackling is untrue. NFL players are the best they?ve ever been at tackling, but they?re facing off against offensive players who are light years ahead of where they were even a decade ago. When you have players like Reggie Bush and Percy Harvin in the open-field, it?s going to be difficult to tackle. In addition, the rules have changed to really restrict defenders in how they can bring down ball-carriers.
In any event, I recently charted the Dallas defense against every other NFL team in terms of tackle rate?the percentage of tackles that they made relative to what they attempted. The missed tackle stats are courtesy of Pro Football Focus.
The Cowboys (represented with the gray line) ranked 12th in the NFL in tackle rate last year. If you?re curious, the top five teams in tackle rate were the Broncos, Giants, 49ers, Browns, and Texans. The bottom five were the Falcons, Jets, Bucs, Lions, and Redskins. The Falcons, who missed 150 tackles and 20 more than any other team, were by far the worst in the NFL.
There appears to be a relatively strong correlation between defensive strength and tackle rate. I?ll examine that later, but it?s unclear if teams are good because they don?t miss tackles, or just don?t miss tackles because they?re good. That would go a long way in determining just how much it hurts to miss more tackles than normal in a season.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.