NFL tackling stats can be misleading

November 3, 9:49 PMHouston Texans ExaminerAlan Burge

Previous Next

7 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Houston Texans Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Brian Cushing and DeMeco Ryans are among the league leaders in tackles any way you calculate it  (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)

Like many of you, I enjoy poring through stats after the weekend is complete to see where our team and players stand in various categories.

I'm enjoying the heck out of those offensive passing stats and I'm really encouraged by the improvement in the rushing defense ranking over the past five games.

But there's always been one stat that to me deserves a caveat.

Tackles.

While it's great that the Texans have two players (DeMeco Ryans and Brian Cushing) in the top eleven in the league in tackles, this is a stat that can really be skewed by teams that: a) have bad offenses (meaning the defense is on the field more - which we saw at Buffalo on Sunday); and b) teams that have bad defenses (meaning they can't get off the field and have to defend more plays).

Ryans and Cushing are obviously playing at a very high level so their presence on any 'top fifteen' list of defensive players is totally legit but these things don't always hold true.

I remember back in 2003 or '04 when Jay Foreman was near the top of the NFL in tackles - but the Texans were not a good team, nor was Foreman anything close to a Pro Bowler.  Some would simply point to the number and conclude that Foreman was a great player - just because of the numbers.

Well, first he was an inside linebacker in a 3-4 and those guys get a lot of tackles.  Second, the Texans offense was fairly inept back in those days and the defense was on the field a lot.

I recall getting ripped in an email from Jay's dad Chuck (one of my favorite players from back in the day) after I pointed out in an article that Jay wasn't as good as his numbers suggested.  Chuck played the 'you never played the game so you don't know squat' card.  Jay was out of the league a year or two later.  I still have the email - it's one of my favorites.

The point is you should consider more than just the number of tackles.  First, does it make sense that the more plays a team has to defend, then there are more tackles as a result?  Sure it does.  It's kind of like there are more car wrecks in Houston than anywhere else because there are more cars.  So first let's look at the number of plays defensed by NFL teams.  We'll just look at the top ten. (stats from nfl.com)

Two things jump out at me on that list.  One is that the top four teams that have defended the most plays this season are not good teams - bad offenses and defenses.  Not surprisingly, as you will see in a minute, players from three of those four teams are among the NFL leaders in tackles.  The second thing to jump out at me is that the teams at the top of the list have played eight games.  Makes sense - more games, more plays to defend.

Here's the top fifteen in tackles:

Considering that some teams (like Buffalo) have defended as many as 568 plays while others (like New England) have defended only 398 (again, these stats are available on nfl.com), the raw tackle numbers are begging for normalization.

So let's look at this differently.  Let's do something that will eliminate - or at least reduce the effect of games played and plays defensed from the raw tackle numbers.  Let's look at the rate of tackles per team plays defended for the top fifteen tacklers.

As you can see the top two on the list don't change, they just switched places.  Under this formula, London Fletcher and Curtis Lofton are still 1-2 on the list (but reversed), however, when you look at guys like Kirk Morrison and Keith Ellison, their tackle numbers look different when normalized against their opportunites for tackles - or the number of plays defensed by their teams.

Ellison's 68 tackles which is 4th overall on the pure tackles list are only good for 12th when the Bills' 568 plays defended are taken into consideration.  Morrison drops from 3rd to 8th when normalized.

Ray Lewis jumps from 9th to 4th because his 60 tackles were made as the Ravens defensed only 416 plays - which is over 100 fewer plays defensed than Buffalo, Cleveland and Oakland.  So one could argue that Ray Lewis' 60 tackles are more significant than Morrison's 70 or Ellison's 68.

As far as the Texans players, Cushing stays at 6 and DeMeco goes from 11th to 10th under the new formula.  Solid numbers any way you look at them.

Finally, there are several players who are not in the top fifteen in tackles who 'should be' under this formula.

As you can see in this table, D.J. Williams' 57 tackles are good for 8th overall under the 'tackles as % of team plays defensed' formula.  Likewise, Thomas Davis' "should be" rank is 9th. 

Furthermore, Williams, Davis, Beason and Pierce knock Ellison, Tyvon Branch, D'Qwell Jackson and Eric Barton off the list of top fifteen tacklers in the league when you apply the tackles per plays defensed formula.

However for those who simply go by pure tackle numbers, those four players won't even be in the conversation because they rank 16th through 24th by that simpler and sometimes misleading means of measure..