A couple of months back, we began looking at the tackling prowess of individual defenders in the 2010 season. We’ve seen cornerbacks and safeties, but now we get to the meat of things, the linebackers.
For the purposes of the study we’re going to separate 3-4 OLBs – because they play as much as defensive ends as they do linebackers – from the rest of the linebackers (the 4-3 OLBs and ILBs in both three and four-man fronts). These numbers also include only regular season games.
Guys in the secondary are primarily coverage machines, and run support is very often a secondary (sorry) concern for them, but a linebacker’s job is to read, react, and flow to the ball. You’re expecting linebackers to sniff out the ballcarrier and make tackles. So let’s take a look at who was a sure thing and who disappointed in 2010.
Top of the Class
We were high on the rookie season of the Patriots’ Brandon Spikes even before this. He was a force against the run all season long, coming downhill and blowing up run plays in the backfield, as well as taking on blockers and generally disrupting plays. He was also the only linebacker with more than 25 attempts not to miss a tackle.
Spikes may be the only guy with a perfect record, but he’s not the only player deserving of serious praise. Kirk Morrison missed just a single tackle in his 79 attempts last year, and Takeo Spikes was once again among the elite in this study, missing only twice in 104 attempts. That’s a serious number of tackles to be racking up between misses, and in Spikes’ case in particular, it’s part of a long trend of impressive performances. Over the past three seasons, Takeo Spikes has now missed just four tackles – total – including a season without a single miss. He has missed just once in every 64.75 attempts over three years.
Brandon Spikes’ New England teammate Jerod Mayo, however, was the benchmark standard this season for miss ratio, given the prolific nature of his numbers. Mayo finished 3rd, missing just three tackles on the season; one in every 48.33 attempts.
In an uncharacteristic slip in this regard, Patrick Willis recorded eight missed tackles, dropping him all the way to 36th in the study, missing a tackle every 16.63 attempts. Only one player in the Top 10 missed more than three tackles – DJ Williams of the Broncos (4), but his 119 attempts ensured that his ratio remained a healthy one in 29.75 attempts.
Lastly, it’s worth giving a mention to a pair of players that managed to maintain a solid ratio despite some impressive tackle totals. Though neither can come close to Mayo’s performance, as he really set the bar in terms of mistake-free production, both Chad Greenway from the Vikings and Tennessee’s Stephen Tulloch attempted more than 139 tackles, and neither player was into double-figures for misses on the season. Each went more than 17 attempts between misses.
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Not so hot
At the other end of the scale, things were not so great from some other big name players. Cincinnati’s Keith Rivers missed 14 tackles on the season – one in every 5.71 attempts, for the poorest ratio amongst players with more than 25 tries.
DeAndre Levy was talked up a lot by the Lions’ coaching staff, but he matched Rivers with 14 misses on the season, and finished with a narrowly better ratio of one miss in every 5.86 attempts. Levy has talent, but he can’t afford to miss that number of tackles as a 4-3 MLB.
The only player to miss more than the 14 recorded by Levy and Rivers (Lofa Tatupu also missed 14, or one in 6.64 attempts), was Tennessee’s Will Witherspoon, who missed 16 tackles on the year.
Two more players that topped double digits in misses were the much-heralded duo in Chicago, Lance Briggs and Brian Urlacher. Together, the pair combined to miss 27 tackles (Briggs with 15, Urlacher with 12), for ratios of one in 6.73 and 10.83, respectively. There’s more to playing linebacker than securing tackles, and both players graded well over the season – Urlacher exceptionally so – but those are figures that they won’t be pleased to see.
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The 3-4 OLBs
The first thing that stands out looking at the totals for these guys is how much of a variance there is in number of attempts. No 3-4 OLB made more attempts than the 94 Pittsburgh’s James Harrison racked-up. OK, so some of that is due to the number of snaps he played, but the one player at the position to play more snaps than Harrison last year was Tamba Hali, who recorded just 51 tackle attempts. Despite the difference in attempts, the two finished next to each other on the list in terms of ratio, with Hali missing just a pair of tackles and Harrison right behind him, missing just four of his 94.
Two 3-4 OLBs went the year without missing a tackle, and both played for the Packers, but neither are the player you’re thinking. Erik Walden and Brad Jones combined for just 42 attempts on the season and neither recorded a miss. As for that other guy … Clay Matthews attempted 59 tackles and missed four, for a pretty reasonable ratio of 14.75.
At the poor end of things, the man with the nickname ‘One Man Gang’, Lorenzo Alexander, missed one in every 5.88 tackles he attempted. Perhaps predictably showing some issues with playing in space after having converted from defensive tackle in the off-season. Alexander owns the poorest ratio of the 3-4 OLBs, but Clark Haggans of the Cardinals and Mike Vrabel of the Chiefs aren’t far behind, missing one in every 6.43 and 6.63 tackles respectively.
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