macbob
  • macbob
  • Veteran Member Topic Starter
13 years ago
Football Oustiders analysis on broken tackles, both from a running back perspective and a defensive player perspective. According to their analysis, CMIII topped the LBs last year with zero broken tackles. Mendenhall sure didn't break that one tackle in the SB. 😝

52-C.Matthews GB 0 53 0.0%

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2011/broken-tackles-2010 

Time to continue our series presenting various 2010 stats from the multitude of Football Outsiders spreadsheets. Today, let's look at broken tackles. Broken tackles are a stat from game charting, not from the standard play-by-play. We defined a "broken tackle" as one of two events: either the ballcarrier escapes from the grasp of the defender, or the defender is in good position for a tackle but the ballcarrier jukes him out of his shoes. If the ballcarrier sped by a slow defender who dived and missed, that didn't count as a broken tackle. We only measured broken tackles for standard plays; volunteers didn't have the time to track them for all special teams plays.

The resulting numbers are subjective, obviously, but there were over two dozen charters involved, so no team's numbers could be overly slanted because of the bias of a single specific charter. We know that there are other groups on the Web who track broken tackles, and because of the subjectivity, their numbers won't be exactly the same as ours. Given the mistakes that are easy to make when marking players off of television tape, a difference of one or two broken tackles isn't a big deal. But looking at the players with the most and fewest broken tackles does a good job of showing us which defenders were able to wrap up and which ones got run over.

We can also look at broken tackle rate. For each defender we compared broken tackles to the total of broken tackles and solo tackles. We decided not to include assists, because a missed assist is not usually something we would mark as a missed tackle opportunity -- after all, another defender is getting a successful tackle at the exact same time. However, we did remove special teams tackles so we were only looking at defensive plays.

Here are all the players that our game charters recorded with 10 or more broken tackles in 2010:

Player 		Defense 	Brk Tkl     Tackles	Rate 	x 	Player 		Defense 	Brk Tkl 	Tackles 	Rate 			
33-M.Griffin 		TEN 	17		88	16.20%	x 	57-D.Hawthorne 	SEA 	11		75	12.80%	
24-A.Wilson 		ARI 	16		79	16.80%	x 	29-G.Quin 		HOU 	11		73	13.10%
92-W.Witherspoon 	TEN 	15	62		19.50%	x 	25-W.Moore 		ATL 	11	61		15.30%	
51-P.Lenon 		ARI 	14		100	12.30%	x 	58-S.Shanle 		NO 	11		54	16.90%
20-R.Barber 		TB 	14		66	17.50%	x 	36-S.Spencer 		SF 	11		39	22.00%
55-S.Tulloch 		TEN 	13		115	10.20%	x 	57-D.Jones 		CIN 	10		99	9.20%
31-B.Pollard 		HOU 	13		87	13.00%	x 	50-C.Lofton 		ATL 	10		96	9.40%
27-Q.Mikell 		PHI 	12		79	13.20%	x 	24-T.Thomas 		NYG 	10		87	10.30%
51-L.Tatupu 		SEA 	12		64	15.80%	x 	29-E.Berry 		KC 	10		76	11.60%
55-K.Rivers 		CIN 	12		58	17.10%	x 	54-D.Levy 		DET 	10		64	13.50%
55-L.Briggs 		CHI 	11		81	12.00%	x 	23-S.Martin 		CAR 	10		57	14.90%
52-R.McIntosh 		WAS 	11		78	12.40%	x 	27-M.Jenkins 		NO 	10		56	15.20%
25-K.Rhodes 		ARI 	11		77	12.50%	x 	29-D.Rodgers-Cromartie  ARI	10		43	18.90%		
31-R.Marshall 		CAR 	11		77	12.50%	x 	27-A.Smith 		DET 	10		35	22.20%

There are a couple of surprise names near the top of this list. We only recorded Adrian Wilson with two broken tackles in 2009, so to see him near the top of the list for 2010 is a shock. Michael Griffin was also much lower in 2009, with only five broken tackles. Less of a surprise is Ronde Barber. For all the run tackles that Barber makes, he also misses quite a few. He had 15 broken tackles in 2009, which was second that year behind Sabby Piscitelli.

Now let's look at the highest and lowest broken tackle rates. First, here are the best and worst rates for linebackers, with a minimum of 50 tackles:

Player 		Defense 	Brk Tkl  Tackles	Rate 	x 	Player 	Defense  Brk Tkl	Tackles 	Rate 				
92-W.Witherspoon 	TEN 	15	62	19.50%		x 	52-C.Matthews 	GB 	0	53	0.00%		
55-K.Rivers 		CIN 	12		58	17.10%		x 	51-J.Mayo 	NE 	1	118	0.80%
58-S.Shanle 		NO 	11		54	16.90%		x 	59-M.Boley 	NYG 	1	61	1.60%
51-L.Tatupu 		SEA 	12		64	15.80%		x 	51-T.Spikes 	SF 	2	92	2.10%
58-G.Brackett 		IND 	9		51	15.00%		x 	51-K.Brooking 	DAL 	2	79	2.50%
54-D.Levy 		DET 	10		64	13.50%		x 	51-P.Posluszny 	BUF 	3	114	2.60%
51-C.Gocong 		CLE 	8		52	13.30%		x 	92-J.Harrison 	PIT 	2	75	2.60%
98-J.Peterson 		DET 	9		60	13.00%		x 	57-B.Scott 	NYJ 	2	62	3.10%
57-D.Hawthorne 		SEA 	11		75	12.80%		x 	94-D.Ware 	DAL 	2	56	3.40%
52-R.McIntosh 		WAS 	11		78	12.40%		x 	55-T.Suggs 	BAL 	2	55	3.50%

Don't make too much out of the fact that our game charters did not record Clay Matthews with a single broken tackle. There's a good chance we missed one at some point. What's important is that he had very few broken tackles, possibly zero.

I find Paul Posluszny's appearance on this list to be interesting, especially in conjunction with the poor run Stop Rate we reported last week. Posluszny was making his tackles farther away from the line of scrimmage than is usual for a linebacker, but at least he wasn't missing them. This is the second straight year that Posluszny had only three broken tackles. Most of these linebackers who were low in broken tackles last year were also low in broken tackles the year before. Takeo Spikes and Jerod Mayo had only four apiece in 2009, Clay Matthews had three, and Keith Brooking had two.

Now, let's look at the highest and lowest broken tackle rates for defensive backs, with a minimum of 40 tackles:

Player 			Defense Brk Tkl Tackles 	Rate 	x 	Player 	Defense 	Brk Tkl Tackles Rate										
29-D.Rodgers-Cromartie ARI	10	43	18.90%	x 	32-B.Fletcher 	STL 	1	64	1.50%									
43-A.Francisco 		IND 	9	42	17.60%	x 	24-B.Flowers 	KC 	1	57	1.70%							
20-R.Barber 		TB 	14	66	17.50%	x 	27-R.Mathis 	JAC 	1	48	2.00%							
21-V.Davis 		MIA 	9	44	17.00%	x 	25-C.Carr 		BAL 	2	56	3.40%						
24-A.Wilson 		ARI 	16	79	16.80%	x 	41-A.Bethea 	IND 	3	80	3.60%							
26-E.Wilson 		HOU 	8	41	16.30%	x 	20-D.Whitner 	BUF 	4	105	3.70%							
33-M.Griffin 		TEN 	17	88	16.20%	x 	20-B.McFadden 	PIT 	3	75	3.80%							
34-D.Grant 		NYG 	9	47	16.10%	x 	33-N.Jones 		DEN 	2	46	4.20%						
25-W.Moore 		ATL 	11	61	15.30%	x 	26-A.Elam 		CLE 	3	66	4.30%						
27-M.Jenkins 		NO 	10	56	15.20%	x 	38-D.Manning 	CHI 	3	62	4.60%							
													x 	32-D.McCourty 	NE 	3	62	4.60%

One big surprise that doesn't quite make our list: Cincinnati's Reggie Nelson, often thought to be an awful tackler when he was with Jacksonville, had zero broken tackles with 37 solo tackles last year. Oddly enough, Sabby Piscitelli, our broken tackle champion from 2009, also wasn't recorded with a single broken tackle in 2010. Of course, he didn't play very much, but it's still surprising. Perhaps broken tackle numbers are inherently less consistent for defensive backs than they are for linebackers. For example, Antoine Bethea had eight broken tackles in 2009, only three last year. Brandon Flowers had seven in 2009. On the other hand, Bradley Fletcher had just one broken tackle in both seasons, and Ronde Barber was very high both seasons. We'll need a couple more years of data before we can say for sure whether broken tackles are more meaningful for linebackers than for defensive backs.

Defensive linemen don't make anywhere near as many plays as linebackers and defensive backs, so there aren't a lot of linemen with more than two or three broken tackles. Only two defensive linemen had six broken tackles: Chris Long of St. Louis and Lamarr Houston of Oakland. Justin Smith of San Francisco had zero broken tackles with 62 tackles, and four other linemen had zero broken tackles with more than 40 tackles: Jared Allen, Antonio Garay, Sione Pouha, and Vince Wilfork.

Full broken tackle numbers will be found in Football Outsiders Almanac 2011. They aren't available yet on the player pages, but we'll work on getting that done.

FootballOutsiders wrote:

RaiderPride
13 years ago
Great read.. I love this kind of stuff in the off season. This makes me so hungry for camp. Thanks for taking the time to post this read. I appreciate you macbob.
""People Will Probably Never Remember What You Said, And May Never Remember What You Did. However, People Will Always Remember How You Made Them Feel."
nerdmann
13 years ago
Be interesting to see how Woody rates as far as broken tackles. He's kind of in a position where he's asked to make tackles in the open field more than the average DB, and he appears to me to be pretty damn good at it.
“Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don't do things right once in a while…you do them right all the time.”
RaiderPride
13 years ago

Be interesting to see how Woody rates as far as broken tackles. He's kind of in a position where he's asked to make tackles in the open field more than the average DB, and he appears to me to be pretty damn good at it.

Originally Posted by: nerdmann 



Nerdman..

I am a little worried about your AVATAR thingy... What is that?

It looks like you might be a dyslexic Nazi? : )
""People Will Probably Never Remember What You Said, And May Never Remember What You Did. However, People Will Always Remember How You Made Them Feel."
nerdmann
13 years ago
Process Church.
“Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don't do things right once in a while…you do them right all the time.”
macbob
  • macbob
  • Veteran Member Topic Starter
13 years ago

Great read.. I love this kind of stuff in the off season. This makes me so hungry for camp. Thanks for taking the time to post this read. I appreciate you macbob.

Originally Posted by: RaiderPride 




Thanks, RP! I get a lot of enjoyment out of reading the comments here on the articles. The commentary hear is usually more insightful than the articles themselves, and a lot funnier, too.

So, thanks to you and other PH members for enjoyable reads.

And thanks to Kevin for a providing us a tremendous site to hang out at.
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