Vikings

2017 NFL DRAFT: Pre-Combine Production Profiles (Edge Defenders—”3-4″ projection)

Yesterday, we looked at the production profiles of edge defenders that seemed best fit for a 4-3 system, based on the consensus of draft experts around the web. That continues the series of production profiles we’ve been looking at, and we’ve covered offensive linemen and off-ball linebackers.

The distinction between “3-4” and “4-3” edge rushers is becoming less important as “3-4” teams have been moving to nickel sets with only two down linemen, but it still matters for evaluators—especially those who are likely to drop either outside linebacker into coverage instead of favoring one of them

For the Vikings, that distinction may not mean much if the player in question can rush the passer well and add some weight; they drafted 252-lb. Danielle Hunter in 2015 and Brian Robison was 259 lbs at the combine. Justin Trattou is listed at 258 lbs and was listed at 249 at the combine.

Brian Robison and Danielle Hunter weren’t limited to only playing as 3-4 OLBs (Photo Credit: Kyle Hansen, Cumulus Media)

So in that sense, the Minnesota Vikings (and Vikings fans) will be keeping an eye on all pass-rushing prospects, including the ones pegged by draft experts to better fit into other fronts.


As a reminder, we’ll be looking at total sack production, pressure rate and total tackles-for-loss. After that, we’ll adjust for age. For a primer as to why we’re using those statistics instead of other ones, be sure to check out the previous piece on pass rushers evaluating players designated for 4-3 ends.

Per usual, we’re using a 100+ system, where 15 points above or below 100 represents one standard deviation away from average—which roughly means that a player with a rating of 115 would have a better score than 84 percent of the population, and a score of 130 would mean a better score than 97.7 percent of the population. 100 is the average.

The ranks listed for the players come from CBS’ draft rankings as of publish time.

As a quick note, we know that pure sack production doesn’t mean everything— Hunter’s 12.5-sack season is fresh for Vikings fans and the most recent defensive rookie of the year (Joey Bosa) only had 5.0 sacks in his final season.

Regardless, when one uses peak production, throws in tackles-for-loss, pressure rate (largely drawn from Pro Football Focus) and age, one finds a very predictive system that privileges players that tend to perform well in the NFL. Adding in athleticism completes the analytic ranking, so a player like Hunter actually scored 110.1 and would have been judged to be undervalued.

Joey Bosa would have scored 120.1 because all players use their best years; Bosa uses his sophomore year totals of 13.5 sacks and 21.5 tackles-for-loss. His above-average athletic score and below-average age puts him at 120.1.

So put in the proper context, production profiles can still be useful and predictive of NFL-level success, especially after accounting for draft position. Let’s take a look at the “outside linebackers” in the draft that could conceivably be edge defenders.

What immediately sticks out is how poor Vince Biegel‘s score is. He’s got nothing going for him from a production perspective. His pressure rate is the best facet of his profile, and it’s a tier below average. Besides that, his sack rate is low (even relative to pressure) with 5.5 sacks at his peak in his sophomore year. His tackle-for-loss production is even worse relative to the class (12). His relatively advanced age pins the final nail in the coffin—even an outstanding athletic score would place him well below average.

On the other side of that is Jordan Willis, who consistently earned praise from PFF for his productiveness hasn’t drawn as much from draft analysts critical of his flexibility or technique. Still, despite that, he’s been massively productive.

Boasting the second-best pressure rate among all edge defenders in CBS’ top 150 (behind projected 4-3 defensive end DeMarcus Walker of Florida State), Willis accomplishes this as the youngest among the linebacker group and third-youngest among all edge defenders. The only area where he’s close to average is in tackle-for-loss production, where he still stands above average (with 17.5). He’s well worth a closer look.

Those two present the largest departures from the average production profile but there are still some players who represent significant concerns. Both Tyus Bowser and Tim Williams are more than 15 points below average for a couple of reasons.

Bowser produced very few tackles-for-loss (and hey, maybe being on a team with Ed Oliver could be the reason) and extremely few sacks. One might think it could be because he dropped in coverage more often than any other edge defender, but he actually produced pressure at an extremely poor rate on the pass-rush snaps he did take.

More than anything else, one might expect his sack rate to drop because he produced sacks at a higher rate than his pressure rate implies and he should get fewer sacks per pressure going forward.

Tim Williams didn’t see the field that often because he was a designated pass rusher for a talented Alabama team, and it might be credible to throw out the production profile here. His pressure rate in 2016 was average but if we’re using “peak production” one might want to acknowledge that his pressure rate in 2015 was nosebleed-level good.

Honestly, his career pressure rate might be more credible than the best of a single year given how few snaps he played in a single year. That’s a pressure every 4.3 snaps, and something close to 16 sacks over a year’s worth of snaps.

He also produced 16 tackles-for-loss on an astoundingly few 178 run defense snaps. That’s fewer than anyone else, often by half. That would be 29 tackles-for-loss on a normal run defense snap count.

His rating in that world jumps to 114.3; still dragged down in a big way by his age but certainly productive.

However, I’d be suspicious of the correction, too. Pass rushing is easier on third down and sack rates often double on third-and-long versus other downs—and that’s when designated pass-rushers like Tim Williams comes in. Throw in the advantage of not having much film on him and one could perhaps split the difference and say Williams’ true production is probably 98.2.

I would remain skeptical of Williams, but not as much as his current unadjusted score would imply. No matter how one adjusts for production, his age remains a big concern. At least his highlights are great:

After that are three average production profiles and one somewhat above average. Takkarist McKinley having an average such profile is surprising to me if only because of his incredible off-ball linebacker production profile—driven by his market share instead of raw totals. Despite accounting for a staggering 40 percent of his team’s sack total and even more of their TFL total, his actual raw production was low.

Another way to think about it: if Tim Williams accounted for 40 percent of his team’s sacks, he’d have 20, not 11 (he officially has 9.0, but just like Pro Football Focus, we count all half sacks as full sacks).

McKinley actually produced fewer pressures per pass-rushing snap than most of the class, produced sacks less often on those pressures, and generated only a few more tackles-for-loss than average in order to make up for it. That TFL production and his age push him back up to average, so there’s not much to worry about overall, but it is worth noting.

T.J. Watt from Wisconsin earned quite a bit of preseason buzz and in some sense made good on it, but it’s unlikely he’ll live up to the loftiest expectations of him. Generally, he’s had slightly above-average scores; he’s a little young for a declared prospect, has a good pressure rate and an even better sack rate—but loses points because of his tackle-for-loss creation, which at 15.5 is lower than 12 of the 20 pass-rushers profiled in this series.

Tim Williams’ teammate at Alabama, Ryan Anderson, fared better than in tackles-for-loss and pass-rush production, but doesn’t have the advantage in age that Watt does. He’s essentially producing better than Watt in every area but ends up with a similar score because he’s a year older.

The final player to check out is Haason Reddick, who also had absurd scores in market-share statistics and pretty good raw numbers, particularly because he has such a low rate of run snaps to deal with. Here, he maintains a fantastic lead as a producer of TFLs, but falls behind in sack production. Generally speaking, he was alright at producing pressure but didn’t do an excellent job turning them into sacks.

I suspect that if he somehow found a role as a pure edge defender despite his weight that he would project to finish better simply because of what he’s shown on film and his ability to create TFLs—three more than the next-best edge defender and two standard deviations above the average; better in tackle-for-loss production against the field than any other edge defender is in any other statistic.


There have been some mentions of how few running snaps a player played, or how often they dropped into coverage, and those are important points—ideally, we’d adjust every player for the number of snaps that they played instead of season-long totals.

Unfortunately, the data we have available to test uses season totals instead of rates.

Not only that, some of the rates will be unreliable, like Alabama’s proclivity for featuring Tim Williams on downs where it’s naturally easier to rush the passer, like third-and-long.

With all of that in mind, I’ve concocted snap adjustments for some of the players in order to get a more interesting picture. Like the coverage numbers for the linebackers, these numbers are too recent enough to trust as “true” data in the same way that the numbers above are more useful, but it’s an interesting experiment nevertheless.

No player loses more with this method than Jordan Willis, though he remains above average by the end. Willis played more run snaps than anyone else in the set (524, compared to the average of 319) and loses a lot of his tackles-for-loss as a result. He does gain about half a sack, but overall loses the obscene positive grade.

On the other hand, Tyus Bowser grows the most—not only did he play more snaps in coverage than any of the other defenders listed, he actually played the fewest snaps, period (assuming we’re using Tim Williams’ whole career instead of his final year).

Vince Biegel grows quite a bit as well, but his original score was so low that it functionally doesn’t matter. After that, Haason Reddick and Tim Williams see improvements in their score, and Williams really does benefit from the whole career approach even after adjusting for pitfalls like down and distance.

Minimal changes for Myles Garrett, Derek Barnett, Ryan Anderson and Tarell Basham are by definition par for the course, while a big loss for Dawuane Smoot isolates how disappointing his production really has been.

At the end of the day, it’s not an approach I’d use outside of situations for players with far too many snaps (like Jordan Willis and Dawuane Smoot) or not enough (Tyus Bowser and to a weird extent Tim Williams). For what it’s worth, I also expect athletic testing to even out those problems as well.

Most of all, I’m intrigued with what Jordan Willis can do and if players like Takkarist McKinley and Haason Reddick may end up being better off-ball linebackers than edge defenders.

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