Next Gen Stats - Seahawks Third best Pass-Rushing Unit

[hawknation2018]

I have a dream that someday, someone will say at least one positive thing about the Hawks here :lol:

 

[SoulfishHawk]

I like

 

[SoulfishHawk]

Chris makes a hell of a point. No way this team could be the same minus Sherm, Kam and Avril on defense. That's just way too much to ask.

 

[sdog1981]

39% of passing attempts on 3rd down led to first down.
6% of passing attempts led to a sack.

43% of rushing attempts on 3rd down led to a first down.

The overall 3rd down conversion rate was middle of the pack relative to the NFL.

Further on passing 3rd downs.

You'll see that the shorter the distance to down, the higher the conversion rate. As much as we might be gutted by those 3rd and 10+s those rang in at a 24% conversion rate opposed to 66% for 1-3 yards, 84% for 4-7, 26% 7-10 yards.

To me, it seems kind of obvious when looking at the splits, the lack of ability to get sacks or pressure on 3rd and long were not the smoking gun in our 3rd down foibles - it was 3rd and under 7 that the hawks were terrible.

so sdog, you going to come off your soapbox and do even a cursory exploration of attendant data or are you gonna triple down?[/quote]


What am I going to triple down on? You just posted new information that is well laid out. Based on the new information I have to come up with a new idea and opinion.

So what the hell is going on with 3rd down pass rush. It shows that only 6% of 3rd downs resulted in a sack how much pressure including sacks was generated.

 

[mrt144]

If it makes you feel any better, Minny had an 11% sack rate on passing 3rd downs and Philly had a 6% rate as well. Washington came in with a 9% sack rate.

This is a related tangent - https://www.fieldgulls.com/2018/2/13/17 ... issic-lacy - where John P Gilbert did a survey beforehand of fan expectations on run stuffs and fans were way more optimistic about what is a realistic stuff rate. Voters in that poll thought at 10-15% stuff rate was acceptable when historically that is AMAZING.

I'd say that the sack % isn't inherently meaningful when those in the high pressure cohort at most are 500 basis points above our own rate. It literally is the difference between 2 or 3 sacks to the overall passing attempts.

Linking pressures to sacks would involve film study to reconcile, something these next gen stats by the nfl attempt to do without the need for eyeballs to some degree. They're just missing linking the two together fully.

 

[sdog1981]

If it makes you feel any better, Minny had an 11% sack rate on passing 3rd downs and Philly had a 6% rate as well. Washington came in with a 9% sack rate.

This is a related tangent - https://www.fieldgulls.com/2018/2/13/17 ... issic-lacy - where John P Gilbert did a survey beforehand of fan expectations on run stuffs and fans were way more optimistic about what is a realistic stuff rate. Voters in that poll thought at 10-15% stuff rate was acceptable when historically that is AMAZING.

I'd say that the sack % isn't inherently meaningful when those in the high pressure cohort at most are 500 basis points above our own rate. It literally is the difference between 2 or 3 sacks to the overall passing attempts.

Linking pressures to sacks would involve film study to reconcile, something these next gen stats by the nfl attempt to do without the need for eyeballs to some degree. They're just missing linking the two together fully.

That makes sense.

One thing I remember about the 2012-2014 teams was they were constantly collapsing the pocket and would force bad throws. Not getting home every time.

2012 18th in sacks
2013 8th
2014 20th

So I don't know if it is a pass rush issue or a coverage or both.

 

[mrt144]

If it makes you feel any better, Minny had an 11% sack rate on passing 3rd downs and Philly had a 6% rate as well. Washington came in with a 9% sack rate.

This is a related tangent - https://www.fieldgulls.com/2018/2/13/17 ... issic-lacy - where John P Gilbert did a survey beforehand of fan expectations on run stuffs and fans were way more optimistic about what is a realistic stuff rate. Voters in that poll thought at 10-15% stuff rate was acceptable when historically that is AMAZING.

I'd say that the sack % isn't inherently meaningful when those in the high pressure cohort at most are 500 basis points above our own rate. It literally is the difference between 2 or 3 sacks to the overall passing attempts.

Linking pressures to sacks would involve film study to reconcile, something these next gen stats by the nfl attempt to do without the need for eyeballs to some degree. They're just missing linking the two together fully.

That makes sense.

One thing I remember about the 2012-2014 teams was they were constantly collapsing the pocket and would force bad throws. Not getting home every time.

2012 18th in sacks
2013 8th
2014 20th

So I don't know if it is a pass rush issue or a coverage or both.

I thinks its probably a few factors overlapping.

The character of pressures changed with more outside than inside. Would need to verify either by numbers or film.

Tons of film on our defense and their tendencies. Speculative meta argument that posits other NFL teams are at least trying.

Schematic choices to prevent explosive plays in coverage leading to a higher than expected short passing down conversion rate. Sadly would need to do exhaustive film study to get a sense of the changes over time and it would be very mundane eyeball measures of relative position of back 7 to their prior selves while trying to account for down and distance and/or specific deviations from status quo (like playing cover 2 in a specific situation rather than 3 deep zone)

 

[mrt144]

Just for comps to other teams from the top 3

3rd down passing 1st down conversion rate:

1-4 yards to go: PHI - 37% | WAS - 26% | SEA - 67%
4-6 yards to go: PHI - 47% | WAS - 42% | SEA - 46% (I made a typo above - that should be 46% not 84% - looked at the completions rather than attempts, this is why its always important to check yourself with each go around)
7-9 yards to go: PHI - 25% | WAS - 32% | SEA - 26%
10+ yards to go: PHI - 16.9% | WAS - 20% | SEA - 24%

As you can see in the above, the 1-4 to go was the biggest aberration from the other two, with 3rd and 10+ being slightly worse than the other two.

Rams: 59%-40%-43%-21%
Jags - 55%-45%-21%-18%

i really wish I had some good graphing software to illustrate the various conversion curves by distance according to team.

 

[brimsalabim]

"next gen stats" my ass.. nothing behind this ranking but a number.

 

[mrt144]

"next gen stats" my ass.. nothing behind this ranking but a number.

Again with the semantic argument. Next Gen Stats refers to the capture method and availability of the data.

Here we will use the unique Next Gen Stats tracking data provided by the microchips in every player's shoulder pads to measure the best pass-rushing teams from the 2017 regular season. Overall sack totals are one way to measure a pass rush's effectiveness, but these often paint an incomplete picture of just how much a defense disrupts opposing passing games. Tracking pressures can help reveal the true productivity of a defensive front. These rankings were compiled using total pressures recorded by each team this past season.

NOTE: Next Gen Stats defines a "pressure" as a pass-rushing play in which a defender gets within 2 yards of the opposing quarterback at the time of the throw or sack. Other outlets collect pressures using different methods, and these have value. What is and is not a pressure will always carry some level of debate, but NGS provides us a unique advantage in that the numbers rely not on the subjective eye test, but rather on objective results that are consistent across all plays.

Like, try your best to decouple a brand name for bespoke NFL captured stats from what you consider next gen in a colloquial sense meaning, derivative 2nd order or higher stats.

 

[Chapow]

Kee-ryst. You could tell some people that two and two is four and they'd just argue about how it feels like five.

I'm really beginning to hate this board.

Agreed. On both accounts.

 

[MontanaHawk05]

If it makes you feel any better, Minny had an 11% sack rate on passing 3rd downs and Philly had a 6% rate as well. Washington came in with a 9% sack rate.

This is a related tangent - https://www.fieldgulls.com/2018/2/13/17 ... issic-lacy - where John P Gilbert did a survey beforehand of fan expectations on run stuffs and fans were way more optimistic about what is a realistic stuff rate. Voters in that poll thought at 10-15% stuff rate was acceptable when historically that is AMAZING.

I'd say that the sack % isn't inherently meaningful when those in the high pressure cohort at most are 500 basis points above our own rate. It literally is the difference between 2 or 3 sacks to the overall passing attempts.

Linking pressures to sacks would involve film study to reconcile, something these next gen stats by the nfl attempt to do without the need for eyeballs to some degree. They're just missing linking the two together fully.

That makes sense.

One thing I remember about the 2012-2014 teams was they were constantly collapsing the pocket and would force bad throws. Not getting home every time.

2012 18th in sacks
2013 8th
2014 20th

So I don't know if it is a pass rush issue or a coverage or both.

Or it might simply be good quarterbacks making great plays even under pressure. There IS another team playing against our defense, after all.

 

[Chapow]

"next gen stats" my ass.. nothing behind this ranking but a number.

So, what then? You think they just pulled numbers out of a hat and randomly assigned those numbers to each NFL team?

Would it really be all that horrible for some of you guys to acknowledge that there were actually some things the Seahawks did well?

 

[hawknation2018]

The Seahawks defensive line has been good at generating pressure (even without Cliff Avril and a hobbled Michael Bennett). But they weren't very good at finishing those pressures with sacks.

Sheldon Richardson epitomizes this fact, in that he had a large number of pressures (36) but just one sack. It was great to finally have some interior pressure via Richardson/Reed/Jones, but we didn't have a super fast guy to finish those plays.

Even if they do re-sign Richardson, it will be important to draft a true LEO pass rusher. It would great to add one of those SEC outside rushers: LSU's Arden Key, Auburn's Jeff Holland, Georgia's Lorenzo Carter, etc.

 

[adeltaY]

Hmm this is interesting. I'd actually like to question the value of these pressures. What's the conversion rate into sacks? I'm glad to see Bennett was doing better than we thought, but did our pass rush pass the eye test? To me it didn't. I can think of at least three occasions where Bennett got past his lineman but got outrun by Drew Stanton or Dak, who made big plays out of it.

Also, the distribution of pressures matters a lot. If we had a ton of pressures in the Washington game (which we still lost) and then close to zero pressures in the Titans and Jags games, that's a huge problem. Other games where it didn't seem like we were getting any pressure were the second Rams game, the Falcons game, and the home Cardinals game. The type of pressure also matters. Is it slow pressure due to coverage, or is it instant pressure like the kind Russ often faces. I can't think of more than three instances of our DL creating instant pressure that either resulted in a sack or a bad throw.