A question for all Redskins fans.....

[donofriose]

Originally Posted by Skinzman

This is a pretty misleading stat imo. It doesnt take into account that most linebackers had help. Our corners needed our safeties and our safeties were busy messing up putting more strain on the LB's. How many times did we see Fletcher or Riley on coverage that most teams would have a safety assigned to?

How many times do other teams stop that stat for players on their team? Such as being in 3 and 7 or longer a lot as opposed to being in 3rd and 1 or 2 all the time. If a 3rd and 7 has a pass completed to a TE that a LB is covering and a safety stops him at 6 yards, it makes this completely strange metric look a whole lot different. Yet says nothing about the play of a LB on the field when comparing two separate LB's. In fact, its an easy metric to score the wrong way. Take my example above. 3rd and 7 and the LB gets beat but gets saved by a safety. 3rd and 1 and the LB has very tight coverage but the pass is complete. He still makes an immediate tackle for a 2 yard gain. That metric has the LB who was lost in left field and got saved by a safety as the better player over a LB in a difficult coverage who got beat for a whole 2 yards but ultimately made his own tackle.

Any metric that takes team stats to rate bad players as good and good players as bad should probably just be ignored.

Now, if you want to have the debate over whether London should be cut, thats fine. But I dont think the proof should be that our secondary was terrible and made our MLB's our main pass defenders. If thats the case, we should look at the secondary first before the LB's.

Also a big flaw with the stat is it does not seem to take into account 3 down linebackers vs 2 down linebackers. I still think Fletcher had a great year but I do think he showed signs of his age.