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2011 Tackling: Safeties

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2011 Tackling: The Safeties
January 25th, 2012 | Author: Sam Monson

It’s that time of the year again–time to look at the best and the worst when it comes to tackling in the NFL. As with every season we’re going to start our analysis with the safety position, the last line of defense.

When tackles are missed, it’s almost always a bad thing, but when safeties miss tackles, it’s often catastrophic and results in six points. As the very position name would suggest, safeties should be reliable tacklers, able to bring the runner down when they have to and make sure the play doesn’t get behind them, but that just wasn’t the case with a lot of players this season.

Tackling in 2011 was far from impressive from the safety group, featuring some of the worst tackling we’ve ever seen.







Worst First

There really is no other place to start this list than the play of Tampa Bay’s Tanard Jackson. Somehow by the end of the season there were still people defending Jackson’s play, despite all evidence before them. “He had come back from a suspension and with all things considered, he really wasn’t performing that badly” they claimed. The only trouble is he was, and then some.

Jackson missed 18 tackles in the run game, which is just three fewer than the number of tackles he made. In total, he missed a tackle for every 2.4 he attempted all season, which was the worst mark in the NFL by a distance this season. In four seasons of PFF data, Jackson is the only safety to fall below a missed tackle every three attempts, and his mark is a full 20% worse than the next poorest since 2008.

What makes Jackson’s tally of misses all the more impressive (he led the entire NFL, at any position, with 24), is that he did it in just 10 games this season. He missed a tackle in every game he played in, with multiple misses in all but three. For a safety that can hit the way Jackson can, there is no excuse for this level of tackling ineptitude.

No other safety came close to the 24 misses that Jackson recorded, but that’s not to say that he was the only poor performer out there. There were 22 other safeties who missed double-digit tackles on the season, and in several other cases the performance was bad enough to get that player benched.

The Rams had their defensive problems and both safeties showing poorly in this study didn’t help. Darian Stewart missed a tackle in every 4.3 attempts and totaled 20 for the season (second only to Jackson’s 24), but big-money free agent Quintin Mikell also struggled. Mikell missed a tackle every 6.2 attempts, giving the Rams a pair of safeties in the bottom 30 among qualifying players. It wasn’t all bad news for the Rams though, as we will discover shortly.


2011 Tackling: Safeties, Bottom 20
# Name Team Total Snaps Total Attempts Total Misses Tackle Efficiency
68 Jordan Babineaux TEN 887 98 18 5.4
69 Brandon Meriweather CHI 394 27 5 5.4
70 Edward Reed BLT 997 58 11 5.3
71 Reshad Jones MIA 622 58 11 5.3
72 Jim Leonhard NYJ 748 48 9 5.3
73 Kendrick Lewis KC 919 62 12 5.2
74 Brodney Pool NYJ 523 36 7 5.1
75 Jarrad Page PHI 295 36 7 5.1
76 Michael Mitchell OAK 464 25 5 5.0
77 Charles Godfrey CAR 821 88 18 4.9
78 Louis Delmas DET 629 58 12 4.8
79 Deon Grant NYG 839 57 12 4.8
80 Joe Lefeged IND 390 29 6 4.8
81 Donald Washington KC 299 24 5 4.8
82 Sherrod Martin CAR 938 68 15 4.5
83 Mistral Raymond MIN 360 18 4 4.5
83 Darian Stewart SL 859 85 20 4.3
85 Jon McGraw KC 462 47 11 4.3
86 Rahim Moore DEN 497 38 10 3.8
87 Chris Harris DET 372 22 6 3.7
88 Tanard Jackson TB 498 57 24 2.4



Safe in Coverage

We have divided the tackles made into plays against the run and plays in coverage, and there are nine safeties who played a qualifying number of snaps and avoided missing a single tackle in coverage (all missed at least one against the run). Those nine players each made at least 11 tackles in coverage with five of them posting more than 20 solos and the Cowboys’ Abram Elam racking up 37 solo and six assisted tackles in coverage without missing one.

The sample size may be smaller, but that isn’t to say that it is automatic that players will miss far fewer tackles in coverage as opposed to the run game. Sean Jones, also from the Buccaneers–who, as a team, showed some all-time levels of ineptitude for tackling–and Charles Godfrey of the Panthers each missed 10 tackles in coverage. The Miami pairing of Reshad Jones and Yeremiah Bell each missed at least eight in coverage, with Bell’s mark particularly surprising given his strong history in this study.

The fact that there were nine guys who managed to avoid missing a tackle in coverage is not to be dismissed, and deserves significant recognition. Seven of them finished in the Top 20 overall in tackling efficiency. One that didn’t was Cleveland’s Mike Adams, who missed out because of the six misses he had in the run game.


2011 Tackling: Safeties in Coverage, Top 20
# Name Team Coverage Snaps Cover Tackle Attempts Cover Tackle Misses Tackle Efficiency
1 Abram Elam DAL 608 37 0 --
2 O.J. Atogwe WAS 392 23 0 --
3 Craig Dahl SL 255 22 0 --
4 Danieal Manning HST 418 22 0 --
5 Mike Adams CLV 412 20 0 --
6 Troy Nolan HST 316 19 0 --
7 Rashad Johnson ARZ 212 14 0 --
8 Craig Steltz CHI 228 12 0 --
9 Tyrell Johnson MIN 176 11 0 --
10 Usama Young CLV 297 27 1 27.0
11 George Wilson BUF 451 46 2 23.0
12 Jairus Byrd BUF 544 45 2 22.5
13 Charlie Peprah GB 597 45 2 22.5
14 Louis Delmas DET 383 21 1 21.0
15 Tyvon Branch OAK 655 40 2 20.0
16 Reggie Nelson CIN 600 38 2 19.0
17 Steve Gregory SD 428 37 2 18.5
18 Kenny Phillips NYG 592 35 2 17.5
19 Dawan Landry JAX 565 52 3 17.3
20 Amari Spievey DET 567 34 2 17.0



The Surest Twenty

Remember the good news for Rams fans I mentioned earlier? Well, here it is: it comes in the shape of Craig Dahl, who missed just one tackle all season to top the Efficiency Rating at a rate of a miss in every 40 attempts.

The Texans made Danieal Manning one of their biggest free agency priorities to help out a leaky secondary, and though Jonathan Joseph got all of the press with Houston’s improved play this year, Manning’s reliability as a tackler helped in a major way as well. Manning missed only two tackles this season (neither in coverage) to finish second on the list with a miss every 26 attempts. Houston’s third-year safety, Troy Nolan was neck-and-neck with Manning in rating, missing only one tackle against the run, and keeping a clean slate against the pass (where most of his work on the season was done). Nolan missed a tackle once every 24 attempts this season.

The Browns also find themselves with a pair of players inside the Top 10, with Usama Young and T.J. Ward combining for just five missed tackles. To put that into some perspective, Tanard Jackson missed five tackles in a single game, against the Saints in Week 9.



2011 Tackling: Safeties, Top 20
# Name Team Total Snaps Total Attempts Total Misses Tackle Efficiency
1 Craig Dahl SL 375 40 1 40.0
2 Danieal Manning HST 691 52 2 26.0
3 Troy Nolan HST 404 24 1 24.0
4 Usama Young CLV 625 57 3 19.0
5 Rashad Johnson
ARZ 441 38 2 19.0
6 T.J. Ward CLV 454 34 2 17.0
7 Craig Steltz CHI 388 33 2 16.5
8 Kerry Rhodes ARZ 382 30 2 15.0
9 Tyvon Branch OAK 1060 89 6 14.8
10 Husain Abdullah MIN 547 53 4 13.3
11 Eric Smith NYJ 914 78 6 13.0
12 George Wilson BUF 793 90 7 12.9
13 Abram Elam DAL 969 63 5 12.6
14 Antoine Bethea IND 1047 112 9 12.4
15 Jairus Byrd BUF 989 85 7 12.1
16 Kenny Phillips NYG 955 70 6 11.7
17 O.J. Atogwe WAS 650 46 4 11.5
18 Patrick Chung NE 520 46 4 11.5
19 Eric Weddle SD 937 77 7 11.0
20 Morgan Burnett GB 1034 92 9 10.2



Trends

This is not the first season that Carolina’s Sherrod Martin has featured in the lower end of the table. In 2010 Martin missed a tackle every 6.8 attempts and this season he was even worse, missing one in every 4.5. At the other end of the scale, this is the third season running that Danieal Manning has ranked at the sharp end. In 2010, as a member of the Bears, Manning missed a tackle just only every 22.3 attempts to finish in the Top 6, and in 2009, he missed a pair of tackles to finish in the Top 5 with a rating of one miss every 29.0 attempts. This season, Manning was able to maintain his fine level of tackling efficiency while the rest of the league seemed to forget the fundamentals of their position.

http://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2012/01/25/2011-tackling-the-safeties/

One of the real underrated aspects of this Browns team, IMO, was the play of Usama Young and Mike Adams this season.

Very nice guys to have back there, and the Browns do have one of the best secondaries in the division.
 
If we find a FS that can cover would that mean he would just be a corner back?
 
The Browns are one defensive end and one linebacker away from getting some serious recognition defensively.
 
If we find a FS that can cover would that mean he would just be a corner back?

No?

Since TJ Ward is abysmal in coverage..

Yeah he is but he's also one of the best, if not the best, run stopping safeties in the NFL. I love Ward, he's great at what he does, but you have to have a strong coverage FS next to him because of his inability to defend the pass.
 
No?



Yeah he is but he's also one of the best, if not the best, run stopping safeties in the NFL. I love Ward, he's great at what he does, but you have to have a strong coverage FS next to him because of his inability to defend the pass.

Everything in this post was going good until you said "if not the best" run stopping safety in the league..
 
Everything in this post was going good until you said "if not the best" run stopping safety in the league..

Okay, well your opinion means very little to me. Blackmon's going to be the best WR in this draft class except for Griffin.
 
What we need is a ball-hawk at FS. Ed Reed type of guy.. Obviously we won't find one THAT good.

I was hammering to make a play for Eric Weddle last year, although I wasn't expecting San Diego to make him the highest paid S in the league. It paid off though, as he made the All-Pro team IIRC. Back to the earlier thought, yes we need a center-fielder/ball hawk/Ed Reed type at FS...he would pair well with Ward. Iloka from Boise State is a thought with one of our 4th round picks...
 

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