Comments on: Defensive Player of the Year Award: 2007-2014 http://www.footballperspective.com/defensive-player-of-the-year-award-2007-2014/ NFL History and Stats Sat, 11 Jul 2015 13:37:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Bryan Frye http://www.footballperspective.com/defensive-player-of-the-year-award-2007-2014/#comment-309014 Sat, 11 Jul 2015 13:37:00 +0000 http://www.footballperspective.com/?p=25484#comment-309014 In reply to Arif Hasan.

I wish I could find the full breakdown of Turney’s numbers on the internet, but I have only been able to find bits and pieces for guys over 100 sacks. From what you’ve presented, the biggest surprise to me is seeing Merlin Olsen rate above Warrern Sapp. Olsen has a legacy of a space eater who swallowed double teams to let Deacon Jones kill QBs, while Sapp is known for his pass rushing prowess.

I’m definitely not surprised to see Page so high. Look at him coming off the ball, I feel pretty confident he could play today. He’d have to play end instead of tackle, but I think he could do it.

]]> By: Arif Hasan http://www.footballperspective.com/defensive-player-of-the-year-award-2007-2014/#comment-308982 Sat, 11 Jul 2015 02:32:00 +0000 http://www.footballperspective.com/?p=25484#comment-308982 In reply to Bryan Frye.

I’ve been doing work breaking down sack percentages using opponent pass attempts+team sacks and Turney sacks. I haven’t figured it all out yet (because there’s not a ton of data on individual seasons for sacks) and I’m focusing on DTs over edge players but I’ve looked at 12 careers so far.

1. Alan Page: 3.4%
2. J.J. Watt: 2.6%
3. John Randle: 2.0%
4. Randy White: 2.0%
5. Bob Lilly: 1.8%
6. Merlin Olsen: 1.6%
7. Warren Sapp: 1.6%
8. Joe Greene: 1.4%
9. Ndamukong Suh: 1.3%
10. Geno Atkins: 1.1%
11. Cortez Kennedy: 1.0%
12. Haloti Ngata: 0.5%

I am not confident that there’s evidence that it was easier to sack back then, even with the odd pass protection rules and Deacon Jones’ advantage with his now-illegal headslap maneuver. It will be easier to do this with edge players because there’s more sack data for them (I found every player with at least 100 sacks according to Turney plus official data, but that excludes a lot of interior defenders for obvious reasons).

When I look at edge defenders (or someone like you does), we’ll be able to do a better job of determining whether or not it was easier to get sacks on a particular play in the past. Deacon Jones might have just been incredible (which is not an insane presumption).

This would suggest that it wasn’t as easy as it “should have been” to sack the quarterback back then because of:

1. Technical deficiencies in pass-rushing
2. Priorities (run-first league? I don’t know the ’60s was pretty pass-happy)
3. Scheme deficiencies that prevent sacks
4. Mobile/sack-aware quarterbacks (like #2, I doubt this reason as well)
5. Reasons

ALSO JESUS CHRIST WHAT ABOUT THAT ALAN PAGE

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