Playoffs
Hall of Fame
Analysis Notebook: DPOY Special
Sam Monson | January 1, 2014
I agree. An amazing season worthy of the award many aren't even considering him for.
Sam Monson | January 1, 2014
read the full article here: https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2014/01/01/analysis-notebook-dpoy-special/The regular season is in the books for 2013 and rather than look back at any one moment from the final games of the season I want to focus instead on an award that has become a very interesting battle: Defensive Player of the Year.
It’s one thing to get muddied when it comes to MVP. The ‘value’ element to that award instantly creates a whole minefield of mess because it’s an inherently intangible thing to try and quantify. What is value and how do you quantify it? We all know that the most important position in the game is quarterback, so the award has really just become which one had the best season. This year that’s Peyton Manning by a landslide, so while we pay lip service to guys like Jamaal Charles we all know Manning will win and it wouldn’t be a shock if the vote was unanimous.
Defensive Player of the Year on the other hand should be far more simple to analyze. It’s pure performance. Who had the best season in 2013? That’s pretty simple, right? The only thing we have to worry about there is trying to cross compare positions which, while difficult is something we’ve all been doing since the game began so it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. I’ve seen people argue that players shouldn’t be in the running because their team only won a couple of games. That my friends is idiocy. Lawrence Taylor won the award on a 4-win Giants team, Cortez Kennedy won it on a 2-win Seattle side, Jason Taylor’s Dolphins won just 6 games the season he won and Reggie White once won it when his Eagles side had a losing record and the 23rd ranked defense – in a league with just 28 teams.
It is an individual award, so a team’s inability to play ball around a guy shouldn’t prevent him from being acknowledged as the league’s best defender. In my eyes this season the award is very much a two horse race, but one of those horses doesn’t even seem to be on most people’s shortlist. J.J. Watt and Robert Quinn are head and shoulders above any other candidate, but we’ll take a run through them in the order I think they should appear on people’s lists anyway, so you might need to scroll a little bit to find the part on your favorite.
J.J. Watt
It made sense last season. Watt finished the year a hair shy of the all-time sack record, he batted down like a million passes, and he was making plays for everybody to see each and every week – plays that stuck out on the stat sheet. It helped that the Texans were winning games and he was the figurehead for that dominance. He ended the year breaking the PFF grading system becoming the first player to top 100 grading points in a season. This year the gaudy stats aren’t there, but would it surprise you to know that in PFF’s grading, a play by play measure of his performance, he actually topped his 2012 numbers?
Take a look:
This is how Watt stacks up over the past two seasons against the top five 3-4 DEs from the 2013 season. Campbell, Williams, Jordan and Richardson all had extremely strong years – Richardson’s good enough to likely hand him Defensive Rookie of the Year – but none is even playing the same game as Watt in either season. Last year was incredible, but his 2013 performance tops it by a clear ten grading points, the only thing that changed is a few statistics didn’t fall his way and the Texans stopped winning games.
Sometimes when a guy plays on the line what he does won’t show up on the stat sheet at all. Doug Flutie said recently that running the ball is a waste of time, because ‘you need seven good blocks to run the football’. In a funny way the reverse can be true as well. One guy can’t mount a successful defense. No matter how dominant that player is, offenses can find a way to avoid him, even if they can’t neutralize him. Watt found that at times this season. In week 6 the Rams held Watt to his first game not graded in the green in the past two regular seasons, but when I looked at how they did it in that week’s Analysis Notebook I found they didn’t do anything special, just used a bit of common sense. When Watt was lined up on one side they ran to the other, when he was left 1 on 1 they made sure the ball was coming out quickly.
Plenty of Houston defenders owe a lot of their defensive stops to Watt torpedoing the play in the backfield but not recording the stop himself. He has been a one-man wrecking ball all throughout the season but all too often it’s made little impact on the overall outcome. That is not a failing of his.
What is perhaps most amazing about him is that he is a perfectly balanced player. He is no better rushing the passer than he is defending the run, because he uses the same skills and techniques to play both. Simply put he’s just too quick for most blockers to deal with, and any that are quick enough to handle him aren’t strong enough to contain him. If he plays inside he uses his swim move to just toss interior linemen aside and penetrate immediately. The Texans have used him more this season outside as a 4-3 DE where he has been equally as effective. He’s still plenty quick enough to play on the edge, but he also brings a power that offensive tackles just aren’t used to dealing with.
I agree. An amazing season worthy of the award many aren't even considering him for.
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