07-30-2020, 09:12 AM
(07-30-2020, 01:30 AM)J24 Wrote: The defense struggled in weeks 2-11 and then magically improved afterwards. I wonder if their is way too see how many of those missed tackles happened during those weeks compared to rest of the season? I know that Bates and Vigil PFF grade dramatically improved during the last seven weeks of the season compared to the first 9.
I don't know about PFF, but based just on production the most dramatic change over the second half of the season was the development of Pratt. He barely played the first half of the season. In the first 8 games he only played 101 snaps on defense (app 20%) and never more than 38% in any game. Then in game #9 against Baltimore he played 50% of the defensive snaps. After that game Preston Brown released. Pratt saw a lot more action, but still did not play more than 68% of the snaps until the final 4 games where he played over 70% in 3 of them. Here is how his season broke down
Game..snaps...tkl...solo..asst..blitz..TFL
1-4 ........ 25... 4..... 1..... 3..... 1..... 0
5-8 ........ 76...12.... 9..... 3..... 6..... 0
9-12.......148...22...14..... 8..... 7..... 0
13-16.....187...34...23.....11....14..... 4
He had 38 tackles and 0 TFL over the first 12 games, but 34 tackles and 4 TFL in the last 4.
Project that last quarter of the season over a full 16 games and you get 136 tackles and 16 tackle for loss. That would be an awesome year from any of our LBs. I know 4 games is a very small sample size, but those numbers were not just a fluke spike in production. Instead you can track consistent improvement throughout the entire season.
As much asI like the rookie LBs coming in I believe Pratt is more likely to have a major impact on our defense than any of them. In fact he is my predistion for "Break Out Player" this year.
