Sean Taylors play

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Using tackles to measure the impact of a safety is a very bad metric. Having your safeties make a ton of tackles is the last thing you want; you want the ball carrier tackled before he reaches that level of the defense.

The fact that Taylor had 129 tackles speaks more to the ineptitude of our front 7 than it does to Taylor's "production".

INTs are a decent measure, but even those are driven by the opportunities to make INTs. For many years, Champ Bailey had only 2 or 3 INTs per season because nobody threw at him. QBs went after Archuleta a lot more than they tested Taylor. Plus, a defensive line that gets to the QB can often force an ill-advised pass, increasing the opportunities for your safeties to intercept the ball. If you have a worthless pass rush, you can't expect that many INT opportunities.

Defensive player performance can't be easily measured by statistics. You really just have to watch the guys play. I saw Taylor taking bad angles at times last season. I also saw him having to cover for Archuleta's inept play, which Taylor deserves credit for. I saw Taylor make a handful of impact plays, ripping fumbles loose, a couple INTs, and several huge tackles (the Carolina game). And I also saw him fail to get on the same page in terms of communication with the rest of the secondary (Taylor may not be to blame here, that could have been the coaching staff's fault for all we know). Overall he had a good season but has some room for improvement.

Seconded. Good post.

Defensive rate stats are in their early stages. While these stats do measure what you want to know about a certain defender, the sample size is just too small to know anything conclusive.

Just for fun, here were some of the conclusions drawn from 2005 albiet in a small sample size:

-No corner defended the pass better in 2005 (in the entire league) than Shawn Springs.
-No corner defended the run better in 2005 than Carlos Rogers.
-Adam Archuleta (while in STL) allowed only 5 yards per play on plays he was involved in--a wonderful year for a safety.

As you can see, these numbers don't always stay consistent from year to year. One year's data is never conclusive. It will get more accurate with time though.