Are High Tackle Numbers for Safeties a Bad Thing?

[BeastsoftheNFCeast]

Originally Posted by That Guy

is it the offseason?

i don't think there's really enough there to determine causation and i don't think one stat that can be attained in many vague ways (and is calculated differently by different scorers) can be universally used as a single point of failure.

ie, if a ball passes 20 yards over a WR's head in philly, the scorer there counts it as a pass defended, but that's not standard practice anywhere else.

is this X tackles pure game behind the line? after catches? on broken plays where the LBs over-pursue? some guys are faster and have a better nose for the ball, so they get more tackles cause they're actually good... other time the front seven gets blown up and they're just the clean up crew.

judging just on tackles alone without sorting them out is fairly meaningless, since you've got the 3rd best D as well as the 31st best, that pretty much screams nevermind to me.



except that half the teams are in the top 16 in defense, as would be expected in a RANDOM sampling in two of the three years (3/6, 3/10, 4/8), which means your conclusion is wrong twice as often as it's right.

You are right in saying that it is not a causation, but there is a definite correlation. I dont think there is any single stat that is a causation, it is a collection of the correlations that helps build a winning team, and even that is not always true.