Reading the Defense: Week 5

As a group, defensive tackles are off to a slow start. Last year’s top two finishers are out with injuries. DeForest Buckner is expected back, but Derrick Brown is out for the year. Christian Barmore, another top-ten defensive tackle on Footballguys’ 2023 leaderboard, never started this season due to an unusual health concern.

Seven defensive tackles have collected more than 2.0 quarterback sacks through four weeks. Nearly twice that number of players cleared the same milestone in 2023. Keion White, the player atop the current Footballguys leaderboard, is a defensive end. It’s easier to score sacks from the edge because the rusher sees fewer double-teams.

Pass Rush Win Rate

Last week’s edition of Reading the Defense used “pass-rush win rate” to look for players whose performance has met their fantasy production. ESPN collects “pass-rush wins” from NFL Next Gen Stats. A pass rusher who beats the block within 2.5 seconds is credited with a win. ESPN then tracks the rate of wins versus pass-rush attempts along with the rate at which the defender is double-teamed by blockers.

If the opposite of a pass-rush win is a loss, the double-team mitigates the negative impact to the defense of the loss. Other defenders have fewer obstacles in their path to the quarterback.

A confluence of events results in a quarterback sack. The quarterback must drop back to pass and hold the ball long enough for a defender to reach and tackle him. Good coverage helps. Good offensive-line play neutralizes pass rush. Some say, “A sack is a quarterback sack.” The aspect of the sack that the pass rusher can control is how quickly he beats the blocker who aims to impede his progress to the quarterback.

Through four weeks, just two defensive tackles are credited with more than ten pass-rush wins. Only seven tackles are winning at rates greater than 15 percent of the time. In comparison, 15 edge defenders have more than 10 pass-rush wins, and 19 have win rates equal to or greater than 20 percent.

Edge defenders are to wide receivers what defensive tackles are to tight ends in fantasy football. The interior defenders collect stats at slower rates. A tackle like A’Shawn Robinson can pile up stats in a negative game script just as a tight end can in garbage time.  

Early in the 2024 season, defensive tackles have fantasy gamers scratching their heads just as tight ends do. Buckner, Brown, and Barmore aren’t the only premium players missing in action. Quinnen Williams, Daron Payne, Jonathan Allen, and Jeffery Simmons, all DT1s in 2022, aren’t producing.

Christian Wilkins, Las Vegas

Christian Wilkins sits at 26th in fantasy points through four weeks. He has finished better than that in five straight years. He has been a top-five fantasy defensive tackle in each of the past three years. It may be tempting to fault his transfer from Miami to Las Vegas in free agency as a cause.

ESPN’s reports, however, identify Wilkins as one of three players on leaderboards for both pass-rush win rate and run-stop win rate. If not for Zach Allen, Christian Wilkins would lead the league in pass rush wins (14) by a wide margin (4). Wilkins’s success at the line of scrimmage simply hasn’t translated to the box score. As a pass rusher, Wilkins is facing double-teams more often this year than last (69% vs. 65%), but he’s winning at a much higher rate (19% vs. 13%). Statistical production is likely to come in time.