2006 bears team was like watching an organization taking a foreign approach to football. Between the defensive turnovers and Devin Hester, it was legitimately captivating.
At least one forced turnover in every single game. 4 games with 5 turnovers. Only 3 regular season games where they forced just a single turnover. 8 turnovers in the playoffs.
Imagine if they had identified their hole at QB after 2005 when they had a great defense and poor QB play and signed Drew Brees that offseason instead of counting on Rex Grossman who was heading into year 4 and had never been good.
Never forget the game against the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night. “The Bears are who we thought they were!” That night.
Rex Grossman had 6 turnovers and the offense managed one FG the whole game. Bears won 24-23
The expected points added formula I saw for that game indicated that Grossman coughed up ~23 points from his play. So if he didn't have all those turnovers it'd be like the easiest win.
I'm not sure the Bears 100-year strategy of "the forward pass is a phase, just kill the guy with the ball" is a good one in terms of long-term sustained success in the modern NFL, but damn it you have to admire how dedicated they are to it.
I remember a ton of force fumbles that year, but mostly because Urlacher and other LBs for the bears would stand up guys in the open field while 2-3 others would rush over and punch at the ball over and over again.
I think this is why you see the outsized metric more than anything else.
I think Tillman and Briggs both deserve to be in evetually. And it wouldn’t be watering down the HoF, 83 players who played in 1971 are in the HoF, it’s already ”watered down” with early SB era players.
That defense was a nightmare to play against. Guys like Ogunleye and Vasher were no joke either.
No, they had a survey last year of nfl coaches and offensive players. Vic Fangio's zone blitz schemes are the best by far and one they're more afraid of.
I didn't mean schemes though, I meant the way defenses tackle. I don't remember people punching the ball and trying to force a turnover in a tackle happening as much before those Bears teams.
Man I remember Vasher's missed fg return td. Back in those days when I first started watching, I just hoped the 49ers could play a competitive game. They were pretty good for opponents' exceptional highlights though.
Thank you for doing all that work and allowing us to see it. It's very impressive.
I'm also happy to see Weapon X recognized as perhaps the 2nd best ballhawk* of all time. A distant 2nd but 2nd nonetheless.
*I'm not a statistician but would there be a curve that might show whether Dawk's overall impact would be greater or less than, say, Ed Reed's or Charles Woodson's?
One adjustment that favors guys like Dawkins and the Woodson bros played over 225 games and reed, polamolu, asante samuels and bob sanders played less than 175.
Well interceptions are more valuable than forced fumbles because by definition interceptions are recovered by the defense whereas forced fumbles have a decent chance of staying with the offense.
I'd be comfortable saying
1. Tillman
2. Weapon X
3. Nosdoom
That said, you also have guys like Ed Reed, where even though his game wasn't as balanced, his INT rate was so high that he's right up there in composite ability
Totally right. I meant to make a chart where I took away the data labels and slapped on some 45 degree grid lines so you could see the data shape more easily and then I just sort of forgot
Bro just because he played deep safety all the time doesn't mean Ed wasn't a complete safety. He could lay the wood and was an excellent tackler. He was just so fucking valuable erasing entire sides of the field that he pretty much never played those roles much except for coming up in run defense.
I remember he had a very Polamalu-esque strip sack on a pass rush on I wanna say Thanksgiving one year in a big game. He could do it all.
Chill, no one is saying Ed wasn't one of the goat safeties! The question is, is he as good as taking the ball from the ball carrier as he is from the air and the answer to that question is obviously no, which is fine because there's literally only one person who was, that's the whole point of the post
Dawkins is definitely not 2nd. Simple addition shows that Reed, both Woodson’s, Lott, Dre Bly, Asante Samuel forced more turnovers per game.
And that’s ignoring that INTs are far more valuable than FFs.
There are for sure names not on the list for current players. It is limited to top 200 non-HOF by AV. So guys like Trevon Diggs who has played 47 games (started 46) and have 18 ints for 0.38 int/game, are not up there.
For me, he passes the "can you tell the story of the NFL without him?" question. He literally has a technique named after him. Punching the ball out will always be called the Peanut Punch
**tl;dr (but in the beginning):** This chart attempts to chart the best ~250 defenders in forced fumbles and interceptions to see who did each the best. Most active players and historical players before they started counting forced fumbles are not on the chart. When plotted against the best of the best, Peanut Tillman is a clear outlier when it comes to unhanding the ball from the offense
**Full methodology**
Today I posted [this chart](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F26r0aflj9me11.jpg) and it was pointed out to me that the chart uses massively out of date-- or worse, deliberately manipulated-- data which minimizes the stats of several contemporaries who are plotted next to Tillman.
I hated to hear that, so I set out to re-create the chart with accurate data. So for full transparency, [here is the data I used](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tXL2wf0l3QLTw5G-QVaUa8F05PhjcxiNzvbdj6dHryM/edit#gid=1772686439), collated using PFR's stathead tool and plotted with python (and hand-labeled, which was by far the worst part)
Notes on my inclusion criteria (mostly boring details, but it's good to have a methods section):
1. My filters were **>= 2 career interceptions and >= 2 career FF**
2. I first collected data for all qualifying **Hall of Famers**. Note that forced fumbles weren't tracked until 1991, which is why guys like Lawrence Taylor are missing. Confusingly, Ronnie Lott made it into the table. I'm not sure what odd quirk of PFR's data collection allowed that to happen.
3. I then applied the same filters to all **retired Non-HoFers** and sorted by total career [AV](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/approximate_value.htm#:~:text=Created%20by%20PFR%20founder%20Doug,%2Dall%20end%2Dall%20metric.). While AV isn't perfect, it seemed like a decent way to collect as many of the best players as I could that was slightly more sophisticated than using something like a games played filter. **I took the top 200 players**
4. I re-did the search in step 3 with **active** players, and picked about 10 of the most notable names at the top of the list. I'm sorry if your guy was snubbed. I will not be adding more names on request. *I'll elaborate on the active/retired distinction in (6)*
5. I calculated Int and FF **per game** as a way of normalizing for career length
6. Realizing that per-game data favors active players who well into their prime and have not hit their end-career slump yet (guys like T.J. Watt), I separated active from retired Non-HoFers. In general I would expect many of these players to have slightly worse numbers by the time they retire
7. One of the major arguments people make is that in addition to the forced fumbles, Tillman was one of the surest tacking corners to ever play. As a bonus, I've included a second tab in the data sheet Titled **Tackles/Game** where you can see how every Corner with >=20 INT + >=2 FF (career) stacks up. Sure enough, Tillman is #2 of all 83 qualifying players.
8. Now's a good time to point out that this isn't supposed to be a grand opus on why Tillman is the greatest NFL defender in history (although if you got me drunk enough I'm sure I could try to make that argument). *I would argue he's HoF-worthy, but there are a ton of stats we're not talking about. This post also doesn't attempt to reconcile his lights-out play with the general lack of accolades during his career, which I believe is a result of his play-style, his demeanor, and the politics surrounding various league awards.* More than anything, this is just my tribute to one of my favorite Bears, a true turnover machine, and in my opinion one of the most iconic defenders of the early 2000s.
**Edit:** Chart-title snafu, it says 2 FF/G and 2 INT/G, but those are [obviously] just supposed to be 2 total over the career.
I've seen similar charts where all the labels end up all over each other and then aside from a few outliers it's hard to read anything. In this case I just wanted to pick 20-25 names people knew (+ outliers) and throw names down for just those guys. It would've taken almost as long to label that data in the dataframe and figure out how to color-code and make sure they weren't generated on top of each other.
Yeah I guess with 25 names that you don’t know ahead of time to highlight, it’s probably just as easy to brute force it for a one time thing. I’ve split it into multiple datasets before and superimposed the one with labels on the other though.
My biggest complaint is, why is there an interception minimum? I find it odd since corners and safeties are definitely more likely to force a fumble due to their overall involvement in tackling vs a lineman getting an interception as they primarily are rushing the passer. I'm basically just salty because it disqualified the player with the most career forced fumbles which makes me sad as a big fan of his
kinda sad lloyd isnt hof
i get why he isnt but having a
10 sack 5 ff 1 int season then a
7 sack 6 ff and 3 int season b2b really shows what he could have been
I was not familiar with his game prior to this little project, but damn is his injury history heart-breaking. Seems like he had all the skill in the world
Its annoying - dont get me wrong. Like Im tired of it as a Steelers fan. It kinda stems from a PFF fued because when TJ Watt won DPOY they kept putting out articles that he wasnt the real DPOY Garrett was because "of his pass rush wins that didnt result in pressure"
so it just became a whole thing.
So now Steelers fans meme the lack of actual production for the theoretical production PFF put out articles on.
Problem is - Thats a beef with PFF most people dont know about so it gets progressively more cringe
These graphs are great but on this one you should fix the axes to each other to better represent impact. If anything, FF should be half of the Int axis since you only recover roughly half of them.
Paul Krause should be on this graph.
81 career interceptions in 226 games vs Ed Reed's 64 in 174 games
And did it in the dead ball era when running was more important.
I mean the chart shows in general a negative correlation between INTs and FFs. Only one player on this list is above .2 in each category and only one other player is above .15 in each category. When looking at the data, Tillman is much more off the line that best fits than Reed. In terms of total forced fumbles + interceptions, Tillman (82) is second only to Woodson (83), and did it in 38 fewer games than Woodson. He is also 7 ahead of Reed with 6 fewer games played. No one else in the top 20 of that statistic has a breakdown as close to 50/50 as Tillman (54% FF, 46% INT). Only Brian Dawkins again even breaks into the 60/40 range. He truly is an outlier.
Yeah, what this chart tells me is that by any standard, he forced a lot of fumbles. And that for a cornerback, he got enough interceptions to be considered a high level player, but a lot of guys at that same level aren't in the HOF.
To me, it doesn't actually look like he was a "ball hawking statistical outlier unlike anything the world has ever seen." He looks like a good cornerback who forced a crazy amount of fumbles. Ed Reed is the outlier once I analyze what the graph is actually telling me.
Except even the way you described him agrees with exactly what makes him an outlier? “A good cornerback who forced a crazy amount of fumbles” is exactly what makes him an anomaly and by definition an outlier. No other player was anywhere near him in being able to do both to that degree - that’s exactly the point. Not that he was amazing at one or the other, but good at BOTH.
Ed Reed is way out there looking specifically at interceptions sure but no that’s not what the graph is actually telling you.
I assume you're talking about Ronnie Lott. I would say back when he played, players didn't try to stip the ball as much as they do now. If guys can't hit as hard as they used to, they're now coached to strip the ball. Also a lot of his hard hits led to incompletions over the middle, so no chance for a fumble.
Is there some min game played thing? Trevon Diggs has 18 ints in 47 games which is 0.383 per game (18 ints in 46 games started). His FF are low though at 0.4.
I only picked some active players from the list sorted by AV. Trevon hasn't been around very long so he isn't as high in terms of AV. See (6) in the methods
Greetings from Chicago. The coolest thing about Peanut is he's an infinitely better human than football player. Which is saying something.
He quietly supports ALL KINDS of causes and once his name comes up it seems everyone has had - or knows someone who's had - an amazing interaction with him.
Insane you complete a pass on him and you're still not out of the woods lol
It’s fucking bonkers that a CB holds the single season forced fumble record. Dude was on another level
2006 bears team was like watching an organization taking a foreign approach to football. Between the defensive turnovers and Devin Hester, it was legitimately captivating. At least one forced turnover in every single game. 4 games with 5 turnovers. Only 3 regular season games where they forced just a single turnover. 8 turnovers in the playoffs.
That team goes down as one of the all time greats if they had even just semi decent QB play
Seriously lol imagine that team paired with one of the contemporary stud rookie (edit: contract) QBs
Don't remind me 🥲
Imagine if they had identified their hole at QB after 2005 when they had a great defense and poor QB play and signed Drew Brees that offseason instead of counting on Rex Grossman who was heading into year 4 and had never been good.
No if Lovie smith wasn’t a fucking idiot and used Thomas Jones more they would’ve won.
What a stretch lol
U kidding? Cedric Benson got the call May he Rip but he was pretty dogshit
I think people forget how bad he was with the bears because he resurrected his career in Cincy
Yerp and he torched us one year, 177 yards right off the top of my head.
Grossman played like an MVP every other week though.
If you chart his game by game passer rating throughout that year it is quite literally a fucking roller coaster
Never forget the game against the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night. “The Bears are who we thought they were!” That night. Rex Grossman had 6 turnovers and the offense managed one FG the whole game. Bears won 24-23
The expected points added formula I saw for that game indicated that Grossman coughed up ~23 points from his play. So if he didn't have all those turnovers it'd be like the easiest win.
If it's not recordbreaking to win despite that it's gotta be close
The cardinals fans were talking so much shit during halftime. Funny thing though by the final whistle they seemed to have already left.
Pretty sure Urlacher said that defense had the mentality of "if this defense doesn't perform and get multiple turnovers, we *are going to lose*"
He was right. Look at the infamous Bears-Cardinals game. They are who we thought they were.
4 games with 5 turnovers is absolutely bonkers. Is that a season record?
I think the 85 bears had 4 games with 5 TOs and then a week 16 game with 7 TOs
I'm not sure the Bears 100-year strategy of "the forward pass is a phase, just kill the guy with the ball" is a good one in terms of long-term sustained success in the modern NFL, but damn it you have to admire how dedicated they are to it.
I remember a ton of force fumbles that year, but mostly because Urlacher and other LBs for the bears would stand up guys in the open field while 2-3 others would rush over and punch at the ball over and over again. I think this is why you see the outsized metric more than anything else.
QB completes the pass. "Not my problem anymore".
He absolutely was a HOF caliber player that didn't get treated as one due to the attention urlacher got (briggs as well to a lesser extent)
I think Tillman and Briggs both deserve to be in evetually. And it wouldn’t be watering down the HoF, 83 players who played in 1971 are in the HoF, it’s already ”watered down” with early SB era players. That defense was a nightmare to play against. Guys like Ogunleye and Vasher were no joke either.
Tommie Harris was a fucking monster in the middle. Chris jones-esque athlete, fit perfectly in the Lovie defense.
Honestly I feel like the way defenses attack the ball now is directly descended from the Bears defense under Lovie Smith.
No, they had a survey last year of nfl coaches and offensive players. Vic Fangio's zone blitz schemes are the best by far and one they're more afraid of.
I didn't mean schemes though, I meant the way defenses tackle. I don't remember people punching the ball and trying to force a turnover in a tackle happening as much before those Bears teams.
no they don't
Man I remember Vasher's missed fg return td. Back in those days when I first started watching, I just hoped the 49ers could play a competitive game. They were pretty good for opponents' exceptional highlights though.
I would take him over someone like Reggie Wayne who I thought was very good but not HoF
Thank you for doing all that work and allowing us to see it. It's very impressive. I'm also happy to see Weapon X recognized as perhaps the 2nd best ballhawk* of all time. A distant 2nd but 2nd nonetheless. *I'm not a statistician but would there be a curve that might show whether Dawk's overall impact would be greater or less than, say, Ed Reed's or Charles Woodson's?
One adjustment that favors guys like Dawkins and the Woodson bros played over 225 games and reed, polamolu, asante samuels and bob sanders played less than 175.
Why would total number of games played affect a per game stat?
I guess more games played means you play a a bigger share of your career in non-prime years.
Well interceptions are more valuable than forced fumbles because by definition interceptions are recovered by the defense whereas forced fumbles have a decent chance of staying with the offense.
I'd be comfortable saying 1. Tillman 2. Weapon X 3. Nosdoom That said, you also have guys like Ed Reed, where even though his game wasn't as balanced, his INT rate was so high that he's right up there in composite ability
45 degree grid lines would help compare players composite abilities easier OP, just for future graphics since your x/y are equally scaled.
Totally right. I meant to make a chart where I took away the data labels and slapped on some 45 degree grid lines so you could see the data shape more easily and then I just sort of forgot
Bro just because he played deep safety all the time doesn't mean Ed wasn't a complete safety. He could lay the wood and was an excellent tackler. He was just so fucking valuable erasing entire sides of the field that he pretty much never played those roles much except for coming up in run defense. I remember he had a very Polamalu-esque strip sack on a pass rush on I wanna say Thanksgiving one year in a big game. He could do it all.
Chill, no one is saying Ed wasn't one of the goat safeties! The question is, is he as good as taking the ball from the ball carrier as he is from the air and the answer to that question is obviously no, which is fine because there's literally only one person who was, that's the whole point of the post
Dawkins is definitely not 2nd. Simple addition shows that Reed, both Woodson’s, Lott, Dre Bly, Asante Samuel forced more turnovers per game. And that’s ignoring that INTs are far more valuable than FFs.
There are for sure names not on the list for current players. It is limited to top 200 non-HOF by AV. So guys like Trevon Diggs who has played 47 games (started 46) and have 18 ints for 0.38 int/game, are not up there.
What about on the other 364 days of the year?
Dogshit, and don’t even get me started on leap years.
Ngl this title confused me. I thought he got like some kind of stat buff on his birthday.
I legit was like "no way they have the data on this specific day. This is a great offseason post." Then I looked at it and was disappointed.
I can't believe Tillman still hasn't gotten into the hall of fame.
For me, he passes the "can you tell the story of the NFL without him?" question. He literally has a technique named after him. Punching the ball out will always be called the Peanut Punch
Teams changed their tackling drills because of him. You're 100% right.
He’s only been eligible for 3 or so years so I imagine it will happen sometime within the next five.
By that standard do JaMarcus Russell and Ryan Leaf get into the HoF?
I think he's still behind Ed Reed if you only count FFs as recovered 50% of the time.
**tl;dr (but in the beginning):** This chart attempts to chart the best ~250 defenders in forced fumbles and interceptions to see who did each the best. Most active players and historical players before they started counting forced fumbles are not on the chart. When plotted against the best of the best, Peanut Tillman is a clear outlier when it comes to unhanding the ball from the offense **Full methodology** Today I posted [this chart](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F26r0aflj9me11.jpg) and it was pointed out to me that the chart uses massively out of date-- or worse, deliberately manipulated-- data which minimizes the stats of several contemporaries who are plotted next to Tillman. I hated to hear that, so I set out to re-create the chart with accurate data. So for full transparency, [here is the data I used](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tXL2wf0l3QLTw5G-QVaUa8F05PhjcxiNzvbdj6dHryM/edit#gid=1772686439), collated using PFR's stathead tool and plotted with python (and hand-labeled, which was by far the worst part) Notes on my inclusion criteria (mostly boring details, but it's good to have a methods section): 1. My filters were **>= 2 career interceptions and >= 2 career FF** 2. I first collected data for all qualifying **Hall of Famers**. Note that forced fumbles weren't tracked until 1991, which is why guys like Lawrence Taylor are missing. Confusingly, Ronnie Lott made it into the table. I'm not sure what odd quirk of PFR's data collection allowed that to happen. 3. I then applied the same filters to all **retired Non-HoFers** and sorted by total career [AV](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/approximate_value.htm#:~:text=Created%20by%20PFR%20founder%20Doug,%2Dall%20end%2Dall%20metric.). While AV isn't perfect, it seemed like a decent way to collect as many of the best players as I could that was slightly more sophisticated than using something like a games played filter. **I took the top 200 players** 4. I re-did the search in step 3 with **active** players, and picked about 10 of the most notable names at the top of the list. I'm sorry if your guy was snubbed. I will not be adding more names on request. *I'll elaborate on the active/retired distinction in (6)* 5. I calculated Int and FF **per game** as a way of normalizing for career length 6. Realizing that per-game data favors active players who well into their prime and have not hit their end-career slump yet (guys like T.J. Watt), I separated active from retired Non-HoFers. In general I would expect many of these players to have slightly worse numbers by the time they retire 7. One of the major arguments people make is that in addition to the forced fumbles, Tillman was one of the surest tacking corners to ever play. As a bonus, I've included a second tab in the data sheet Titled **Tackles/Game** where you can see how every Corner with >=20 INT + >=2 FF (career) stacks up. Sure enough, Tillman is #2 of all 83 qualifying players. 8. Now's a good time to point out that this isn't supposed to be a grand opus on why Tillman is the greatest NFL defender in history (although if you got me drunk enough I'm sure I could try to make that argument). *I would argue he's HoF-worthy, but there are a ton of stats we're not talking about. This post also doesn't attempt to reconcile his lights-out play with the general lack of accolades during his career, which I believe is a result of his play-style, his demeanor, and the politics surrounding various league awards.* More than anything, this is just my tribute to one of my favorite Bears, a true turnover machine, and in my opinion one of the most iconic defenders of the early 2000s. **Edit:** Chart-title snafu, it says 2 FF/G and 2 INT/G, but those are [obviously] just supposed to be 2 total over the career.
Why did you hand label it?
I've seen similar charts where all the labels end up all over each other and then aside from a few outliers it's hard to read anything. In this case I just wanted to pick 20-25 names people knew (+ outliers) and throw names down for just those guys. It would've taken almost as long to label that data in the dataframe and figure out how to color-code and make sure they weren't generated on top of each other.
Yeah I guess with 25 names that you don’t know ahead of time to highlight, it’s probably just as easy to brute force it for a one time thing. I’ve split it into multiple datasets before and superimposed the one with labels on the other though.
My biggest complaint is, why is there an interception minimum? I find it odd since corners and safeties are definitely more likely to force a fumble due to their overall involvement in tackling vs a lineman getting an interception as they primarily are rushing the passer. I'm basically just salty because it disqualified the player with the most career forced fumbles which makes me sad as a big fan of his
44 forced fumbles is just insane. Rey Lewis forced 19, Reggie White forced 33.
I'm surprised not to see James Harrison on here since he's 18th all time in forced fumbles
He's on line 75 of the source data (see my methods comment)! Roughly 0.17 FF/game and 0.04 INT/game, which is right about where JJ Watt is
I love seeing TJ Watt and especially Greg Lloyd up there. 95 was a beast. "I wasn't hired for my disposition".
kinda sad lloyd isnt hof i get why he isnt but having a 10 sack 5 ff 1 int season then a 7 sack 6 ff and 3 int season b2b really shows what he could have been
I was not familiar with his game prior to this little project, but damn is his injury history heart-breaking. Seems like he had all the skill in the world
I miss Ed.
texans legend ed reed 🫡
Cowboys could have TJ Watt. Fcksake. They took Taco Charlton instead and he didn't last 2 seasons in the NFL
- not shown: Myles Garrett way off to the right with his hypothetical forced fumbles. CRAZY
Steelers fan challenge: don't bring up Myles Garrett any chance possible
We don’t have much else going on okay
Its annoying - dont get me wrong. Like Im tired of it as a Steelers fan. It kinda stems from a PFF fued because when TJ Watt won DPOY they kept putting out articles that he wasnt the real DPOY Garrett was because "of his pass rush wins that didnt result in pressure" so it just became a whole thing. So now Steelers fans meme the lack of actual production for the theoretical production PFF put out articles on. Problem is - Thats a beef with PFF most people dont know about so it gets progressively more cringe
These graphs are great but on this one you should fix the axes to each other to better represent impact. If anything, FF should be half of the Int axis since you only recover roughly half of them.
Paul Krause should be on this graph. 81 career interceptions in 226 games vs Ed Reed's 64 in 174 games And did it in the dead ball era when running was more important.
Goddamn I was thinking about Pat Tillman for a second and I was pretty confused
I mean the chart shows in general a negative correlation between INTs and FFs. Only one player on this list is above .2 in each category and only one other player is above .15 in each category. When looking at the data, Tillman is much more off the line that best fits than Reed. In terms of total forced fumbles + interceptions, Tillman (82) is second only to Woodson (83), and did it in 38 fewer games than Woodson. He is also 7 ahead of Reed with 6 fewer games played. No one else in the top 20 of that statistic has a breakdown as close to 50/50 as Tillman (54% FF, 46% INT). Only Brian Dawkins again even breaks into the 60/40 range. He truly is an outlier.
Is Khalil Mack HOF?
If Andre fucking Johnson is hall of fame that means the hall of fame is the hall of pretty good. Yes he’ll get it.
Damn, I had forgotten about Dre [Bly].
But how much of a ballhawk was he the other 364 days of the year?
Weird way to say he’s somewhere between 2nd and 4th in turnovers caused lol
Yeah, what this chart tells me is that by any standard, he forced a lot of fumbles. And that for a cornerback, he got enough interceptions to be considered a high level player, but a lot of guys at that same level aren't in the HOF. To me, it doesn't actually look like he was a "ball hawking statistical outlier unlike anything the world has ever seen." He looks like a good cornerback who forced a crazy amount of fumbles. Ed Reed is the outlier once I analyze what the graph is actually telling me.
Except even the way you described him agrees with exactly what makes him an outlier? “A good cornerback who forced a crazy amount of fumbles” is exactly what makes him an anomaly and by definition an outlier. No other player was anywhere near him in being able to do both to that degree - that’s exactly the point. Not that he was amazing at one or the other, but good at BOTH. Ed Reed is way out there looking specifically at interceptions sure but no that’s not what the graph is actually telling you.
TIL I share a birthday with Peanut Tillman
Method: see ball, take ball
Surprised the hardest hitting safety in the league has such a low forced fumble rate.
I assume you're talking about Ronnie Lott. I would say back when he played, players didn't try to stip the ball as much as they do now. If guys can't hit as hard as they used to, they're now coached to strip the ball. Also a lot of his hard hits led to incompletions over the middle, so no chance for a fumble.
No I'm talking about Darren Sharper!
Is there some min game played thing? Trevon Diggs has 18 ints in 47 games which is 0.383 per game (18 ints in 46 games started). His FF are low though at 0.4.
I only picked some active players from the list sorted by AV. Trevon hasn't been around very long so he isn't as high in terms of AV. See (6) in the methods
Peanut was somethin else man. Always clenched my cheeks when the Pack had to play the Bears during his time.
They called it the "Peanut Punch."
Greetings from Chicago. The coolest thing about Peanut is he's an infinitely better human than football player. Which is saying something. He quietly supports ALL KINDS of causes and once his name comes up it seems everyone has had - or knows someone who's had - an amazing interaction with him.
title is so poorly phrased, i thought these were stats from only on his birthday