Pleasant Surprise Team

Earlier this week I brought you a team of players who have been the most disappointing this season. Today I’m going in the opposite direction, listing eleven players on offense and defense who have been pleasant surprises this year.

As with the other team, I gave myself a set of rules to follow. I tried to aim for less heralded players who have been in the league for some time performing at a less than extraordinary level. Bjoern Werner has been much better than anyone expected coming into the season, but he was still a first round pick just last year. This is normal development, and it shouldn’t be surprising. I also didn’t include any rookies on the list, even though players like John Brown and Joe Bitonio would fit in well with this team.

Offense

Quarterback: Philip Rivers, San Diego Chargers

It was difficult for me to find a quarterback for this spot on the most disappointing team, and it was even harder this time around. Quarterback is, by its nature, a position where it is very hard to come out of nowhere. I considered going with someone like Austin Davis or Brian Hoyer, but simply playing at a slightly below average level shouldn’t be enough to be considered a ‘pleasant surprise.’ I needed someone playing at a high level, someone exceeding all expectations coming into the season.

I’m still not completely happy with this, but Rivers is the best I’m going to do. Expectations were extremely high coming into the season, after last year performing like one of the top five quarterbacks in the league. Everyone expected him to continue to play very well, even if many suspected he would fall back. We not only has he not fallen back, he’s actually gotten better. Last year he was excellent, but he was still a level below top quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, and (healthy) Aaron Rodgers. This year he is right up there with those three and Andrew Luck, neck and neck and neck and neck and neck for the title of best quarterback in the league.

Rivers has done this despite a startling drop in his team’s running game and a mildly disappointing season from top wideout Keenan Allen. Both of these will improve as the season goes on, cancelling any natural regression by Rivers. I don’t think he will win MVP at the end of the year, but I expect his name to be heavily involved in every conversation for the award.

Running Back: DeMarco Murray, Dallas Cowboys; Justin Forsett, Baltimore Ravens

I’m going with two running backs because it was easier to find surprising running backs than it was wide receivers. Murray is the obvious choice, a talented runner who has exploded into the most productive back in the league. We all knew that Dallas’s offensive line was great coming into the season, but questions about Murray’s ability to handle the load left most people skeptical about how effective their rushing game could be. So far Murray has certainly carried the load for the team—has carried two or three teams’ worth of load to be honest—and has produced more than a thousand yards over the first half of the season. He’ll cool down eventually, whether through exhaustion or injury or bad luck. But with the sizeable lead he has, I think he is even money to end up leading the league in rushing this season.

At the beginning of the season Forsett was sitting third on the Ravens depth chart, with most people assuming rookie Lorenzo Taliaferro would pass him by soon enough. The suspension and release of Ray Rice gave him life, and the incompetence of Bernard Pierce gave him a platform to show the world what he is capable of. After six years bouncing around the bottom of depth charts, he is currently fourth in the league in rushing yards and behind only Mark Ingram in yards per carry. The improved offensive line deserves a lot of credit (which I will give them below) but Forsett is doing far more behind it than any other back they’ve plugged in.

Wide Receiver: Emmanuel Sanders, Denver Broncos; Golden Tate, Detroit Lions;

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see Sanders on this team. Peyton Manning has always been very generous to wide receivers, and with Wes Welker on the decline Sanders is their clear number two receiving option. But no one could have expected this level of play from him. In four years with Pittsburgh he never once had 100 yards receiving. He has done it four times in seven games since joining the Broncos. It is a testament to Manning’s greatness that he can get so much more out of a receiver than another top ten quarterback like Ben Roethlisberger ever could.

Detroit has spent the past eight years desperately searching for a second receiver opposite Calvin Johnson. Tate was supposed to be their answer this year, but so far injuries to Johnson have robbed us of the chance to see what the two of them could do. Instead Tate has been asked to carry the receiving corps on his own, and he has proven more than capable. He is third in the league in receiving yards, and in each of the past two games he scored a long touchdown to power a Lions comeback victory. Tate is about the only thing working well on their offense right now, and it will be interesting to see how he performs once Johnson returns.

Tight End: Delanie Walker, Tennessee Titans

I really wanted to go with Larry Donnell on this one. In fact, I’m still a bit surprised I didn’t. Donnell certainly came from nowhere to put together a breakout performance, but it isn’t unusual to see little known players prove to be better than expected. It is much more uncommon to see an established NFL veteran go from a blocking tight end into a dangerous weapon down the field. Walker thrived for years as a second tight end in San Francisco, but he was a disappointment when given a leading role in Tennessee last season. So far this year he has been their most dangerous threat in the passing game, one of the few things to like about their offense. They have other talented players on the outside who will step up and take some of his production, but he is definitely more than the one dimensional player we thought he was coming into the season.

Offensive Tackle: Kelvin Beachum, Pittsburgh Steelers; Terron Armstead, New Orleans Saints

Beachum should not be a starting left tackle in the NFL. There is no way it makes sense. He was a seventh round pick as a utility lineman, always assumed to be unable to play on a quarterback’s blindside due to his short stature. He ended up there last year only due to the failure of second round selection Mike Adams, and somehow he has held down the role. Not only has he held it down, he has been one of the better pass protecting tackles in the league. Roethlisberger had a record performance this past weekend largely thanks to impeccable protection. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a while now, but I’m starting to believe there is a genuine chance he can hold down that position for a while.

Armstead was a more highly touted prospect than Beachum coming into the league, but it wasn’t because of his skillset as a blocker. Armstead is a freak athlete, going in the third round of last year’s draft after running the fastest recorded 40 time for an offensive lineman. Other than that he is known mostly for being eaten alive by Greg Hardy and the Panthers late last season. He was one of the biggest concerns for New Orleans headed into the season, but so far he has been a solid option at left tackle. He should only get better as he develops, and if he can harness his athletic potential he can become one of the top players at his position.

Offensive Guard: Kelechi Osemele, Baltimore Ravens; Ronald Leary, Dallas Cowboys

Osemele has had an interesting career, which is a strange thing to say about a player only in his third season. As a rookie he started most of the regular season at right tackle before being moved to left guard for Baltimore’s Super Bowl run. He stayed at that position last year, struggling for most of the season along with everyone else on the Ravens roster. But through the first half of this season he has taken a massive step forward, playing better than any other guard in the league. A young player coming into his own, I have every reason to expect that he will remain a dominant force for the rest of the season and for years to come.

Dallas has had the best offensive line in the league so far this year, and most of the credit has gone to their trio of first round picks. Doug Free has received plenty of attention as well for turning into an above average right tackle after failing on the right side. The odd man out seems to be Leary, an undrafted third year player who is manning the position in between Travis Fredrick and Tyron Smith. The players around him have certainly helped, but he has done his part to make this line into the elite unit it is. An offensive line is never just a single player. It is a unit that requires cohesion and coordination to succeed. Leary deserves as much credit as anyone for what Dallas has been able to accomplish this year.

Center: Jeremy Zuttah, Baltimore Ravens

Zuttah has been the biggest change in Baltimore’s offensive line, and it is hard not to give him a great deal of credit for their improvement. Brought in as a free agent from Tampa Bay, he had the advantage of being dropped between Osemele and perennial Pro Bowler Marshall Yanda. The three of them together have been the best offensive interior in the NFL, and it is hard not to credit part of Forsett’s success to them.

Defense

Defensive End: Willie Young, Chicago Bears; DeMarcus Ware, Denver Broncos

The Bears brought in three free agent defensive linemen this season. Jared Allen was supposed to be the pass rusher, Young was supposed to stop the run, and Lamarr Houston was supposed to be a jack of all trades. Well Allen and Houston combined for 2.5 sacks over the first half of the season, 4.5 fewer than the supposed run specialist. Young has evolved into their best pass rusher this season, but I can’t imagine it will last. With Houston out and Allen ineffective, offenses will turn their protection schemes towards Young. He has seven sacks through eight games, but I would not be surprised to see him fail to reach double digits.

Ware technically plays outside linebacker, but he spends most of his time rushing the passer so I have no trouble slotting him at defensive end. A future Hall of Famer, it seems strange to put him on this list. But after last season the common perception was that his career as a dominant player was over, a perception that now seems painfully idiotic. Ware struggled with injuries in 2013, but he has been remarkably healthy every other year in his career. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he came back so effectively, especially with Von Miller rushing from the other side. The two of them will continue tearing quarterbacks apart for the rest of the season as Denver rides a top five offense and defense to a comfortable top seed in the AFC.

Defensive Tackle: Tom Johnson, Minnesota Vikings; Brett Keisel, Pittsburgh Steelers

Some quick facts about Johnson. He is thirty years old and had a total of five career sacks coming into this season. He has spent time in the NFL, NFL Europe, the Arena Football League, and the Canadian Football League. He is making less than $1 million this year and is not signed through next season. He is second among NFL defensive tackles with five sacks despite playing less than 40 percent of the Vikings defensive snaps. He has become a pass rushing force seemingly out of nowhere, and while it is exciting and a lot of fun, I can’t imagine it will last. With the development of Sharrif Floyd over the past few weeks it seems likely that Johnson’s snap totals will fall even further. He still has a role to play with this team, but there is no way in hell he gets another five sacks before the season ends.

Keisel should not be in the league this year. His contract expired at the end of last season, and no team showed any interest in 36 year old defensive linemen. The Steelers signed him out of desperation two weeks before the season, and he has been one of their best defensive players so far. He has earned a stable role for the rest of the season in a rotation with rookie Stephon Tuitt, and as Pittsburgh’s defense gets healthy his contributions will only matter more. The Steelers haven’t been great on defense so far this year, but with surprise players like Keisel contributing they have a chance to pull things together down the stretch.

Linebacker: Larry Foote, Arizona Cardinals; Brandon Marshall, Denver Broncos; Rolando McClain, Dallas Cowboys

Foote has bounced around the league for a long time, somehow always finding his way to a starting role thanks to the desperation of the teams that sign him. It happened again this year in Arizona, where he signed as a veteran backup only for starter Daryl Washington to be suspended the full length of the season. The Cardinals reluctantly plugged Foote into the starting role, and he has rewarded them by playing at the highest level of his career. The Cardinals have weathered brutal injuries across their defense and continue to play at an extremely high level. I give most of the credit to defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, who has taken a player like Foote and turned him into an above average starter. Bowles has done enough to earn the benefit of the doubt, and I would not bet against anyone who is put out there in his system.

The big names on Denver’s defense made it clear before the season that this would be a unit to be reckoned with. Von Miller, TJ Ward, Aqib Talib, Terrence Knighton. The big names were expected to be the core of a top ten defense, and so far they have been. But no one expected this defense to perform as well as it has, because no one expected them to receive this much production from a player like Marshall. He stepped in when Danny Trevathan went down, and he has played phenomenally well in the weakest part of Denver’s defense. It certainly helps to have this sort of talent around him, but he is still performing at a level much higher than we could have expected from a journeyman backup.

McClain is one of the best stories of the NFL so far this year. A former top ten pick of the Raiders, his career turned out as wretchedly awful as could have been imagined. He was released after only three years in Oakland and was picked up by the Ravens, only for him to announce his retirement. It looked like everything was over for him, the highlight of his career being the photograph taken below.

A year after the Ravens signed him, they traded his rights to Dallas along with a seventh round pick in exchange for a sixth round pick. Everyone laughed at the time, assuming that the excellent management of the Ravens had screwed over the typically incompetent Cowboys. No one expected that he would play this season, much less that he would be one of the best defensive players on one of the best teams in the league. The talent has always been there with McClain, and the year away from football may have finally gotten his head right. One good half season does not make up for three years of ineptitude, but I think there is a chance that he could man the middle of Dallas’s defense for years to come.

Cornerback: Vontae Davis, Indianapolis Colts; Rashean Mathis, Detroit Lions

Davis has been highly thought of for the past couple seasons, and there is a good chance that he would have made a ranking of the top ten cornerbacks in the league coming into the season. But there has always been a streak of inconsistency in his play, alternating dominant games with performances that deserve benching. So far this year he has managed to harness some consistency, and it is the primary reason for Indianapolis’s surprising success on defense. Roethlisberger’s dominating performance against them this past weekend likely would not have happened had Davis not left the game in the first quarter. Injuries could slow him down the rest of the season, and his inconsistent tendencies could return at any time. But so far this year he has a case to make as the best cornerback in the league.

Quick question: who out there knew that Mathis was still in the league before this year? I certainly didn’t, and I get the feeling that several of Detroit’s coaches probably didn’t either. Their cornerback situation was an utter disaster coming into the season, and they ended up putting Mathis on the field opposite Darius Slay out of pure necessity. It’s been six or seven years since he was any good, and at least three since he was at all relevant. But he has held his own on the outside this year, thanks to Detroit’s dominant front four and solid linebacker corps. It will be interesting to see how he holds up if Detroit ever goes against someone capable of handling their pass rush, but to this point that hasn’t been a concern.

Safety: Malcolm Jenkins, Philadelphia Eagles; Aaron Williams, Buffalo Bills

Jenkins is one of those first round picks that is difficult to judge. He certainly isn’t a bust, spending several years as a competent starting safety in New Orleans. But he can’t be considered a success either, not when his team drafted him hoping to receive a perennial Pro Bowler. He is something in the middle, reliable until someone better comes along. For the Saints that someone was Jairus Byrd, and they shed no tears when Jenkins signed with Philadelphia. He has cooled off some since his hot start with the Eagles, but he is still playing at a higher level than he ever did in New Orleans. He is the best player in Philadelphia’s secondary and a major part of keeping them afloat as their offense has struggled. I think he is still the player he was in New Orleans, but this brief hot stretch was something I don’t think anyone saw coming.

We go from the player who was replaced by Byrd to the player that replaced Byrd. Williams played alongside Byrd in Buffalo for a few years as a more physical, in the box style safety before moving to a deep coverage role this season. He has filled the departed free agent’s shoes admirably, holding opposing passing games in check long enough for Buffalo’s explosive defensive line to close in on the quarterback. His performance has helped compensate for the loss of one of their best defensive players, and it is the crucial piece behind their surprising start to the season.

All Disappointing Team

Eighteen NFL teams have played eight games so far, with the other fourteen due to reach the halfway point of the season this weekend. Because of the unevenness of the schedule there is no real midpoint of the football season, so I will just call the next two weeks the middle of the year. I’m going to be looking at everything that has happened so far and at everything yet to come in an attempt to figure out what is real and what is just the result of a small sample of games.

This week I’m going to be focusing my attention on players. I’m not going to do a midseason rundown of awards. That is boring, and stupid, and pointless. Instead I’ll take a look at players who are performing below expectations and at players who have come out of nowhere to have successful seasons. Today I will start by filling out a starting lineup of the most disappointing players of the season so far.

To make this roster I gave myself a couple criteria. First of all, I’m not going to include suspended players. Adrian Peterson, Greg Hardy, and Josh Gordon have all been disappointments this year, but I want to judge players based on their performance on the field, not their absence from it. Similarly, I won’t punish players for being injured. I’m not going to populate this team with Calvin Johnson and AJ Green. Finally, I’m going to try to focus on players who have proven themselves in the NFL. It is disappointing when a player like Geno Smith or Mark Barron fails to take the next step, but it isn’t as surprising as when a good player takes a serious step backwards.

Offense

QB: Matt Ryan, Atlanta Falcons

Picking a quarterback for this team is a challenge. There are lots of reasonable options, but no one really jumps off the page. Anyone I select will have his merits, and many I leave off are no doubt disappointing their fans at some level. Jay Cutler would make a lot of sense, though I don’t think he is playing any worse than his division foe Matthew Stafford, who is skating through the worst season of his career thanks to a surprisingly good defense and some good luck in tight games. There are a bevy of quarterbacks who haven’t managed to take the next step, but I would prefer to go with someone more established, someone who has suffered a noticeable dip in performance.

Ryan isn’t the perfect choice, but he’s as close as I’m going to come. Much of his trouble has stemmed from the lack of talent around him. Besides Julio Jones, there is no one on Atlanta’s team playing at a particularly impressive level. Ryan no longer has the safety blanket of Tony Gonzalez, and Roddy White is no longer a viable number two option as a receiver. But two years ago I would have counted Ryan among the ten best quarterbacks in the game, possibly even the top five. His performance over the last season and a half does not even touch that category.

Ryan is still a very talented and very intelligent quarterback and he will bounce back, much as Philip Rivers has done over the past two years. But I don’t think that will happen this season, not while he is still playing with these teammates and this coach. Atlanta still has hope of making the playoffs thanks to the ineptitude of the rest of their division, but I think the chances are just as good that they end up drafting in the top ten again.

RB: Eddie Lacy, Green Bay Packers

There are definitely backs in the league who have had worse seasons than Lacy. Doug Martin, Toby Gerhart, and Zac Stacy were supposed to be feature backs, and all three have disappeared off the face of the Earth. Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice are probably the two biggest disappointments, but I said I wouldn’t list them. I’m going with Lacy here because he had extremely high expectations coming into the season, and so far he has done very little to justify the hype.

After a stellar first season in which he won Offensive Rookie of the Year, Lacy was expected to be the force that pushed the Packers offense into truly elite territory. And while Green Bay’s offense has been very good this year, it has been almost entirely on the back of Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson. Five times this season he has failed to reach 50 rushing yards, and only once has he made it over 100. The offensive line isn’t opening holes for him like it did last year, but he isn’t the tackle shedding beast he used to be. He showed some signs of being this player on Sunday against New Orleans, but he will need more than a couple good games to make up for his performance so far.

WR: Percy Harvin, Seattle Seahawks/New York Jets; Cordarrelle Patterson, Minnesota Vikings; Torrey Smith, Baltimore Ravens

I covered Harvin at length when he was traded a couple weeks ago, and I don’t have much more to say. He is a very talented player who has shown flashes of brilliance when given the opportunity, but Seattle never could figure out how to use him. The Jets didn’t look much better in his first game with them, but there is still time for them to figure things out.

Joining Harvin on our team is a player who replaced him in Minnesota. Patterson has a similar skillset to Harvin, just with additional size and even less ability to function in a standard offense. He came into the league as raw as any receiving prospect ever has, but by the end of his rookie season it looked like the Vikings had figured him out. In his first game this year he had over 100 yards rushing on three carries, and it looked like he would be a dynamic part of their offense going forward. But over the next six weeks he seemed to disappear from their gameplan, unable to create separation on the outside and too heavily guarded to contribute on screens or running plays. He showed some flashes of life against Tampa Bay, and it looks like Teddy Bridgewater is starting to trust him to make plays on back shoulder throws and jump balls. I expect Patterson will perform significantly better over the second half of the season, but I’ve been wrong about him before.

Torrey Smith led the Ravens in receptions and receiving yards last year, and even with the addition of Steve Smith most people expected him to remain their primary receiving threat. It took only one week to realize that Steve Smith was now their primary receiver, and only a couple more to start to wonder if Torrey Smith was even part of their offense anymore. Flacco has tried forcing the ball to him more in recent weeks, and it has not gone well. Five of Flacco’s seven interceptions this season have happened on passes targeted towards Torrey Smith, and he still hasn’t connected on a pass of more than 40 yards to his best deep threat. Torrey Smith is by nature a limited receiver, and he only needs a couple of catches for his numbers to become tolerable. It also doesn’t hurt that he leads the NFL in pass interference penalties drawn. Even though the production isn’t there, Torrey Smith will remain a significant part of Baltimore’s offense.

TE: Vernon Davis, San Francisco 49ers

Expectations were high for the 49ers passing game coming into the season. Davis and Michael Crabtree were still the heart of their passing game, but they looked to have real depth this year with Anquan Boldin, Stevie Johnson, and Brandon Lloyd on the outside. Those last three have all lived up to expectations, but the two at the top have held them back. Of the two, Davis has definitely been the most disappointing. Injuries have hampered him some, but that doesn’t explain his sudden inability to catch passes that hit him in the hands. He’ll get better as he gets healthy, but more importantly he needs to cut down on the mistakes that are killing the 49ers offense.

OT: Riley Reiff, Detroit Lions; Matt Kalil, Minnesota Vikings

What a neat coincidence. The two tackles on our all disappointment team were the two tackles taken in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft. Reiff was the second of the two selected, going number 23 to Detroit. He didn’t do much his rookie year, but last season he played at an above average level on one of the better lines in the league. So far this year their line has been an utter train wreck, allowing Matthew Stafford to be sacked more times through eight games than he was all of last season. There have been problems across the line, and even if Reiff picks up his level of play Detroit’s offense will continue to struggle.

Reiff has been a disappointment this year. Kalil has been far and away the worst left tackle in the league. His incompetence is staggering and perplexing, particularly for a player who earned a well deserved Pro Bowl berth his rookie year. He slumped some last season, but this year is on another level entirely. He is slow getting out of his stance, he loses balance and is beaten inside several times a game, and he has absolutely no control when he gets his hands on opposing pass rushers. Early in the season I had hopes that it was just a cold streak, but after eight games I am starting to wonder if we are dealing with someone who will never again be a capable NFL starter.

OG: Andy Levitre, Tennessee Titans; Alex Boone, San Francisco 49ers

Levitre is the highest paid player on Tennessee’s roster, and right now he may also be the worst. Signed to a six year $48 million dollar contract after leaving Buffalo in 2013, he was expected to be the anchor of the line the Titans were planning to build around. No one on that line has been playing up to expectations, but Levitre is far and away the most disappointing. He likely would have been benched for first round pick Taylor Lewan had the loss of Michael Roos not forced Lewan into the starting lineup at left tackle. The Titans are stuck with Levitre for now, but at the end of the season they may have to consider letting him go. They would save only $2 million on their cap next year if they did so, but at this point it is hard to say that Levitre is worth that.

It’s a bit unfair, but I’m bringing Boone into this team as a scapegoat. San Francisco’s offensive line has been a major disappointment this season. Injuries to Anthony Davis and Daniel Kilgore have hurt, but their full time starters haven’t been playing at their normal high level. Boone is performing no worse than Joe Staley or Mike Iupati, but I’m throwing him under the bus for the summer holdout that cost him training camp and the first game of the season. He is still a good player, and as he rounds into form he will play his way off this team, but for now he is the most disappointing player on a unit that has been a serious disappointment this season.

C: Eric Wood, Buffalo Bills

Center is a relatively stable position in the NFL, and it is hard to find anyone to fit this position on our team. I decided to go with Wood, a center playing at an average level for a team that hoped to get more than that. Buffalo’s success this season has stemmed primarily from their defense and some extraordinary luck, and right now there isn’t much about their offense to like besides Sammy Watkins. With question marks at three of the five positions, Wood will need to step up his game if the Bills are going to field a high quality line.

Defense

DE: Robert Quinn, St Louis Rams; Charles Johnson, Carolina Panthers

Quinn was the best defensive player in the NFL last year, and there was every expectation he would be just as dominant this year. A noted football expert even wrote prior to the season “I expect him to make a serious run at the single season sack record.” Everyone thought the Rams had the best pass rush in the league coming into the season, yet somehow they are currently last in the league in team sacks with six, of which Quinn is responsible for three. All three have come over the past two weeks, suggesting he is starting to pick it up. He will be back to his normal dominant self down the stretch, but that doesn’t negate how wretched he has been so far.

In fairness, the most disappointing defensive end in the league is probably Johnson’s teammate Greg Hardy, who has missed all but the first game of the season due to suspension for domestic violence. In his absence their incredible defensive line has fallen to pieces, and Johnson has failed miserably in his effort to pick up the slack. Johnson was likely going to be released after the season no matter what due to his contract, but with the way he’s playing the Panthers won’t even have any regrets cut him loose.

DT: Clinton McDonald, Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Lamarr Houston, Chicago Bears

A pair of offseason free agents man the middle of our defense. McDonald was brought in from Seattle in order to bolster the heart of Tampa Bay’s defense, a unit peppered with phenomenal athletes who can occasionally be pushed around by more physical blockers. So far McDonald has done nothing to help their defense, and their unit has struggled even as Gerald McCoy and Lavonte David have remained two of the best players in the NFL. He is just one of several defenders who have struggled since leaving Seattle, and at this point I think it is fair to wonder how much the talent around him enhanced the appearance of his performance.

There is a common saying in the NFL: never celebrate a player’s injury. This is reasonable, considering that one injury can cost these players their careers and millions of dollars. But there is also an addendum to that statement that is usually not mentioned: unless the player injures themselves doing something profoundly stupid. Houston did that this weekend, tearing his ACL celebrating a sack late in a blowout loss. That alone wouldn’t be enough for him to make this list, but it isn’t as if he was playing up to expectations prior to his injury. Chicago’s thin defensive front will miss him the rest of the season, but not as much as we would have expected prior to the season. For now, he leaves us with only this.

LB: Derrick Morgan, Tennessee Titans; Brian Cushing, Houston Texans; Vontaze Burfict, Cincinnati Bengals

Morgan has flashed potential for years as a defensive end. The talent is undeniable, and many people hoped that he would be able to put it together as he transitioned to a 3-4 outside linebacker this season. That simply hasn’t happened, as he has managed only one sack through the first eight games. Morgan is now in his fifth year in the league, and it is time to start wondering whether his immense talent will ever turn into quality production.

Over the past two years the Texans defense has had two main modes: dominant and vulnerable. The difference between these always seemed to be the presence of Cushing, a talented linebacker who suffered serious leg injuries in 2012 and 2013. The past few years have shown that it is very possible to come back from leg troubles at full speed, but the sort of repeated and varied injuries Cushing suffered produced plenty of doubt about what sort of player he would be upon his return. So far it looks like the worst fears have been realized. We will have to keep an eye on him as the season goes on, but I think there is a good chance he will never again be anything close to the player he was prior to his injuries.

Burfict has actually been playing perfectly fine so far this year, even if he hasn’t been at the same Pro Bowl level he was last season. He makes this list not because of his play but because of other issues he has had. Throughout his time at Arizona State Burfict was considered a talented headcase, good for at least one personal foul a game. He seemed to have cleaned this up since arriving in Cincinnati, but things have taken a turn this year. He has drawn multiple personal fouls and been caught on video trying to twist the ankles of Cam Newton and Greg Olsen after taking them to the ground. He is a very talented player, but he needs to clean this shit up if he wants to have a sustained NFL career.

CB: Joe Haden, Cleveland Browns; Cortez Allen, Pittsburgh Steelers

Two AFC North cornerbacks on this one, though two coming from very different places. Haden came into the season with a well deserved reputation as one of the best cover guys in the game, and with a massive new contract he was expected to lead a Browns defense ready to take the next step. So far this season the Browns have done much better than expected, but none of that credit goes to their defense. They have been borderline terrible on that side of the ball this season, and a large part of that falls on the shoulders of their supposed best player. Haden has been exposed in coverage repeatedly through the season. He is still a very talented player capable of performing at a high level, but he needs to step it up if they want their early season success to last.

The other disappointing cornerback is another who received a long term deal prior to the season. After a couple up and down seasons, the Steelers signed Allen to a 5 year deal worth $26 million. So far this season, he has been one of the worst cornerbacks in the league. Every team that faces the Steelers targets his side of the field throughout the game, and he likely would have been benched had the injury to Ike Taylor not left them perilously thin on the outside. Allen suffered similar struggles early last season before bouncing back down the stretch, and the Steelers have to hope he is capable of doing so again. If he isn’t, they just wasted a lot of money.

S: Matt Elam, Baltimore Ravens; Jairus Byrd, New Orleans Saints 

I struggled for a while before deciding to put Elam on this list. Elam had a solid rookie season last year, even though he did nothing to suggest he would be a superstar in the league. But at the very least the Ravens had to believe they’d found a player to fill that spot in their defense for the next few years. Instead, Elam has been steadily phased out of their defense as the season has gone along, playing only a third of their defensive snaps two weeks ago. That is not what you want from last year’s first round pick. He is still listed as the starter and will get plenty of opportunities to earn back a primary role, but if he fails to do so the Ravens will be looking at a wasted first round selection.

I know I said I wouldn’t penalize players for being injured, but Byrd belonged on this list before he suffered a season ending meniscus tear. He was supposed to be the piece that put the improving Saints defense into elite company. Instead, he epitomized its utter collapse. He took terrible angles against the run and the pass, and the defense has probably improved since losing their highest paid player. There is nothing he can do to salvage this season, but fortunately he has at least two more before the Saints can even consider trying to offload his massive contract.

Offense and Defense

A quick note before I begin. This is going to get a bit math heavy as I go on. I will be using the statistic known as DVOA in order to measure a team’s offense and defense. DVOA is the favored metric among the football statistical community because it is the most comprehensive means of measuring an offense or a defense. The details are a bit complex, but it essentially judges a team on a play by play basis then adjusts for strength of schedule and league average. Each team is measured based on percentage points varied from the average. On offense you want a positive value, and on defense you want a negative value.

We are through seven weeks of the NFL season, and we are starting to get an idea of what we’re dealing with from each team. Some things have come as expected, and some things have caught us by surprise. Below I’ve listed the top eight and bottom eight in both offensive and defensive DVOA.

OFFENSE				DEFENSE
Top 8		Bottom 8		Top 8		Bottom 8
Broncos	31.4	Cardinals	-11.2	Lions	-24.9	Browns	5.4
Packers	19.9	Lions	-11.3	Broncos	-18.2	Steelers	6.7
Cowboys	16.5	Raiders	-16.0	Dolphins	-11.1	Raiders	7.2
Ravens	16.2	Jets	-16.2	Bills	-10.5	Rams	12.2
Chargers	15.7	Bills	-16.5	Cardinals	-10.0	Panthers	14.0
Seahawks	15.5	Buccaneers	-25.8	Ravens	-8.8	Buccaneers	15.0
Saints	11.8	Jaguars	-28.7	Seahawks	-8.1	Falcons	16.0
Colts	8.7	Vikings	-29.8	Eagles	-6.3	Saints	17.7

Do a quick eye test of the listed teams and compare them to whatever preseason expectations you had. On the offensive side, pretty much everything lines up the way you’d expect it. It’s a small surprise to see the Ravens ranked so high, and a bit shocking to see the Lions so low, but every other team is right about where you would think they belong. The Broncos, Packers, and Saints are good on offense, and the Raiders, Bills, and Jaguars are not.

Then look at the other side of the equation. Immediately you see the Lions sitting as the top rated defense, an outcome that would have been laughable at the beginning of the season. Look down the list and you see other units—the Eagles jump out—who would not have been out of place in the bottom eight coming into the year. A similar phenomenon is seen on the other side, where highly touted units like the Browns, Panthers, and Buccaneers languish among the worst in the league.

(It has not slipped my attention that the bottom four teams in defensive DVOA are all in the NFC South, which has probably displaced the AFC South as the worst division in football. Congratulations to the Titans, Jaguars, Texans, and Colts. Mostly the Colts, who are the only thing saving the division from the abyss.)

At first glimpse it looks as if the defensive side of the ball is more volatile from year to year, and possibly the easiest way for a team to improve. This raises a number of intriguing questions if true, but first we’re going to need more data.

I collected the DVOA statistics from the past eleven years in an attempt to figure out if this is a one year pattern or if it there is something more to it. I performed a simple linear regression of each season compared to the previous year in order to see which had the most consistency from one season to the next. Below are the graphs with the best fit lines plotted atop the data.

 

I didn’t use identical scales on each graph, so it is a bit tricky to make sense of it just by looking at the distribution. But the equations of the regression line in the top right tell a great deal on their own. For those without much statistical background, the R-squared values are a measure of how effectively the line fits the data. A number close to one means a strong correlation, while a number close to zero means very little. These correlations are not strong, but the correlation between year to year offensive DVOA is noticeably higher than the correlation between year to year defensive DVOA.

This raises a number of questions. First and foremost is: why? Is there something about the defensive side of the ball that leads to more inconsistency? Is there perhaps more year to year turnover on defense than there is on offense? Or are injuries more likely on that side of the ball?

I searched for a while, but I wasn’t able to find any sort of convenient database to measure roster turnover. The only option I could think of would be to go through and compare year to year starting units for each and every team, something I don’t have the time or the patience for. Injuries are similarly difficult to track, especially comparing offense to defense. The best I found was this graph put together by Football Outsiders using their statistic “Adjusted Games Lost” to measure the top and bottom eight in the league in injuries on offense and defense in 2013.

Top 8				Bottom 8
Offense	AGL	Defense	AGL	Offense	AGL	Defense	AGL
CHI	6.9	TB	9.9	NYG	82.1	NO	74.4
CIN	12.1	KC	11.2	TB	76.6	NYG	62.5
NO	14.2	PHI	12.2	IND	76.4	CHI	55.7
WAS	16.3	BAL	14.7	GB	59.3	DAL	51.4
KC	16.4	TEN	15.9	PIT	55.8	NE	49.8
DAL	16.6	SEA	17.3	ATL	54.0	DEN	47.5
BUF	18.5	CLE	18.4	OAK	50.7	SF	47.3
PHI	21.4	MIA	19.4	NE	50.1	SD	46.3

Obviously, this isn’t close to a reasonable sample size. But it does suggest that injuries are actually more frequent on the offensive side of the ball. The results are far from conclusive, but they certainly don’t support the idea that defenses are more vulnerable to variation due to a higher rate of injuries.

The one obvious difference between offense and defense is the quarterback. There is no player on the defensive side of the ball that wields the same influence over his unit’s performance as the quarterback does on offense. At first glimpse this would seem to suggest that offense would be more volatile. Individual players are subject to ups and downs during games and seasons, and normally you would expect a unit of eleven equally weighted players to be able to handle that more than a unit highly dependent on a single individual.

There is also a rationalization that can be made for the quarterback as a stabilizing force. If a quarterback’s performance is less erratic than an average player’s, he can absorb a great deal of the volatility of his teammates. Since quarterback is one of the positions least likely to suffer an injury or see turnover during the offseason, it stands to reason that an offense will largely stay the same from year to year provided their quarterback is consistent.

Another possibility, one I lean towards, is that this is simply the nature of a game in which offense dictates almost everything. On each play the offense knows exactly what they need to do before the snap, while the defense is forced to react after the play begins. By allowing the offense to dictate the flow of each play, the defense leaves itself vulnerable to more factors outside its control. Over the long run, this could manifest as the sort of inconsistency we see above.

The one final thing we need to consider is the metric being used. DVOA is the height of current football analytics, but it is still a single number trying to capture the entirety of a team’s performance. Other sports have plenty of experience with how difficult it is to measure defensive production, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the NFL has the same troubles. The uncertainty in the numbers could be caused by the metric itself. I’m less inclined to believe that, if only because the finding that defense is less consistent than offense passes the eye test as well as the statistics test.

The next question raised by this discovery is what it can tell us about trying to forecast a team’s future. The simplest answer is that it is safer to pick a team based on the strength of their offense than the strength of their defense. Teams with an above average offense and a below average defense are more likely to remain the same on offense and regress to the mean on defense than vice versa.

I’ll give a couple examples from this year to back this up. Last year San Diego snuck into the playoffs as the 3^rd ranked offense and 32^nd ranked defense. I picked them to miss the playoffs because I expected their offense to fall back to earth and I saw nothing to expect their defense would improve. But so far this year they are 5^th offensively and 23^rd on defense. The gain in defense was larger than the loss on offense, and they are well on their way to earning a playoff spot.

I was wrong about San Diego, and I was even more wrong about New Orleans. I picked the Saints to reach the Super Bowl because I saw a team that finished last year ranked in the top ten in both offense and defense. I expected their defense to continue playing at the same level, and possibly even improve, but instead they plummeted to last in the league.

There were eight teams last year with an offense ten ranks or more ahead of their defense. Those teams—Denver, New England, San Diego, Philadelphia, Chicago, Green Bay, Atlanta, and Dallas—are a combined 37-19. Reverse that criteria and you find eight teams—Cincinnati, Arizona, St Louis, Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Houston, and the Giants—with a combined record of 26-25-1.

All this evidence seems to point in the same direction. Offense is the more trustworthy quantity in the NFL, and it is what you should build around if you want to find long term success. But let’s say you are an NFL coach of a bad team, and the fans of your team are currently screaming for your head. The owner has made it very clear that your job depends on making the playoffs this season. If it is significantly easier to improve on defense than it is on offense, wouldn’t you be safer to build on that side of the ball?

To answer that question, I plotted each team’s annual change in wins against its change in offensive and defensive DVOA. The plots are shown below.

 Look at those R-squared values. Not only is offense more sustainable in the long run, it has a much stronger correlation with a team’s improvement. Even if your team makes a massive jump on the defensive side of the ball, it likely will not result in as many wins as if they had made a similar jump on offense.

Improving on offense is better for a team in the long term, and it is better for a team in the short term. So there we have it. Hours of data collection and manipulation, along with nearly 2000 words, all to reach the conclusion that has been obvious all along.

In the NFL, offense wins.