Patriots LB Adalius T.- The "T" Does NOT Stand for Tackler

by Richard Hill on Mar 20, 2010 6:33 PM EDT in New England Patriots News

The guys over at ProFootballFocus.com have been running a series about "Tackling Inefficiency"- aka: how good of a tackler a certain player is. The latest update is about the Linebacker position. Oh boy, oh boy, this stat shows exactly why Adalius Thomas is halfway out the door.

The stat is as followed:

(Number of Missed Tackles/[Number of Missed Tackles + Number of Solo Tackles]) x 100 = TIR

Basically, what percentage of tackle attempts does a player miss. Our friend AT finished dead last. By a lot. With 24 tackles and 8 misses, AT has an inefficiency rating of 25%- which means he missed 25% of his tackles last season. And that's with our coaching staff TRYING to take him off the field. The next lowest mark was a notch under 19%, or 18.92%, by Corey Mays of the Kansas City Chiefs. What does that say? Our already weak linebacker core has no space for Adalius Thomas.

Here are the ranks of some other Patriots players and notable linebackers:

[Note: All players must have played on 400+ defensive snaps to qualify for the ranking]

1st (tied): Elvis Dumervil (Denver Broncos), Takeo Spikes (San Francisco 49ers), Tavares Gooden (Baltimore Ravens) all had ratings of 0%, which means they made 100% of their tackles.

5th: Joey Porter (Formerly of the Miami Dolphins, now Arizona Cardinals) - 2.78%, or 97.22% success rate.

29th: Jerod Mayo - 6.58%, or 93.42% success rate.

45th: Gary Guyton - 8.06%, or 91.94% success rate.

102nd: Tully Banta-Cain - 14.55%, or 85.45% success rate.

116th (last): Adalius Thomas - 25%, or 75% success rate.

What's surprising? How poorly TBC did as well. While he did a great job at rushing the QB, this shows that he's more of a liability than we previously imagined. Our team thrived earlier in this decade upon sound fundamentals; let's hope we spend this off-season regaining the basic skills that will push us back to the top.

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I do remember seeing TBC bounce off a few tackles

He’d be on an edge-rush and would overpursue on what turned out to be a rush or a screen pass. He’d turn around and run outside to the flat, only to either bounce off the pursuit tackle because it was at a difficult angle, or he’d have to try to make a hand-grab on an already moving HB or TE running a flat when they’re flat-out faster than him. I must’ve seen that 3 or 4 times; he’s just not the best edge-sealer around, unfortunately. I’d imagine they count for quite a few of his missed-tackle stats.

Token southern hemisphere guy - 14,688km from Foxboro. That's 9128 miles, for you heathens.

by Comedic.Sans on Mar 20, 2010 6:42 PM EDT reply actions

Just briefly looking at some other numbers...

…it appears that Wilfork might be at the bottom of the D-Line list as well.

by Richard Hill on Mar 20, 2010 6:51 PM EDT up reply actions

Where are the other 3-4 NTs?

I always thought they were bound to “miss” tackles because they were fighting off double-teams pretty much constantly, and only the particularly good/big NTs would be able to take on two blockers and get an arm on a HB scampering through. In some ways the very fact he laid an arm on a guy shows he’s pretty good, not that he’s bad.

Token southern hemisphere guy - 14,688km from Foxboro. That's 9128 miles, for you heathens.

by Comedic.Sans on Mar 20, 2010 6:58 PM EDT up reply actions

Yeah, I didn't rank Wilfork against other NTs...

…just against other Pats, where he led the D-Line in missed tackles.

Just checked and he led 3-4 NTs in missed tackles.

by Richard Hill on Mar 20, 2010 7:03 PM EDT up reply actions

Were the 3-4 guys worse than 4-3 DTs overall?

Token southern hemisphere guy - 14,688km from Foxboro. That's 9128 miles, for you heathens.

by Comedic.Sans on Mar 20, 2010 7:19 PM EDT up reply actions

yes

by patriotguy on Mar 20, 2010 7:49 PM EDT up reply actions

but only because they have different roles to play.

by patriotguy on Mar 20, 2010 7:49 PM EDT up reply actions

Agreed

It’s pretty easy to miss a tackle when you have blockers holding each of your arms on every play.

by RSNexile on Mar 20, 2010 7:17 PM EDT up reply actions

Useful stat?

Perhaps to some degree, but I’m left wondering about how being around the ball factors in to the equation. As a defender, if you realize you’re probably not going to make a tackle, and give up, you will not be discredited with a missed tackle. However, if you hustle and at least get a piece of the guy and some one else polishes him off, you are credited with a missed tackle, however, it wasn’t necessarily a poor play on your part.

I think the pats front office has a way of rating a guy on a plus, minus, equal system, whereas every player is rated on every play as to whether they made a good play, whether they just did their job or were a non-factor, or whether they made a bad play. Evaluating players based on this system would seem to make more sense. I would guess that AD would rank pretty low based on these ratings just having watched the games.

by amerrill on Mar 20, 2010 11:31 PM EDT reply actions

Perhaps to some extent

but then you ‘cure’ those debatable missed tackles by making two or three or a dozen successful stops. AD only made 24 tackles on the season, which is his own fault – he had every opportunity to be an every-down starting OLB and blew it through complaining and lack of motivation. He might have a legitimate gripe that the D Co-ordinator changed schemes on him, but then Guyton and Mayo faced the same change and did pretty well in racking up tackles.

Token southern hemisphere guy - 14,688km from Foxboro. That's 9128 miles, for you heathens.

by Comedic.Sans on Mar 21, 2010 4:37 AM EDT up reply actions

not defending the guy

he sucked something awful last year. It’s just more complicated than tackle/missed tackle. Another factor missed in that equation is the ability to eat up blockers.

Let’s hope they pick up Kindle or Graham in the draft

by amerrill on Mar 21, 2010 10:27 AM EDT up reply actions

Sure -- that would still be strong evidence AT stinks

As others have noted, he only had 24 tackles all year and missed another 8. That means he definitely wasn’t hustling to the ball — he was only around the ball 32 times! That’s an ok total if you’re only on the field for a 15-20 plays a game, but he was supposed to be an every-down player.

The point of the metric is what the player does when he has an opportunity to make a tackle. Is it a perfect measure? Of course not, but it’s a lot harder to quantify defensive quality than offense — baseball, basketball, and hockey have the same problem. If you consider the Tackling Inefficiency rating as nothing more than a measure of tackling quality, I think it does exactly what it’s supposed to do for a player like AT — it shows that he’s awful.

by RSNexile on Mar 21, 2010 11:02 AM EDT up reply actions