Breakdowns

3/20/22

7 min read

The More You Can Do: Part 2

By Charles Brensinger

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Charles Brensinger worked in the NFL in various Personnel Department roles for nearly a decade. Most recently, he served as a Pro Scout for the Detroit Lions from 2016-2020.

In this installment of "The More You Can Do," I'll look again at the individual player level to investigate who are the most versatile players in the NFL, based on the type of defender that is deployed to combat them as a receiver in the passing game. To do this, I'll examine which players in the league at RB, FB, and TE are most often defended (identified by PFF primary coverage defender) by non-traditional defenders (DC or DS), which may indicate that the player has a non-traditional skill-set, at least as pertains to the passing game.

As in the previous article, garbage time was removed from the sample to account for extreme in-game situations, which require a defense to defend the situation as opposed to the personnel.

TE vs DC/DS

• 46 players with 100+ receiving snaps covered by a DC or DS on pass plays

The More You Can Do Part II: TE Table 1

The More You Can Do Part II: TE Table 2

When we combine the lists above with the tables from "The More You Can Do: Part 1," we can again identify players who display versatility in both their alignment and skill set, and as a result the way the defense chooses to defend them.

One thing that sticks out in regard the TE tiers below is that intuitively, one would probably consider many of the Tier 3 players to be more versatile players than those who appear in Tier 2 and an argument could even be made that certainly players in Tier 3 are even more versatile than those found in Tier 1.

The commonality between the Tier 3 players is that, while they may not have appeared on the lists that place an emphasis on the number of snaps, they did show up in each instance on the lists that emphasized PFF grade in those specific situations. This means that although they might not been at the top of the league in terms of snaps in certain alignments or when covered by a certain position, they did meet the minimum threshold in that regard and were high producers from a grade standpoint.

HB vs DC/DS

• 38 players with 100+ receiving snaps covered by a DC or DS on pass plays

The More You Can Do Part II: HB Table 1

The More You Can Do Part II: HB Table 2

The first chart reflects HBs with 100+ receiving snaps when covered by a DB and is sorted by number of DB coverage snaps. The second chart follows the same criteria, but is sorted by PFF receiving grade. While the first chart is important, as it identifies which HBs draw special attention from the defense most often, we'll focus on chart No. 2, which puts more emphasis on how the player is able to produce despite receiving special attention. It's worth noting that Darrell Williams and Najee Harris (highlighted in bold) are the only players present on both lists, which for the purpose of this study qualifies as a higher level of versatility.

It's not a perfect system, but when we combine the tables above with the tables from "The More You Can Do Part 1," we can identify players who display versatility in both their alignment and skill set and tier them based on the aggregate of how many times their names appear on each of the four tables.

FB vs DC/DS

• 13 players with 10+ receiving snaps covered by a DC or DS on pass plays

The More You Can Do Part II: FB Table 1

The More You Can Do Part II: FB Table 2

Unlike the HB list, the overwhelming majority of the players found on FB Table #1 are also present on FB Table #2, although Kyle Juszczyk (49ers), Patrick Ricard (Ravens), and CJ Ham (Vikings) are the only players that really see significant snaps covered by a DB.

When we combine the lists above with the lists from The More You Can Do Part 1, we can again identify players who appeared most frequently, displaying versatility in both their alignment and skill set, and as a result the way the defense reacts and chooses to counter act them specifically with the types of players they deploy in primary coverage.