Seth Walder

August 1 bump

He usually is. Down year for him in PRWR!

I know the full year is somewhere but this should be close enough: this one is through Week 17 of that year.

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1. Calais Campbell can play until he's 60

2. Moro Ojomo is getting that Milton Williams double-team rate in 2025 next to Jalen Carter

Apropos of nothing other than realizing I never tweeted the defensive tackle win rate / double team chart from the 2024 season (h/t to @PaulKuharskyNFL for reminding me) -- here it is!

Chris Jones, of course, exactly where you'd expect him.

Five hypothetical training camp trades involving Kayvon Thibodeaux, Dontayvion Wicks and more: www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

Five NFL trades that make too much sense: Which teams should make a deal during training camps? As NFL teams look to finalize their 2025 rosters, Seth Walder proposes hypothetical trades that could help all sides involved.

Five trade ideas that make sense for both (or in one case, all three!) teams: www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

back to my roots today

Some Lions analytics updates here via NFL Nation Lions writer Eric Woodyard, including Caio Brighenti being promoted to director.

The Panthers hired Benjamin Brown as their Director of Data Science, per his LinkedIn and confirming sources.

Brown joins the Panthers from PENN Entertainment where he was the NFL Data Science Manager. He previously worked for SumerSports and PFF.

Training camp previews and roster projections for every team, from NFL Nation: www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

NFL roster rankings: @mikeclaynfl.bsky.social, @aaronschatz.com and I stacked every team from 1-32 and wrote about it.

www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

i like how every year liam eichenberg inches his way right across the offensive line

thank you! agree, cool to see how much of an outlier he is.

interesting thought! I can take a look.

Check out this alignment!!

Alas

great point again! I'm going to investigate this one.

That's a good thought for sure.

I don't have 3/5/7 drop data I don't *think* so would be somewhat tricky but not un-doable. Interesting thought definitely.

I like that, good idea!

This analysis looked at pass plays only, with play action filtered out. All data was from 2024, by the way, min. 250 qualifying plays.

Why medians? Because the timing of the snap data is far from perfect. If that's off it can affect these measurements. Median ignores impact of outliers.

Some details: starting depth here is measured as the vertical distance between the tackle and center on that play. Each player’s measurement is based on the midpoint between their shoulders. So while the starting depth is not literally the distance to the LOS, it functions in same way.

This was pretty surprising to me and I’m very open to thoughts on if there’s something I’m not thinking about in measuring here.

Same deal looking at starting and total depth.

OK now the disappointing part. Does this matter? As a stylistic descriptor, sure. It’s interesting to see the differences.
But do players that get big jumps have better results than those without? Not compared to pass block win rate last year. If anything there’s a very light negative correlation.

And then here is median total depth at 0.5 seconds (essentially alignment plus jump).

As you can see: starting point is much more important here, which is why Taylor is deepest at 0.5s and Dawkins is shallowest, despite the latter’s strong jump.

Here's an example of a big Moton jump play.

What about jump? I’m defining this as the vertical distance covered from snap to 0.5 seconds. No one higher than Taylor Moton.

Dawkins shows up again here, getting a big jump from that shallow starting point.

(Ben had some great insight on why Dawkins plays that way, and I’ll let him add if he'd like)

The highest median depth tackle is exactly a 0% surprise: Jawaan Taylor (RT in first image).

On the other end of the spectrum Dion Dawkins (LT in second image) has the shallowest starting depth of anyone – by far.

A table showing the 10 tackles with the deepest starting alignment on pass plays in 2024. Jawaan Taylor is first.

A table showing the 10 tackles with the shallowest starting alignment on pass plays in 2024. Dion Dawkins is first.

Asked @benjaminsolak.bsky.social this week, what’s something you want quantified? His response: tackle depth and jump in pass protection. Great one. So got to work with NGS data. Let’s take a look.

Here’s the deepest and shallowest starting depth for tackles at time of snap.