A Very Falcoholic Discussion: Curtis Lofton

When I did my first set of cumulative numbers for the “Digging Deeper” thing, he had good, but not great numbers early (first 3 games). By the way, I’m going to give another update soon – I promise. Just from watching and seeing some of the recent weekly numbers, I feel like he’s stepped it up a notch. Some of the plays that impress me the most are ones that have little impact on the numbers (a huge jarring hit on a RB – just goes down as any other tackle), or ones that actually make his numbers look worse (covering a TE 20 yards downfield; chasing somebody down sideline-to-sideline for a big gain after somebody else missed a tackle).

I’m going to continue doing the weekly breakdowns – because it’s fun, and because I want to check for myself what’s happening out there – but I found a resource that is potentially much much MUCH better than anything I’ve been doing to grade individual performances. It’s called Pro Football Focus (I can’t believe I’ve never seen them before). They grade every player on every play – and when I found the site yesterday, they had already posted info from the Redskins game. They rate Curtis Lofton as the #6 MLB/ILB in the NFL.

I’ll have to check it out a little closer to see how they’re grading the guys, but at least initially, they seem to jibe with my numbers:

A) They rank the CB’s performance the same way I had them early: #1 Brent Grimes, #2 Chris Houston, #3 Brian Williams
B) They have Justin Blaylock as the weak link on the O-Line
C) They show Mike Peterson starting off strong, then really dropping off the last few weeks

One area I definitely have a problem with right now is rating QB’s. Somehow, they have Aaron Rogers ranked #1 so far, with Peyton Manning and Drew Brees right behind. All I can figure is that they’re crediting his sacks all as the fault of the O-Line. He’s a great passer, but he holds on to the ball too long, and allows some of those sacks.

Anyway, I’m definitely going to be using this site in some of my analysis going forward – it looks like a tremendous resource. Heck, they even have a Player Participation Log to show how many snaps everybody was playing (and where they were lined up). For instance, I knew they were using Tye Hill more, but did you know that Grimes only got 6 snaps against the Redskins? Or that Ovie was in for 23% of the Offensive snaps, with 11 run plays and 3 pass plays (2 running routes; 1 as a blocker)? Holy crap, my head is going to explode!