PFF Data Study: Coverage vs. Pass Rush

PFF Data Study: Coverage vs. Pass Rush

BY ERIC EAGER AND GEORGE CHAHROURI • MAY 7, 2019

We are now fully into the dull days of football, with free agency and the NFL draft fully in the rearview mirror. As such, it is high time to discuss some topics that have been on our collective minds while our favorite teams have made decisions about where to allocate capital. For example, half of the players in the first 10 picks of last month’s draft were defensive linemen, while it took until Pick 21 for a player from the secondary to be chosen, and it took until Pick 30 for a team to pick a cornerback. The Kansas City Chiefs decided to trade their first-round pick and a 2020 second-round pick to the Seattle Seahawks for Frank Clark, and then give him a five-year, $105-million deal. The Chiefs internally felt that Clark was worth the second-biggest contract among edge defenders, while many analysts, including us, were less bullish on the move, in our case because we value coverage very much relative to pass rush.

Really?

Coverage over pass rush? This seems to upend everything we think we know about football. For example, the league’s last defensive player to win league MVP, Giants Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, generated 20.5 sacks and propelled the 1986 Giants to a Super Bowl title the very year I was born. His crushing hits literally ended the careers of quarterbacks like Joe Theismann and struck fear in the eyes of both opposing players and fans. I don’t know about you, but for every Deion Sanders or Darrelle Revis, I seemingly remember the exploits of four or five elite pass rushers while growing up watching football.

Our perception that pass rush is king on defense is due to a few factors. First, the pass rush absolutely does affect the offense. In any measure, pass rush decreases not only the effectiveness of an offense but also our ability to reliably predict they and their quarterback’s effectiveness.

Second, the game has changed in substantial ways since many of us started viewing it. During the PFF era (2006-present) alone, first-down passes have increased from 47% of plays to almost 52% of plays. Time to throw and play- action percentages have gone down and up during this stretch, respectively, in many ways mitigating the effect that the pass rush can have on an offense. Passing plays are no longer just third-and-long, mano y mano battles between pass rushers and the offensive linemen trying to block them long enough for the quarterback to execute a deep drop and a 10-plus-yard completion.

Lastly, the way the game is broadcast has a big effect on the way we perceive the relationship between coverage and pass rush. Before that proliferation of All-22, we only saw the relationship between coverage and pressure in one direction – the pass rush affecting the integrity of a quarterback’s delivery and, in turn, enhancing the coverage on the back end. We are less inclined to view the other direction as equally meaningful – the one where the quarterback has to go to his second read gives the pass rush more time to get home, often further helping coverage.

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