I Thought Geathers Kinda Sucked, Nerds Beg to Differ

The nerds who dwell in their nerdery with their nerd calculators (Football Outsiders) penned this recent article on QB Hurries, basically a junior varsity version of the Sack.  Sacks grab attention but hurries can be just as influential, especially since they are much more numerous than sacks. 

How much more numerous, you ask?  Well, as part of the FO Game Charting Project (where they literally hire folks to rewatch every play of every game and hopefully record better and more accurate statistics), FO found that last season there were 3,268 hurries.  That is about 3 times the number of sacks and just over twice the number of QB hits (QB knocked down but not sacked).  FO found that the average pass play last year yielded 6.2 yards but that when hurried the average pass play fell to just 5 yards, about a 20% drop.  And I'm sure the effect would be greater if you compared it to the average pass play when the QB was not hurried at all.

Now to my eyes, our defense line still does not provide as much pressure as I'd like.  And in particular, I always thought Geathers seemed like a culprit for this.  But it appears my lyin' eyes dun fooled me again, the FO guys rank Geathers in the top 15 in hurries.  But more importantly, they note that Geathers ranked 9th highest in the percentage of hurries he accounted for on his entire team (23.3% of all hurries by the Bengals) and 2nd highest in ratio of hurries compared to the next closest guy (242% more hurries than our number 2 guy).  The implication here is that Geathers had little help when pressuring the QB.  As is obvious from the FO tables, the leaders in hurries tend to come in pairs (think Freeney and Mathis, or Jared Allen and Ray Edwards) so help really matters.

Geathers played without Odom opposite him most of the season.  Our next closest guy in hurries was actually Michael Johnson, which a) speaks highly for his potential given he was a rookie with limited playing time - and Zims situational use of him - and b) speaks poorly to the rest of the defense's ability to get to the passer.

Anyway, for a pessimistic guy like myself this article mostly provided a nice little boost to my confidence for a unit I believe is a relative weakness (assuming, of course, their charting project accurately captures Geathers' performance).  To recap:

1. Geathers may be better than I thought
2. Having Odom back to provide help may  matter more than I thought
3. There is evidence Michael Johnson may actually realize his freak potential

We face some nasty passing offenses this year.  Nothing will be more important to the Bengals' success than pressuring the opposing QB.

Update:  I must say though, Justin Smith ranks pretty damn high according to these stats too and I always thought he was not that great a player.  Certainly good, but overrated and overpaid.  So perhaps I will tone down my enthusiasm.

Update 2:  funny, Geoff Hoblaw's Hobblog has some stuff up on Geathers including this quote:  "When it comes to team stats, that’s another story because it is the ultimate team game. You can’t look up stats for a guy like Bengals left end Robert Geathers and really know if he had a good year or a bad year, or appreciate his value like you can find on the back of a baseball card."  Translation:  our front office doesn't use data.  Look, football is harder to measure than baseball, but you should still try to measure things that you can, like hurries.

Comments

[Artrell]

You're right about one thing: MJ is a freak. Sounds like he's been playing a lot of OLB in OTAs. High hopes for that guy.

Pressure on the QB will be essential and it seems like we have the pieces in place. Geathers is solid, maybe he hasn't had a real breakout year, but he's solid. He's only 27, maybe this year's his year finally. Add Odom, Fanene & Dunlap to Geathers and the aforementioned MJ, and you've got some reasonable serious talent and what seems like reasonable depth.

Not as sure on interior D-Line behind Tank & Peko.

[Major Payne]

First of all, how do I get one of those jobs watching games and scoring plays for FO? I WANT THAT JOB!! Please don't tell me that they've outsourced it to some telemarketing/help desk reject in India.

As for Geathers, I thought the same thing. His name hardly ever gets called by Lap or whatever goofball CBS sends to call the game (ie Gus Johnson). So it is easy to perceive him as pretty much just disappearing on most plays. Perhaps that isn't a fair evaluation, as FO seems to indicate. I can't say how much he does things that never appear on a stat sheet, like keeping runs inside or forcing a QB to his check down because RG is bearing down.

It is easy to view a hurry as failed sack because we often don't know what the offense wanted to do. If the QB chucks the ball to a bench, then we know. But if he checks down to a safety outlet, then we only know what happens, not that they had planned a 35 yard bomb down the right sideline but had to settle for a 5 yard outlet to the RB.

Believe me, I'll take a hurry any time I can get it, because it increases the odds of a mistake by the QB. But better teams also have better QBs who know how to find that outlet guy, and they have better guys to go to. (Manning isn't checking down to Dan Coats.) So maybe I do need to raise my opinion of Geathers a little based on this info, but it doesn't change all that much. I still want to see DEs putting QBs on the ground.

Who knows, maybe MJ will step up enough that he can give Geathers more rest and that help him out.

[Sleeping With Bieniemy]

Sorry Major - don't think it's a paying gig. It's done by volunteers I believe. Sounds like a great job, right?

[TheCarlPickensClause]

Michael Johnson = Peter Boulware.

[Major Payne]

Damn. I guess the dream of pulling down $120K to watch football all day goes back on ice.