Wrapping up our look at returning players and new veterans on defense, today we’re going to explore stopping the run.
This can be difficult to quantify, because much of what goes into run stopping doesn’t get measured. When Eddie Goldman holds his own against two blockers, he frees up a linebacker to make the tackle, but nothing Goldman did there shows up on a stat sheet. So I want to be clear from the start that this is not going to be a perfect science, and I make no claims that it is.
However, Pro Football Focus (PFF) does track some data that can give us an idea of how often a defender is directly involved in stopping a run play.