Somewhat Surprising Darren Howard Stat

[UPDATE:  Glad I posted this today.  Darren Howard just got cut.  The dead wood -- even the semi-dead wood -- is being hacked.

UPDATE #2 (#3?):  Kevin Curtis too, so says Noah quoting Adam Schefter.  I almost made a Curtis joke in the first update, but decided I could save that for tomorrow.  Gotta strike while the iron is hot.

I'm not sure this Tony Hunt kid has a future in the NFL.]

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Thanks to ProFootballFocus, we no longer have to wait until Football Outsiders publishes its book in July to get a better sense of how effective our defensive linemen were at rushing the passer.  We've got the numbers right here:

 

Looks kind of how we expect.  Trent Cole is the man, Juqua is decent and Howard is the team's third-best pass rusher.  It's numbers like these that suggest cutting Howard is a bad idea.

But lets dig a little deeper.  ProFootballFocus also gives us the number of snaps each player rushed the passer (as opposed to playing the run).  What if we take the numbers above and put them into percentage terms, to see how effective each guy was when he actually had the opportunity to be on the field [UPDATE:  Fixed the table.  Last column was messed up]:

 

Let's start by putting out a couple caveats:  

1. You can't directly compare a pass rush specialist like Darren Howard to a two-down guy like Bunkley.  Howard is free to guess pass pretty much every time, while Bunk needs to worry about the run first.
2. The number of snaps each guy gets tells us something in and of itself.  We can't just assume Chris Clemons would have been as effective as Trent Cole if only they'd quadrupled his playing time.

With that said, hmmm ......  

Abiamiri may not have the sack stats, but he's doing something right.  And Darren Howard's cumulative numbers suddenly look less impressive when you realize he was on the field a lot more than the other situational guys.

And seriously, Antonio Dixon?  Is he really the best pass rusher of the "true" DTs on this roster?  That's amazing, if true.  (And not great news for Trevor Laws.)

As for Howard, those pressure / sack statistics go back to something we talked about last year when PFP came out:

With that said, those aren't remotely the scariest numbers in that table.  This one is:

Player .......... Sack .. Hurry
Darren Howard ... 10.0 .... 4

That is, quite simply, an unsustainable ratio.  I'll have to do some more data collection to put that in better context, but what it means is that Howard was converting an insanely high percentage of his pressure opportunities into actual sacks.  That's a bit like a baseball player having an unreasonably high batting average on balls in play.  You're going to get regression to the mean the next year.

Yep, pretty much.

Does this mean I think we should dump Howard?  No, it doesn't.  VA still needs to prove he can stay on the field and newcomer Tapp hasn't proved anything here yet, notwithstanding this note Sam dug up yesterday from Lombardi at NFP:

"Tapp has 18 career sacks and needs to be matched up against the right player to be effective. Watching Tapp play, I always felt he was an “in-between” player, which means his quickness was best inside against guards, but he played outside at end. His style of play fits the Eagles’ on-the-move style of defense, and I’m sure the Eagles feel he can be as effective as Juqua Parker has been for them."

Let's see how this all plays out for a year.  If Tapp can be the new Howard, then move on next year.

In the meantime, at the rate we're shedding salary to afford Kolb's massive new bonus, it's not like he's an unaffordable luxury.