EDGE Free Agents

[rcon14]

I know we have a general FA thread, but I figured this would be worthy of its own post. If there is interest I will update it as guys get cut/people ask for stuff and whatnot. The purpose of this touches on free agency discussion of guys GB would target. Now note, the purpose of this post is NOT to say "Green Bay will not sign any EDGE or consider any EDGE that does not fit this profile." This is just to say that these are generally the types of players that GB has targeted for the EDGE position throughout the Thompson era. The reason I am using the Thompson is era is three-fold a) Gutekunst has had one off-season in which he only added one EDGE (who is a superstar athlete, but taken in the 7th round) b) Thompson era gives us a larger sample c) Gutekunst is a Thompson disciple and largely followed his thresholds in the 2018 NFL Draft (aside from Cole Madison). So without further adieu, let's explain the ground rules...

What are these scores?

I'm glad you asked. So there are five different scores, and these aren't even my formulas. It was actually on this forum about eight years ago. Due to rules about not commenting on former posters I'm not going to go any further, but if you really want to inquire, you can find your way there through some google searches. Anyways, the purpose of these formulas is to contextualize how good an EDGE player is from an athletic perspective while, and this is the very important part, taking into account their size. A 7.1 3-cone and 240 lbs is a lot different than at 310 lbs. For data purposes, I have every height, weight, 40, vertical, broad, 3 cone, 20 yard shuttle, and 10 yard split for every EDGE/OLB/DE that participated going back ten years.

So the scores are: Mass, Power, Speed 40, Speed 10, Agility, and Twitch

Mass is just weight/height, pretty simple

Power uses their explosive jumping scores to look at how good they are at creating power

Speed 40 tests their speed using their 40 time

Speed 10 uses their 10-yard split to do so (imo this one is probably more important for the EDGE position)

Agility uses their 3-cone score

Twitch uses both their 3-cone and shuttle scores to try and determine how "twitchy" an athlete they are

For all of the scores (aside from Mass, which is more of a descriptor), the higher the number the better, aside from Twitch, where lower is better.

So what are GB's thresholds?

Another good question... So let's look

Let's walk through each of the players and what these metrics can tell us...

Nick Perry: Decently agile but not super twitchy, Perry's power score is very strong, which plays on tape, or at least it did before his body fell apart. Guys with this type of profile like to convert speed to power and win through the OT.

Clay Matthews: Very agile, and insanely twitchy. This isn't surprising. Prime Clay was a freak of nature with his COD and ability to explode around OT both rushing the passer and stopping the run.

Kyler Fackrell: Yeah he was just a terrible athlete. Even with the big sack #s this year, I'm not sold on him at all. Seem to be the beneficiary of a lot of Pettine blitzes.

Vince Biegel: If not for his foot injuries sapping his athleticism, I think he would've been a good one. Kind of like a discount Clay in terms of his burst and bend. Would have probably made for a decent EDGE2. God dang f****** foot injuries.

Carl Bradford: I included him because he was classified as an OLB, so he's in my dataset. He never really found a position in the NFL though.

Now onto the thresholds. A quick glance gets you .89 power, Agility > 1 (Bradford was an OBLB and Fackrell just throws everything way off), Speed 10 of -.79 or better, and the Twitch score doesn't seem to have a lot of bearing. To contextualize these thresholds for percentiles, they're looking for better than 34th percentile Power, 62nd percentile Agility, 50th percentile Speed 10. Now obviously, there isn't just one type of EDGE. For example, both Nick Perry and Clay Matthews were stand-out athletes, but for different reasons. Like I said earlier, this isn't designed to be the be-all-end-all, but to provide some context for what GB has generally looked for in the past, so we can use it going forward.

Alright, so who clears the thresholds?

So to do this I did a search of all the guys that are EDGE that are of any real value (I'm not including guys to be 4th EDGE, if you have a particular request, leave a comment and I'll run it) and checked their threshold status. The list below is the results...

The players that clear all of the thresholds are marked in green, the ones that fail all or fail one particular one spectacularly are in red. Players that are one away or are missing information (basically John Simon's 10-split) are marked in yellow. Some notes about the guys in red: It would mean GB is deviating heavily from what they normally go with in an EDGE. Yellow would be allowable and Green would be their ideal athletic profile.

Again, nothing here is saying remove Trey Flowers or Za'Darius Smith from your mocks, but at least consider it, I guess.

[MacReady]

Love it, thank you.  Now please be sure to do this for draft prospects after the combine.

 

[rcon14]

1 minute ago, Outpost31 said:

Love it, thank you.  Now please be sure to do this for draft prospects after the combine.

 

I'm planning on having it done within a few days of it finishing.

[Redt]

Not sure the TT model applies now, Gute didn't follow it at CB with Alexander and he was a great addition. Also, Capers is no longer the DC and I think we are looking at a different paradigm. I get all the measurable stuff, but I prefer players that produce on the field and ultimately couldn't care less how they test within reason, obviously we wouldn't want a WR who runs a 5.0 40.

[rcon14]

Just now, Redt said:

Not sure the TT model applies now, Gute didn't follow it at CB with Alexander and he was a great addition. Also, Capers is no longer the DC and I think we are looking at a different paradigm. I get all the measurable stuff, but I prefer players that produce on the field and ultimately couldn't care less how they test within reason, obviously we wouldn't want a WR who runs a 5.0 40.

Jaire was 1/2 inch shorter than any CB TT had drafted. This is true. It's also true that Jaire knocked it out of the park on every available metric. Also, the Capers DC thing doesn't really matter imo. I was actually more lenient with the thresholds here that I probably should have been for the very purpose of leaving some openness to a post-Capers/post-TT world.

[vegas492]

Just so I'm clear, you are using the stats based on their past combine performance, right?

So, if say someone older, like Brandon Graham, is on there and has aged...he may not fit the metric anymore, but he did when at the Combine?

I hate that this makes me like Barr.

[incognito_man]

i think i solved the "where's waldo" puzzle, guys

[Redt]

On second thought the metric used on Packer players resulted in one decent player, time to revise.

[Shanedorf]

1 hour ago, rcon14 said:

Also, the Capers DC thing doesn't really matter imo. I was actually more lenient with the thresholds here that I probably should have been for the very purpose of leaving some openness to a post-Capers/post-TT world.

Here's a quote from Das Gute shortly after Pettine arrived last year:

“Back then, we were going from a 4-3 to a 3-4, and quite frankly, at that time, there wasn’t as much sub-packaging back then (as there is now),” said Gutekunst. "Now, the way (Pettine) may use percentages and different packages on the field, (that) may change a little bit. But the pieces, I don’t think they’re changing as significantly as they did back in 2009.”

[Sasquatch]

@rcon14 thanks for this information.  In your next version, it’d be sweet if you could add a column for “age” if it’s not too much trouble.  Thanks again for this data.

[rcon14]

1 hour ago, Sasquatch said:

@rcon14 thanks for this information.  In your next version, it’d be sweet if you could add a column for “age” if it’s not too much trouble.  Thanks again for this data.

In terms of how old they were when they were drafted?

[rcon14]

3 hours ago, vegas492 said:

Just so I'm clear, you are using the stats based on their past combine performance, right?

So, if say someone older, like Brandon Graham, is on there and has aged...he may not fit the metric anymore, but he did when at the Combine?

I hate that this makes me like Barr.

Correct. They never run it again.

[incognito_man]

2 minutes ago, rcon14 said:

In terms of how old they were when they were drafted?

yes but in modified Julian dates so it's easy to subtract

[rcon14]

2 hours ago, Redt said:

On second thought the metric used on Packer players resulted in one decent player, time to revise.

I don't think that's fair. Perry was very good and now his body doesn't work anymore. So two first round picks: Two hits. You can't expect anything from mid-late round EDGEs generally.

[Arthur Penske]

Barr is a freak athlete, aye?