When it comes to some of the players you mentioned, specifically the pass rushers, I agree. If a player can beat pass blocks 1 on 1, he can play in any scheme. For my money, being able to generate a pass rush without blitzing is the most valuable skill set in football outside of quality QB play.
Where we disagree in regards to Shelton specifically is how much actual impact a non-pass rushing DT really has. A run stuffing, no pass rush DT is the type of specialist that is becoming more and more obsolete as the NFL continues to change.
Literally every single team in the NFL passed more than they ran in 2017. We're rapidly approaching a point where a "two down" player is actually a "1.5 down" player and before long they might only be a "1 down" player.
Shelton is very good at one specific thing, but he played less than 50% of the snaps for a reason.
This is fair. At the same time, this problem existed when he was drafted. Everyone saw where the league was trending. Most of his pass rushing in college came from bull rushing centers that wouldn't even get camp invites. But different regime.
I still think Shelton as a 1 technique in a 4-3 has value. How much is the debate. Yes he only produced in a specific situation and doing a specific thing. That's because he is a specialist. He was at least good at his one task.
I think a lot is being made about snap count, but defensive lines rotating and specialists isn't something new.
Last year there were 249 defensive linemen that played at least 100 defensive snaps.
Of those 249 only 49 played MORE than 60% of their team's defensive snaps. 19.7% of defensive linemen. The Browns had 2.. Coley at 61.5% and Nassib at 60.3%.
Unfortunately football outsiders data uses each team's entire amount of snaps played instead of just those snaps the teams played in games they were active, but Shelton also only played 14 games last season so the 44% number is actually biased down based on two games missed. On
average the Browns defense played 67 snaps per game so an
estimate adjusted snap% for Shelton based on missing 2 games would put him at 50.3% of snaps. I really think Football Outsiders data is misleading because of this which almost makes me want to just stop this analysis because I don't have the time to adjust for games missed, but I will lay out a few more numbers but please keep in mind these statistics are biased
downward for any player who missed games (for instance, Garrett was only at 48.5% but this is largely impacted by injuries)
Anyway,
84/249 DL played at least 50% of their teams' snaps last season. Slightly over 1/3 of guys (33.7%).
143/249 DL played
less percentage of snaps than Shelton last season. Over half of the DL logging at least 100 defensive snaps. (57.4%)
125/249 (50.2%) played less than 40% of snaps
Am I going to lose sleep over Shelton being gone? No. It isn't the end of the world. But using the snap count argument against him ignores that the NFL is basically a DL by committee with only elite defensive linemen logging a anywhere close to 100% of defensive snaps.
Of interest, Poe logged 74.6% of defensive snaps last year. If we sign Poe I will be very happy and I think that would be a big upgrade to Shelton. I guess my final thoughts on this trade depend on what is done in free agency.
One last data disclaimer. Football Outsiders doesn't split their data by DE/DT/NT. DEs in the data likely inflates all of the numbers above, but I don't have time to do a manual split.
Just something to keep in mind when talking about our DL in the future. The NFL has embraced a DL by committee it seems.
@natedagg tagging you because I’m proud of my data disclosures
