As I was trolling D.J. Reader over the weekend I found a nice graphic on his Instagram page that got me excited. He was the top rated run stop defender when his defense was setup in a run defense scheme. Now that is pretty specific but I took a look at the list and immediately went to the 2019 stat machine. Here is the graphic
I took a look at this list and I thought, oh my god this is an immediate game changer for our rush defense. I still think that because D.J. Reader is one of the best, however there are teams on there with multiple names. Green Bay, LA Rams and the Dolphins have two players a piece and the Redskins have a whopping three. So does that translate into the best rush defense?
I did not look at this from a total yards perspective because some divisions just like to run. YPC is probably the best number to look at to see if it directly translates. Green Bay (25th), LA Rams (9th), Dolphins (23rd) and finally Washington (24th) did not translate to top 5 run stopping defenses. If you were curious the Bengals were 26th. The Buccaneers turned in the lowest YPC and they did not have a top-15 player.
The takeaway here is that one player does not make a four-man line. It certainly needs help from linebackers and safety support in the box. Stats/graphics like this can be misleading and it takes a village to put pressure on the pass when the run is stopped. Is this an indictment on Reader, heck no! I couldn’t be happier that we signed him…but it is going to take Dunlap, Atkins, Hubbard, Pratt, Bynes and Wilson to be the 2019 Buccaneers.