FanPost

How Bad the Giants' DL Is (or Isn't) in 2021

The Giants' poor play on defense has been a big reason, probably the biggest reason, for our current 1-4 record. No pass rush, can't get off the field on 3rd down, wide-open receivers, gashed in the running game, and TDs given up every week before the end of the first half or end of the game or both.

When fans think about the difference between the under-performing 2021 D and over-achieving 2020 D that was thought to be only a player or two away from being a shutdown D, two inter-twined things tend to come to mind: The big contract given to Leonard Williams and his failure to dominate this year, and the release of Dalvin Tomlinson because we couldn't pay both of them.

This post is a look at what the numbers have to say about these questions. Here is a comparison of Leonard Williams’ performance this year to other highly paid DLs (some DEs, some DTs, since LW plays some of both), to his own 2020 performance through 5 games, to other members of the Giants’ DL, and to Dalvin Tomlinson through 5 games. I used Spotrac’s information on mean salaries and their classification that distinguishes DTs from DEs and I exclude OLBs who are effectively EDGEs, several of whom make much more $ than LW (T.J. Watt, $28M; Khalil Mack, $23.5M). All other numbers are taken from Pro Football Reference:


Salary

D Snap %

Sacks

Tackles

TFL

QB Hits

Missed T %

DEs








Joey Bosa

$27M

81%

2.5

15

0

6

17.60%

Myles Garrett

$25M

82%

7

21

8

16

8.70%

Leonard Williams

$21M

80%

1.5

26

2

4

3.70%

Leonard Williams 2020


74%

2

19

4

4

3.40%

DeM. Lawrence (1 game)

$21M

13%

0

5

0

0

16.70%

Frank Clark (2 games)

$20.8M

30%

0

4

1

0

42.90%









DTs








Aaron Donald

$22.5M

91%

3

24

5

8

14.30%

DeForest Buckner

$21M

83%

1

19

1

5

8.00%

Chris Jones

$20M

61%

2

7

3

4

12.50%









Dexter Lawrence


67%

0

13

2

1

0%

Austin Johnson


55%

3

24

4

3

7.70%

Danny Shelton


33%

0.5

14

0

1

12.50%

Dalvin Tomlinson


59%

1

11

0

2

21.40%

Some conclusions from this:

1. There are 3 DLs who make more $ than LW. Of those, Myles Garrett stands out as having by far the best year, but about half of his season production came in that disastrous first start of Justin Fields. LW has had more tackles and a lower missed tackle % than any of them. He hasn’t been quite as productive as Aaron Donald. Overall LW has been about as good as he was in 2020 through 5 games, when he had a monster second half of the season and big games against Seattle and Dallas. People think that LW’s big salary demands a more dominant performance that what they have seen, but there is little evidence that he has been performing more poorly than his highly paid peers this season.

2. Dexter Lawrence has been OK but has not been very productive this year behind the line of scrimmage, with no sacks and only 1 QB hit. Danny Shelton has been comparably unproductive considering he’s had half as many defensive snaps as Dexy. Austin Johnson, on the other hand, has had a very good start to the season. Other than QB hits, his stat line is almost identical to Aaron Donald’s.

3. The much-missed Dalvin Tomlinson has not been lighting up the stat sheet in Minnesota, and has missed quite a few tackles. (And those numbers aren’t a lot different than his 2020 numbers after 5 games, which I didn’t include.) If you think the loss of DT is having a large impact on our DL, these numbers tell a different story.

Here is an interesting chart from Seth Walder of PFF that reveals something about what our DLs are facing this year. It shows ESPN’s pass block win rate plotted against % of plays on which a DT is double-teamed through the first 5 games:

All 3 primary Giants DLs are in the bottom right section of the diagram, which means that they aren’t winning in their pass rush often (less than 10% of the time) but that they are being double-teamed on 65-75% of their pass rushes. (Dalvin Tomlinson has an equally poor pass rush win rate but has only been double-teamed about 45% of the time.). To be sure, they could be winning more often – Aaron Donald and a few others do despite being double-teamed as much (upper right part of the diagram). But other well known DLs that are double-teamed a lot aren't winning that much either (Ndamukong Suh, Grady Jarrett, Vita Vea, DeForest Buckner, Jonathan Allen, Calais Campbell), never mind the ones that AREN'T being double-teamed much but still aren't winning (Dalvin, but also Fletcher Cox, Shelby Harris, Christian Wilkins, Cam Heyward).

To me, these numbers suggest that opposing offenses’ strategy is to concentrate on keeping our DLs off the QB, assuming that if they do, then RBs and TEs will be able to win against our EDGEs and LBs even if their OLs don't make it to the second level. The DLs could be playing better, but they do not seem to be the main reason our D is so poor this year.

FanPosts are written by community members. This is simply a way for community members to express opinions too long to be contained in a comment.