I’m continuing to look at Chicago’s defense using advanced defensive statistics from Pro Football Reference (PFR). I already looked at missed tackles, and today I want to look at coverage.
Baseline Rates
There are a whole host of advanced coverage stats available, including completion percentage, yards/target, target depth, yards after catch allowed, TDs, INTs, and passer rating. In order to keep it simple, I’m going to look only at yards/target, as that is a good baseline metric for how effective teams are when targeting a player. I’m intentionally not looking at passer rating because that gets skewed by touchdowns and interceptions, which are notoriously random statistics within a small sample size like this.
I compiled all yards/target stats from the PFR database for 2018 and 2019, the only 2 years it has, and sorted them by position. In order to compare starters to starters and avoid rates skewed by backups, I assumed a base nickel package of 4 defensive linemen (DL), 2 linebackers (LB), 3 cornerbacks (CB), and 2 safeties (S). For all 32 teams over a 2 year span, this would mean 128 LB, 192 CB, and 128 S. This gave thresholds of 30 targets for LB, 40 for CB, and 20 for S.
Looking at those sample sizes, you can see the spread of missed tackle rates in the table below for each position group.
