2012 Broncos Season Review: Defensive Line

The 2012 season is over for the Broncos and many have begun turning to free agency and draft talk but before that happened I wanted to review the Broncos position by position. This is purely looking back on the production of each player in 2012, this is not a discussion about what players I think should stay or go. Instead I want to present the data on the 2012 season before we start making decisions about what should change.

Here's the positions we've already review:

- Quarterbacks
- Running backs
- Wide receivers
- Tight ends

Today we'll be moving onto the defense, starting with the defensive line.

Basic Info

So in this table we'll be looking at a few topics
- Name of the player
- Their current age
- Position
- Games they saw at least one snap
- Snaps played during the 2012 season
- Years left on their contract

*This is a sortable table*

Pass Rushing Production

So in this table we'll be looking at a few topics
- Name of the player
- Position
- Snaps where they rushed the passer
- Sacks
- Hits on the quarterback
- Times they hurried the quarterback
- Total pressures, sacks plus hits plus hurries
- Pure Pass Rushing Productivity (PRP), take total pressures divide by pass rushing snaps. This percentage is the chance of creating a pressure per snap.
- Weighted Pass Rushing Productivity (WPRP), created by Pro Football Focus which does the same as the pure PRP but gives more weight to sacks and other factors
- Their rank among their peers (DT's compared to DT's, DE's to DE's), so for Ayers and Wolfe, since they are listed as DT/DE when it says 10/20 that means they are the 10th ranked DT and the 20th ranked DE.

*This is a sortable table*

2012 Overall Production

So in this table we'll be looking at a few topics
- Name of the player
- Position
- Tackles
- Missed tackles
- Missed tackle percentage, missed tackles divided by tackle attempts
- Tackles for a loss
- Passes deflected
- Forced fumbles
- Penalties

*This is a sortable table*

Notes

- The first thing to talk about is something a lot of you are already thinking of, "But Wolfe plays both inside and outside!" Don't worry, I know and did my best to include that into this review. Something to keep in mind is that Ayers and Wolfe played almost exactly the same percentage of snaps inside and outside so if you don't want to compare Wolfe to the DE's or DT's, compare him to Ayers since they played the same role.

- Having said that while Ayers had fewer snaps he was more EFFICIENT than Wolfe in terms of pass rush. Now Wolfe had a higher number of total stats, but it too him far more snaps. To put it this was, Ayers had only two fewer pressures than Wolfe did but played 288 fewer snaps pass rushing snaps. Wolfe was a beast in the run game but his totals were inflated by a huge number of snaps. It would be like looking at two QB's, both passed for 3,500 yards but one did it in 550 attempts or 700 attempts, which one is more efficient?

- Now moving onto the pure DT's, Bannan was just a beast inside as a true nose tackle, he only missed two tackles, lead the defensive line with four pass deflection, forced a fumble and only had one penalty. He was the weakest of all the lineman in terms of pass rush but from the NT position he's not really meant to generate pressure.

- Of the other defensive tackles, Vickerson was the only other one that stood out, leading tackles in PRP, tackles for a loss, but lead the tackles in penalties with four.

- Dumervil had a good season, not as good as previous seasons, mostly due to a large number of penalties and tackle for a loss percentage. He still lead lineman in PRP and forced fumbles, something to be proud of.