By JOHN SHIRLEY

Normally when people talk about teams with a great pass rush, the discussion is centered around specific elite players, such as Aaron Donald, Khalil Mack, or J.J. Watt. If they do go further than that, it is generally to mention a bookend rusher or team Pressure% as a whole. While player and team level pass rush metrics are worthwhile talking points, here we will be breaking down and evaluating specific pass-rushing lineups. You can think of this as similar to evaluating different lines in hockey or a specific lineup in basketball.

Best Three-Man Pass Rush Lineups

Getting pressure from a three-man rush is extremely valuable for a defense. It speeds up the quarterback’s timing, while allowing eight defenders to drop in coverage to leave him almost no windows to the throw ball. Getting pressure from a three-man rush is more difficult, as the league average Pressure% is only 28%, but the lineups below had no problem getting after opposing quarterbacks.

Top 3-Man Pass Rush Lineups by Pressure%, 2019 (Minimum 15 Snaps)

Last off-season the Packers invested heavily in free agent additions to their defense. That investment absolutely paid off, as edge rushers Preston Smith and Za’Darius Smith teamed with Kenny Clark to create the best three-man rush in 2019. 

Best Four-Man Pass Rush Lineups

Getting pressure from a three-man rush is great, but add in a fourth rusher and the league average Pressure% increases five percentage points to 33%. Four-man pass rushes are also the most common, as they accounted for 65% of all dropbacks in 2019.   

Top 4-Man Pass Rush Lineups by Pressure%, 2019 (Minimum 25 Snaps)

Once again, off-season additions help the Packers to the top spot. The lineup of Preston Smith, Za’Darius Smith and Kenny Clark was an elite three-man rush. But add last year’s first round pick Rashan Gary to the lineup, and you get an explosive pass rush that got pressure on 59% of opponent dropbacks.

The Packers elite lineup will be teaming up again this season, but that isn’t the case for some other team’s four-man rush lineups. The top three most used four-man rush lineups from last season could all be missing at least one piece this year. 

Most Often Used 4-Man Pass Rush Lineups, 2019

The Vikings could be without Everson Griffen, who is still a free agent. The 49ers will be without defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, who was traded to the Colts in the offseason. And the Jaguars might end up missing two players, as Calais Campbell was traded to the Ravens and Yannick Ngakoue’s relationship with the team is up in the air. 

Best Five-Man Pass Rush Lineups

Adding a fourth pass rusher increases the league average Pressure% by around five percentage points. Add a fifth pass rush on top of that, and the league average Pressure% increased another ten percentage points to 43% in 2019. This isn’t that surprising, but it just highlights how effective blitzing can be—something we pointed out on Football Outsiders last off-season.  

Top 5-Man Pass Rush Lineups by Pressure%, 2019 (Minimum 15 Snaps)

The Cowboys lineup of DeMarcus Lawrence, Michael Bennett, Robert Quinn, Jaylon Smith, and Maliek Collins was the league’s best five-man blitz package last season, with a Pressure% of 69%. Unfortunately for the Cowboys, this lineup will be nonexistent this season, as Bennett, Quinn and Collins have all moved on from the team.  

This was the first time the Packers didn’t top the leaderboard. Although if we were to lower the minimum number of pass rush snaps to 10, the Packers blitz package of Preston Smith, Za’Darius Smith, Kenny Clark, Kyler Fackrell, and Blake Martinez would have topped the list with a Pressure% of 73% on 11 snaps.

By MICHAEL CHURCHWARD

There is a concept in football known as ‘lost yardage.’ There is an occasional reference to it and its potential impact on games, but I have not seen the impact of lost yardage amongst all the teams in the NFL. So I want to consider the specific plays in which lost yardage can be calculated and measure its impact on game outcomes.

First, an explanation of the concept of lost yardage:  This isn’t lost yardage in the sense of a punt returner losing yards on a return. This covers a situation in which a team moves the ball to a certain yard line, there is a penalty on the play and the ball is moved back to a different yard line depending on the specific call.

The difference of yardage where the ball would have been compared to where the ball was actually placed is my definition of lost yardage. 

For example, if a team receives a kickoff and returns the ball to the 50 yard line, but a penalty makes the team start the subsequent drive from their own 20, the lost yardage on that play would be -30 yards. 

Using this formula to calculate lost yardage, I wanted to find out how this concept could affect NFL teams on a per-game basis. I looked at plays where lost yardage occurs on kickoff returns and punt returns, with no turnovers on the play. I chose these plays because that team is going to be on offense the next play so there will be a quantifiable consequence for lost yardage. 

I used Sports Info Solutions’ formula for Expected Points (EP) to calculate the points lost due to lost yardage. There is an EP value assigned based on the down, distance, and whether or not the offense was the home team. Therefore, we can assign an EP value pre-penalty, and an EP value post-penalty. The difference between those two numbers is what we can define as points lost due to yardage lost. 

The data collected uses a three-season sample from 2016 to 2018, including all the playoff games and Super Bowls from those seasons. I looked at the final score in every game that had a lost-yardage situation on a kick return or punt return from the losing team, and then checked to see if the expected points from the lost yardage may have directly led to a loss. These were mostly games that were decided by three points or less and the EP lost from the penalty cost the team more than the difference in the final score. 

This research is focused on Expected Points lost on kickoff and punt returns, and while yards isn’t a perfect translation into points, I think that we can all agree that the further away an offense starts from the opposing team’s goal line, the harder it is for that team to score. While there are more plays that result in lost yardage due to penalties on offensive plays, starting offensive drives at a positional disadvantage was where I wanted to start. Offensive penalties on positive yardage plays are more of a common way in which lost yardage can accumulate, and future research will be focused on that aspect of lost yardage.

Sorting through all the scenarios that met my criteria, there were several games in the past couple of seasons in which a penalty on a punt or kickoff may have directly led to a loss. According to the expected points lost due to a penalty, there were 10 games during the past few seasons where the game could have been a win instead of a loss. I have a table below that will show the numbers for each of these games to show the starting yard lines and points that were lost

There are many special teams plays throughout the course of an NFL game and season that are overlooked by most people, including coaches. With such a razor-thin margin for victory in the NFL, special teams play needs to be noticed as a major factor. Hopefully, this statistic of lost yardage and loss of expected points will highlight the major role special teams plays in every single game and how teams could potentially lose due to the impact of one penalty in a game.