Quote:
Originally Posted by RealSNR
Dude, you're either choosing to not acknowledge the point or you're actually not seeing it.
When you get a $100 million contract as a pass rusher, the expectation is that you disrupt some shit to benefit the defense. A coverage sack is cleaning up the brilliant work done by the secondary. Yes, the best pass rushers still get coverage sacks, and getting the coverage sack is better than just letting the QB sit back there for 20 seconds until something finally busts open. But if that's ALL you ever get as an edge rusher, you're not elite. You're not worth the $100 million contract. Hell, you're probably not worth half of that depending on the other parts of the position you either do well or don't do well.
Or, if I may put it differently... a guy who only gets coverage sacks is like an Alex Smith when it comes to rushing the passer. If you've got good "protection" and your secondary is giving you time then you can usually make the play. But if you can't from time to time beat your blocker and actually DISRUPT THE DAMN PLAY instead of waiting for it to just slowly collapse thanks to excellent coverage, then all you're doing is managing the pass rush... taking what you're given instead of being the catalyst for the rest of the defense to have success.
Frank Clark hasn't been a catalyst for this defense's success very often this year. If at all. If I'm being generous, he's been an Alex Smith as a pass rusher. If I'm being truthful, he just ****ing sucks.
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Let's be clear: I never said there was no such thing as a "coverage sack."
What I said was "
show me where I can find the stat listed "coverage sacks." Because that dip I was responding to kept asking the question, "how many of Frank's sacks have been coverage sacks this season?" Well, I don't know about you, RSNR, but the only way to find the actual number of "coverage sacks" for a player would be to go back through every sack by that player over the asked for range of games. And I'm not doing that. So I told him to stop asking that question because it's dumb.
Now if I'm wrong, and there is a site that separates out "coverage sacks" then I'm happy to apologize to all and sundry. But I have never seen any site that does this, have you?
As for the rest, as I've stated numerous times, I don't give a flying you-know-what how much they're paying Clark. Doesn't mean a thing to me, since I'm not the one writing the checks. I don't really get the preoccupation with trying to equate game to game performance in one particular stat column with a multi-year contract. It's nonsensical. And even if I did, Clark Hunt isn't paying Frank to sack QBs. He's not a sack artist. We had two of those, and we know how that worked out.
Frank is not a sack specialist. Everyone knew he got about 10 sacks a season when they signed him. 10 sacks is not an elite level number. Frank is a Swiss Army knife. He does things well/serviceably that Dee Ford and Justin Houston could or would not. And since we've enumerated those things before, I won't bother to again here. But watching Dee Ford run around in coverage like a literal chicken with its head chopped off springs to mind right now. Did he ever find the RB on that play? Is he still trying to find that guy?
The same can be said of Tyrann. He's not a prototypical safety, anymore than Frank is a pass-rush specialist. He's too short, he's not fast enough, he doesn't have great length, etc. But he's another Swiss Army knife. You can insert him just about anywhere, ask him to do just about anything, and he'll make plays.
Frank makes plays, and Spags can insert him all over the place, even in coverage and get a decent performance out of him. Sometimes they aren't flashy, sometimes they are. But who gives a rat's ass if Frank gives us a sack to "ooh," and "aah," over, so long as he makes the plays he needs to make, and just as importantly doesn't screw up a bunch of plays, like he did last night at the end of the game?
This is exactly why the "great" defenses we had back in 2014 or whatever pissed me off so bad. Because they had all the flashy stats, "the most sacks, the best 3rd down conversion rate, blahblahblah" and all that other stuff everyone loves to point at and giggle over. Because when we needed those stats to jump off the paper and do something on the field, nothing happened. They were useless. And those great defenses got smoked.
This defense as constructed will never be those defenses. Maybe never be 75% of those defenses. But this defense plays well together under Spags, they make adjustments, and they play well situationally on a fairly consistent basis. In other words, they are a better
TEAM than those "great" Chiefs defenses of the past.
And Frank helps make those things happen, by doing whatever Spags asks him to do, even if it means spending fewer snaps chasing QBs. Which sometimes happens. Or has happened, to be more accurate. So whatever they're paying him, as long as Spags and the rest of the defense love him, great by me. I'd rather my team have the rings than the stats all day long.
Though i notice no one in this thread seems willing to give credit when credit is due either. Frank put the heat on Brady that forced TB to throw those two errant passes for INTs, but no one mentions it. Why? Because "QB pressure" isn't an accepted stat? Even though anyone's that followed the game for more than a season has heard the term a hundred times? Or that anyone that's played the game knows that pressuring the QB is a real thing? That the QB can be pressured into making bad decisions, throwing bad balls, etc. just by a defender getting close enough to him? Oh, PFF began using the term as a stat column, so now we don't care to recognize it? Okay. Whatever.
But I also realize that you and others just aren't happy unless those boxes get filled in with satisfactory numbers. I do get it. I wanted to try and get people to see another way of looking at the defense and Frank Clark in this thread. But it's a waste of my time.
Not your fault. Mine for trying to fix something no one wants to be fixed.
Later.