Thread by @miamicallouts, Why Xavien Howard is the DPOY and is having one the greatest [...]

Why Xavien Howard is the DPOY and is having one the greatest CB seasons of the modern era.
For a baseline lets decide what stats we want to prioritize and which stats matter and which don’t.
(Also I am a math person so my grammar and spelling suck, so don't kill me for mistakes)

Obviously, the big flashy stat for CBs is interceptions, although overrated by some they are still giving your team the ball back and stopping the opponent from scoring. This, although crucial, isn’t make or break for most corners, as there is a lot more to the position...

and it really is deterministic of how many times you get thrown to. The thing to look at is the rate a CB gets an interception per however many targets. This removes the issue of corners who get little to no targets because it accounts for that.

This is a pattern you’ll see in the rest of the stats I talk about, rates over totals, but for interceptions the totals matter a little more. Although for most stats the total doesn’t matter, a turnover is a turnover and should be treated with a little more esteem.

The second most important stat for CBs is completion percentage allowed. That is the percentage of passes a CB allows when targeted. This obviously takes into account the targets a corner has and isn’t just looking a completions allowed which literally means nothing.

This is important because a CB’s job is to not allow the WR they are covering to catch the ball, so the rate at which they do that is probably the most important statistic a CB has. This also pairs nicely with our next stat, yards per target, and you might be wondering why not...

yards per completion? Well yards per target accounts for your completion percentage, so a player with 1 catch allowed for 100 yards would have a yards per completion of 100, but what if that was on 100 targets? The yards per attempt would be 1 which is a very different outcome.

Obviously Pass Defenses also deserve some love despite most of these being just dropped interceptions.

And finally, the last important stat we will talk about is QBR allowed. This is definitely isn’t the most important but it kind of ties together all the other stats we like so it’s a nice overview.

Now why not look at other statistics like:
TDs allowed – not allowing the offense to score is big but this isn’t that important as most every top corner allows around the same and a TD allowed is just a catch and it really doesn’t matter where on the field you are.

Missed tackles – if you miss a tackle it will show up in your yards allowed so we don’t need to account for that twice.

Ok so now that we have discussed statistics enough and determined what we think is significant enough to discuss let's finally talk numbers.

There should be multiple tweets below this as I will update the stats at the end of the year as Howard, will obviously have different statistics by the end of the season. So, click the appropriate tweet below to continue (All stats are from http://www.pro-football-reference.com )

Pro Football Statistics and History | Pro-Football-Reference.com

Complete source for pro football history including complete player, team, and league stats, awards, records, leaders, rookies and scores.

http://www.pro-football-reference.com

Currently, as of 12/8/2020 Xavien Howards numbers in the categories I talked about are as follows:
Int: 8
PD: 16
Tgt/Int: 9.875
Cmp%: 46.8%
Yds/Tgt: 6.7
Rat: 42.3

Let’s look at current NFL CBs that are having great years:

Jalen Ramsey
Int: 1
PD: 3
Tgt/Int: 55
Cmp%: 49.1%
Yds/Tgt: 4.8
Rat: 67.1

JC Jackson
Int: 7
PD: 12
Tgt/Int: 8.57
Cmp%: 56.7%
Yds/Tgt: 8.1
Rat: 60.3

Marlon Humphrey (Special Case as he gets a lot of FF. Even though they don’t recover all of them if you treat them as turnovers he still has less turnovers than X and higher comp%)
Int: 1
PD: 7
Tgt/Int: 70
Cmp%: 65.7%
Yds/Tgt: 6.2
Rat: 76.8

Jaire Alexander
Int: 1
PD: 7
Tgt/Int: 61
Cmp%: 54.1%
Yds/Tgt: 5.3
Rat: 73.5

Tre White (Goalie Academy)
Int: 3
PD: 8
Tgt/Int: 14
Cmp%: 57.1%
Yds/Tgt: 8.1
Rat: 77.7

(Did not include James Bradberry because his stats were very similar and slightly worse than Tre White, you can go look for yourself at the website I linked Before)

As you can see there is basically two types of CBs. Ones that let up a few catches and yards but get interceptions at a high rate and ones that don’t get many picks but don’t allow many catches or yards. But then theirs Xavien Howard who does the best of both.

Here are 3 charts for visual reference (all charts are formatted so up and to the right is good and down and to the left is bad).

Clearly Xavien Howard is in a class of his own this year. Some might allow less yards and some might get picks at a higher rate (Jalen Ramsey and JC Jackson) but no one does both, and if they are close to him in one area they are eons away in the other category.

So now let’s do the same comparisons to Xavien using a player from the past. Stephon Gilmore last season is the main reason I am making this is because I feel Xavien deserves to be DPOY like Gilmore was last season.

These are Gilmore’s stats from last year:

Int: 6
PD: 20
Tgt/Int: 16.8334
Cmp%: 50.5%
Yds/Tgt: 5.9
Rat: 44.1

(Scroll Up to compare to Xavien)

Despite Gilmore leading the league in interceptions he only had 6 which Howard has already surpassed. Gilmore only leads Howard in Yards/Target, 5.9 and 6.7 respectively.

This different isn’t as significant as the difference in their respective Targets/Int numbers, with Gilmore at 16.84 and Howard at 9.875. Howard also leads by 4 percentage points in Completion Percentage allowed, which is a good amount, and he also barely...

beats Gilmore in Passer Rating Allowed. The point of this isn’t to say Howard is way better than Gilmore but he is clearly having just as good if not better of a season than Gilmore had when he won DPOY.

Also, for those that think the best corners don’t get thrown and that’s the reason your favorite CB doesn’t have as many picks as Howard, Gilmore got targeted 101 times last year and Xavien 79 so far.

The last thing about Xavien Howard’s stats that needs to be mentioned is his interception totals. Xavien Howard is currently on pace for 11 interceptions this season, whether he gets there or not remains to be seen but if Howard does he will be in absolutely ELITE company.

A player hasn’t gotten 10 or more interceptions since 2007 when Antonio Cromartie lead the league with 10. Also, if Howard does end up with 11 he will have done something that hasn’t been done since 1981 when Everson Walls lead the league.

That means if he gets 10 he will have done something that all the great corners of the 2010s never did. All the great corners that have recently played football or have been drafted since 2007 will not be able to say they did what Xavien might.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean Xavien is better than all those guys but it’s a significant thing when we are talking about DPOY.

So now that we have established that Howard is having a statically insane season and a better one than Gilmore last year when he won DPOY how do we compare Howard to the other candidates of different positions. Short answer is we can’t… not directly.

All we can do is compare them to others at their positions currently and from years past. As we already have done this with Howard let us look at the other DPOY front runners compared to last year’s candidates Gilmore beat.

Well, currently the media’s front runner for DPOY is TJ Watt. An absolute animal of a pass rusher, the guy does it all. However, let’s compare his projected totals to other players in the past and of last years DPOY candidates.

TJ is projected around 16 sacks by the end of the season which is a lot but nowhere near the 19.5 Shaquil Barrett posted last year and it’s pretty close to the 14.5 that Watt himself put up last year. Not only that but historically these numbers aren’t that significant. 22.5...

is the most sacks every but surprisingly people get close almost every year. Last time there where 19 sacks was last year, 20 the year before that, and 22 sacks (A HALF OFF THE RECORD!) 2014. That’s why another player Myles Garrett, who currently has 10.5 in 10 games, also...

isn’t impressive because literally last year a guy averaged more sacks than games and it wasn’t by only a half. Obviously, all these numbers will change but currently this is where they stand.

Although sacks aren’t everything for pass rushers, they are by far more telling of the greatness of a pass rusher than most other stats. However, we will look at TFLs, as they are also very important.

Garrett averages a little less than 1 per game with 8 this season which isn’t very DPOY worthy. On the other hand, Watt has a very impressive 19 TFLs this season at around 1.6 per game. This is probably his most impressive stat, as comparing it to last year Aaron Donald only...

had 20 to lead the league, but DPOY Aaron Donald had 28 the year before that. TJ should put up similar numbers to that to really seal up the award for this year, but unfortunately for TJ...

he isn’t going to get there in terms of TFLs or Sacks at the current rate. He can definitely get close, he just will have to play even better these last few games.

So to me, due to no other player having an all-time great season and Howard on the verge of doing something no one has seen in a decade. I see Xavien Howard as the clear front runner for DPOY

@Duke_Denniz link anyone this thread if they have something to say about Xavien Howard

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