Danielle Hunter Discussion

Thank you sir, I wanted to see if there was a logical reason for why he disappeared last year. I thought maybe he just went up against some better RT's or something and there was no way for me to know that without going back and looking at the charts you posted every week. The chart for week 17 is missing BTW lol.


Alright yeah, that's some info I wasn't privy too. PFF charges for that kind of data haha.


Which is pretty much why I included that bit. It's like ok he managed to get some sacks against some of the better RT's, so why did he struggle against inferior talent? It's confusing.


I would but it's not always easy to tell who goes up against who head to head for an entire game, like it is for LDE vs RT. Sometimes a defense is in zone coverage so who's fault is it if a WR scores a TD or makes a big play in zone coverage? Sometimes a CB isn't covering a guy for a play or 2 as well. Like if Rhodes blankets and shuts down a guy for 90% of the snaps, but then that WR scores a TD or makes a big play the 1 play Rhodes is out with his weekly injury, I wouldn't want to hold it against him, and I don't want to have to watch every single snap myself to make sure that didn't happen lol. I could probably do Griff though, like Hunter, his matchups were a little more straight forward.

From what I can remember, Hunter's number of pressures were still high and he's a very good run stopper, so his effectiveness was only a little bit lower than it was in 2016. I recall commenting here about a year ago saying that Hunter was "lucky" with his sacks (situations where other players' pressures force the QB into a different defender). Zimmer's pass rushing defense seems to vary between who will rack up the sacks - and those will vary over time.

Hunter might just be more effective in a role where he plays 70-75%, and with Zimmer's comments about potentially using a bigger DL rotation like the Eagles do, he should have a better 2018 season. But is he worth $15M+ a year on a deal? Nope, not in my opinion.

Something else of note:

Really interested to see if Bower makes improvements this year. Really not sure at this point how they are going to take snaps off these guys. Jaleel Johnson?

Yeah I didn't intend to do a deep dive into the situation because I didn't think it was that alarming. I'm aware that sacks aren't everything lol. But lets also keep in mind that Griffen was commanding most of the defensive attention and double teams, and it's possible teams ran to Hunters side more often too, giving him more opportunities to make plays. Which would make his 2 missed tackles (compared to Griffs 5) more impressive. I would hope he could generate a comparable number of pressures 1 on 1 as Griff 1 on 2. Many of Griffs sacks did come in garbage time when our opponents were rendered 1 dimensional too. I'm not worried about either guy, but now I am a little worried about snap counts and depth xD.