I am a data scientist by trade. My job, by definition, is defined by distributions, metrics, aggregations, and computations.
But my love of football came from a place that is quite different and definitely more uncertain.
At the turn of my high school years, I found football an escape from everything. Many people describe their “escapes” as quiet places. Football, for me, was a loud place. A place where sheer chaos caused a symphony of speed and strength, power and finesse, pain and gain.
My perception of the game led me to one place, the linebacker position. In my mind, the linebacker position (both inside and outside, independent of scheme) is the ultimate football alignment. At any point, you may rush or drop into coverage. You are often the central player being read in both the run and the pass. You must play both downhill and sideline to sideline. Bill Belichick said it best:
“The linebacker has to make multiple, multiple decisions on every play. Not only what his assignment is and what the play is, but all the way along the line, different angles, how to take on blocks, how to tackle, the leverage to play with, the angle to run to and so forth, the technique. So many different things happen in a split second during the course of the play, just like it is for a quarterback. The more of those things that you can do right, slow down, get the most important things, not get distracted by all the stuff that’s happening, but just really zero in on a target.”
In short, the beauty of the linebacker position is that it is everything, everywhere, all at once.
For that reason, many of the names we associate with our great American game were linebackers. You can track how the game has changed by listing them off.
Players like Dick Butkus, Jack Lambert, Mike Singletary, and Lawrence Taylor set the standard for linebackers. As an old Louisiana Saints fan, I heard legends of the “Dome Patrol” — Rickey Jackson, Sam Mills, Vaughn Johnson, and Pat Swilling — terrorizing offensives. I vividly remember the acquisition of the Jets’ pro bowler Jonathan Vilma prior to “hell freezing over”, and the Saints winning a Super Bowl. That transaction was then mirrored as I grew older by the acquisition of DeMario Davis.
Part of my love of the linebacker position is steeped in these old guard players. The hard hitting, field-commanding presence is what attracted me to the position.
But as I learned more as I progressed through the game, I came to find the position changing rapidly. Still, linebackers command the field, but the sheer amount of the field that they must cover has greatly increased the difficulty of the position. I’d argue this is the key reason it is now considered a “non-premium” position.
Consider the following.
As a linebacker in college, I quickly learned that much of the work that needed to be done was pre-snap. Alignment was absolutely paramount and governed by assignment. These comprised just two of the many items on the AP Exam-like list of things to memorize. A 3×1 set made you bump out of the box, essentially becoming a slot corner. More run-based sets, particularly pistol, moved you back in the box and turned you into a two-gap player, generally the A and the C. Even a slight misalignment would put you in the track of a 6’3”, 330-pound lineman coming to bury you beneath the field of play as the tailback trotted to paydirt. A five-wide set might move you all the way out to outside corner to go mano a mano versus a running back, a troubling task when I was in practice and the back was the Titans’ Tyjae Spears. Not only is this not considering gameplan blitzes where you may be lined up in front of the center or as an edge rusher, but it is also not considering the post-snap recognitions, reactions, and techniques.
The thing I remember most about the post-snap is hand placement. It was drilled into our heads when we should strike the lineman approaching in the chest with both hands rather than one on the outside shoulder and one on the breastplate. Even a slight miss on this attack could get you mauled. But even better would be to gain wrist control or to chop the arm down to stop from being touched all together. As a lifelong defensive player who spent half of his year playing basketball in high school, I much favored the hitting than the getting hit, so this was often the route I decided to go.
The sheer diversity of tasks my fellow linebackers and I were asked to do is a great segway into the modern linebacker role models. At least in our position room, we worshipped at the alter of Darius Shaquille Leonard, a current free agent who in his 6-year career made first team All-Pro three times. He was a visionary to us, a Picasso of sorts–an artist of the game who drew outside the lines. Despite being listed at 6’2”, 230 pounds, he looked to be more like 6’4”, 210 pounds at best, a wing defender in basketball more than the Brian Urlacher’s of old.
#Colts highlights day 40
42 days left
December 18, 2021
Shaquille Leonard reads Patriots QB Mac Jones like a book and picks off a pass to stop a patriots drive deep in the Colts territory. The stiff arm is just the icing on the cake. #ForTheShoe pic.twitter.com/2AvQhHxOQx
— Colts Coverage (@Colts_Coverage) July 31, 2022
Despite this, he maintained the same omnipresence in the game that linebackers have kept throughout time, yet he did it in a new modern way. Rather than bruise through approaching lineman and spear through crossing wide receivers, he seemed to dance into gaps and teleport into throwing lanes. He was a turnover-forcing machine both with picks and forced fumbles. He was just as likely to bang in the trenches as he was to hunt down an offensive player outside the numbers.
He is just my favorite example, but all-around weapons such as Fred Warner and Matt Milano had similar impacts on some of the league’s best teams. The league’s best became less generals–the centralized force of command–and more wizards, tacticians with a secret mix of skills which allowed them to appear all over the field, striking fear into their opponents all the same.
Nice angle on the Fred Warner punch out pic.twitter.com/GhSQ7CuUtr
— Shawn Syed (@SyedSchemes) January 23, 2022
In that sense, the mysticism of the linebacker position continues, still maintaining the hard-hitting attitude of yore while developing a chameleon status that allows them to blend in with the modern day.
As analysts, we have struggled to decode the linebacker game. Some great metrics like Ground Covered Over Expected and Bite Distance Under Expected have gotten us several steps closer, but we still haven’t found the secret sauce to properly valuing the on-field value that scouts and coaches have assigned to them for years. As a result, less and less resources are being devoted to the off-ball linebackers due to the lack of numerical clarity and predictiveness. In 2024, the first linebacker didn’t come off the board until Pick 45, and a true run on them didn’t begin until the third round. While their edge counterparts boon the value of the linebacker franchise tag, inside backers have the lowest top of the market of all defensive players in terms of average per year payment in their contracts. Indeed, the more contract specialist-oriented metric of 3-Year Cash for linebackers is also bottoms for defensive players.
All that to say, there is still something inherent to the game of football that makes linebacker play beautiful. The unexpected nature of their actions. The split-second decision making. The bone-crushing hits. The way running backs and wide receivers alike hesitate to test them. The graceful slips around rumbling linemen. The 30-yard dead-sprints down the middle of the field on Tampa 2 concepts. And my personal favorite, the bull rushes against running backs where it is clear to both players that it is put up or shut up as soon as the guards’ heads pop up, indicating pass.
There is a certain spiritual nature to the position. As an analyst who is tasked with dealing in observable facts, numbers, and values only, I understand why the position is not considered premium anymore. But, as actor and singer Tyrese said on The Breakfast Club radio show, “Don’t confuse data and numbers and popularity with the reality of what affects hearts”.
Now, this might not be a viable business strategy long-term, but I must admit, against my more quantitative urges, that the beauty and terror of linebacker play touches my heart, deeply.
