Analytics and advanced statistics have been a friend to the Kansas City Chiefs in the past. Outlets such as Pro Football Focus and NFL Next Gen Statistics regularly feature Chiefs’ players, including many on the offensive side of the ball, as some of the best in the NFL.
NFL.com’s Cynthia Frelund’s recently-released All-Analytics Team features just one player from Kansas City. Much to my surprise, that player was a defensive player and didn’t receive a lot of praise from the analytics community during the course of the 2019 season. The player was a free-agent acquisition and versatile defensive back Tyrann Mathieu.
Frelund is looking at a numerical value called “contribution metric” for the purposes of this All-Star Team. It is essentially a snap-based measure of a player’s impact on his team’s ability to win games. She used this metric to assemble a team of the top players at each position group for the past season on both sides of the ball.
Here’s a look at what Frelund had to say about Mathieu in her write up:
“NGS shows that Mathieu played 98 percent of defensive snaps for the Chiefs, including the playoffs (1,205 of 1,230). Always a playmaker in pass defense, Mathieu’s run-stopping ability ranked seventh-best among safeties in 2019, per my computer vision. And the fact that that figure was even better in previous seasons — when he was a Cardinal and Texan — reflects a different strategy in K.C., not an erosion in capability.“
No Chiefs defender played a higher percentage of snaps than Mathieu. The only one that came close was CB Charvarius Ward at 95% of defensive snaps. Frelund points to Mathieu’s ability as a playmaker in the pass defense and his run-stopping prowess as a few of the reasons he ends up on this list. Mathieu allowed a 61.7 passer rating from the slot in 2019 according to PFF, a number good for the best mark in the NFL. He also recorded four interceptions and 12 passes defended on the season, those were good for the highest totals for Mathieu since 2015.
I’m still surprised that other Chiefs players such as RT Mitchell Schwartz, TE Travis Kelce, DT Chris Jones and QB Patrick Mahomes aren’t on this list. I feel like when you have a metric that doesn’t include some of the best players in the NFL, it might be time to rethink how the metric works and how things are weighted. Players like Jones and Mahomes are probably excluded because of the snaps they missed during the course of the season. Kelce and Schwartz seem to be overshadowed by others at their position like George Kittle and Ryan Ramczyk.
What do you think, Chiefs Kingdom? Should more players from the Super Bowl LIV champions have ended up on this All-Star Team? Let us know your thoughts on Facebook and Twitter.
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