Inside the trenches: How Sheldon Rankins is adding value to the Saints defensive line [Film Study]

sammymvpknight said
Completely agree there. Adding LBs to the field is NOT a winning strategy.

I’d like to get your opinion on Davison. I think the biggest concern about Rankins is that he has an even more bland player next to him, in Davison. Rankins is NOT a game-changing talent that can beat double teams, so the Saints really could use more help next to him to divert attention away from him. It just feels that the Saints RARELY get any push from the inside. Cam Jordan frequently applies pressure from the outside and there is absolutely nobody to clean it up. With as good as Jordan is...you’d assume that the other guys would at least occasionally luck into sacks, but it rarely happens. I think that reinforces just how mediocre the rest of the DL is. I do think that Davenport has potential...but boy the rest of the line just looks like a bunch of solid fringe starter types. I watch a defense like the Rams, Eagles, and Jags and I see a significant difference between the Saints front line and those types of teams.

Well first let me say that I think the Saints DL is better than you're giving them credit for. You rattled off some elite DLs and with just about any position group there is a drop off after the top units to the "above average" units where the Saints reside. They certainly aren't bad though. A lot of teams are much worse off.

That said, you bring up some valid points. Defeating double teams has not been a strength of Rankins to this point in his career. I do think he benefits from someone helping take the load off of him. I was really surprised to see Davison get so many snaps in Week 1 (52) as that placed him in a lot of passing situations. This is simply not his forte' and he will generally lose one on ones. I've always liked the Onyemata/Rankins interior pairing with each playing either 3 Techs or Rankins the 3 and Onyemata a 1/2i. They seem to have success there as both are just dangerous enough to draw doubles, but you can't target both.

New Orleans has only 1 star (Jordan), but they have some really good pieces (Rankins/Okafor/Davenport?) and it's quietly one of the better, and more underrated, units in the league. New Orleans isn't anywhere near as bad alone the line as say the Raiders or the Giants are. that's just my take and .02 though

I am prepared for the negreps, but....

We can break this down all we want, but this was a slightly below-average defense last year, and this year we've opened with one of our worst defensive games in my memory (which is saying something) and then almost let Cleveland's pedestrian group beat us late, and they would have but for a BUNCH of missed kicks.

Surely a number of these players must be grading out below average, and some well below average. Last year we had amazing secondary play, and were still 18th, at least by the PFR metric. If you're telling me that secretly Rankins, taken 14th overall two years ago, is now a difference-maker like he should be, it's a pretty condemnatory indictment on a lot of the rest of these players.

Personally, I like to use points allowed as the measuring mark for a defenses' total "ranking". New Orleans was 10 in that regard. They also finished 11th in DVOA and 6th in Weighted DVOA Defense (Weighted puts less value in earlier games in order to judge how a team has improved towards the end of the season).

I felt the Saints defense was very good last year, not below average.