Fantasy Football: Evaluating 2023 IDP linebacker production versus expected

• Alex Singleton remains king of the tacklers: Back-to-back seasons with the highest “Tackles versus Expected total” makes Singleton the best at what he does.

• Devin White just can’t deliver: For three consecutive seasons, White has finished well below tackle expectations and is an untrustworthy IDP.

• Looking at repeat rates: A decent return of the top and bottom performers year over year makes this metric an important part of the yearly evaluation process for IDP.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

At the end of each NFL season, it’s easy to look at where fantasy performers finished in scoring but understanding why they finished where they did is often more important going forward. 

For the linebacker position, tackles are a huge part of their IDP success, so knowing which linebackers were able to create more tackles for themselves while identifying those that just delivered as expected, or even below expectations, can help identify better draft targets next season.

All linebacker-expected tackle figures are derived from combing through each player's individual play and situation. Focusing on their alignment, run or pass situation, what type of coverage they’re in, and how many snaps they played, their efficiency is then compared to the larger pool of their peers.

Starting at the top, these are the linebackers who performed above and beyond expectations in 2023 when it came to tackling, and a lot of the same names who appear on this list each season have found a way to do so once again. These players rank in the 80th percentile and above compared to their peers.

• Alex Singleton has finished inside the top three in this metric for three consecutive seasons. This is the second straight year that he’s finished at the very top.
• Roquan Smith is also a repeat performer near the top of this list. He has finished inside the top eight in each of the past three seasons.
• Foyesade Oluokun has also finished inside the top eight in each of the past three seasons, creating elite consistency among our top three performers this season.
• Ernest Jones saw a career-high in playing time in 2023 and delivered high-end production. On just below 700 snaps in 2022, he was still able to finish among the top 20 in this metric as well.
• Khaleke Hudson went on a tear late in the year, taking over for an injured Jamin Davis in Week 15, when most of his strong tackle totals started. Hudson is a pending free agent and could be an intriguing option if he lands somewhere with a chance to start.
• Dre Greenlaw, T.J. Edwards, and Nick Bolton all finished inside the top 10 in this metric last season. Both Bolton and Edwards were top-five in 2021 as well. They all repeat among the top-20th percentile performers in 2023.
• Isaiah Simmons, Blake Cashman and Jordan Hicks are all new to the top performers in this metric, as they've previously finished on the negative side in previous seasons.
• 45% of linebackers who finished among the 80th percentile performers in 2022 did so again in 2023. Lack of playing time took out a lot of last year’s top performers, including Jack Sanborn, Cole Holcomb and Myles Jack. However, Isaiah McDuffie and Elandon Roberts were able to repeat despite inconsistent playing time this season.
• 100% of players that finished with the top-five “Tackles versus Expected” totals in 2022 finished among the 80th percentile of players in 2023. This was the same hit rate as 2022 when looking at 2021’s top-five as well.

The under-performers are players who weren’t nearly as efficient as their peers, and unlike with sacks at the defensive line position, this isn’t necessarily a sign that they’ll bounce back the following year. Inefficient tackling often proves to be more stable than overly efficient tackling, and that holds true here as well with a lot of repeat names at the bottom.

• Devin White was the most inefficient tackler for his position and has been in each of the past three seasons, finishing among the bottom 10 since 2021.
• Demario Davis is in a similar position, as he’s finished among the bottom-five players in each year since 2021.
• Among the bottom five performers, 100% of them finished negatively in “Tackles versus Expected” in 2022 as well.
• Exactly 50% of players who finished in the bottom quarter of linebackers in “Tackles versus Expected” in 2022, and also qualified for the list in 2023, finished in that range once again, including Patrick Queen, Kenneth Murray, Alex Anzalone, Christian Harris, Jerome Baker, Nicholas Morrow and Frankie Luvu.
• New names to the bottom quarter of linebackers include Jordyn Brooks, who was a top-five performer in 2021 and top-20th percentile in 2022.
• Pete Werner is also a new name among the bottom, as he's previously finished among the top quarter percentile of the league in each of the past two seasons.

The final, larger, group of players all finished within their more expected range of outcomes, or just slightly more or less delivered above or below expectations. This is a larger group and obviously can vary wildly year-to-year based on playing time and situations, but still a good group to make note of, specifically for those that finished with a lot of tackles as they didn’t necessarily do anything exceptional to get there.

• Azeez Al-Shaair is a good example of a player who finished among the league leaders in total tackles, but only really had to be on the field in order to deliver those tackles, as he didn’t exceed any expectations to get that mark. Al-Shaair was exceptional against the run, but evened that out by being particularly ineffective tackling against the pass.
• Fred Warner, Cody Barton, Bobby Okereke, and C.J. Mosley all delivered good tackle totals for the year and depending on big plays likely finished with even better fantasy production, but when it came to tackling, they were not necessarily exceptional in any way to get there.

After three seasons of collecting this data, there has been a decent correlation between the top and bottom performers in terms of their ability to deliver above or below tackle expectations, though of course, each year there will be changes. Again, it’s important to understand, for the purposes of evaluating an IDP’s season, why they performed the way they did so that we can better target players in drafts the following season by either not getting too excited about certain players, or even help to identify some of the most reliable players. Hopefully, this process helps fantasy managers do just that.