Introducing LOSDA - Line of Scrimmage Defensive Assist

I was 8 years old when I saw my first alley-oop.

I thought it was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen.

I was already a sports fanatic and I sat, aghast at such a display of sporting prowess. Even then I was prone to noticing the little things in sporting endeavor though.

I remember thinking that, yes, the athletic ability of the player hanging in the air near the basket to catch the ball mid-flight, with impeccable timing to their jump, to finish with a dunk, was remarkable. But I remember being more taken with the player passing the ball. I remember thinking the vision and skill to execute the assist was equal to, if not more impressive than the finish.

Since that day, probably before that day if I’m honest, I have been fascinated by assists in sport. My favorite players from the teams I follow are littered with kingmakers rather than kings themselves. Often underappreciated, but never by me, these sporting heroes who use their skill to help others succeed in the most obvious ways, are slower to be recognized for their gifts. And often go unnoticed entirely. More of that later.

I have found myself seeking out more sports that feature more and more extreme examples of players acting in service of a goal well beyond themselves.

In professional cycling at the Tour de France, athletes ride in teams. Each team has eight members but only one, occasionally two, riders have a chance at glory in winning the race. Each member of the team has a different role; some of the spots reserved for the role of domestique. These are usually inexperienced or limited riders who act in service of the leader, carrying out duties ranging from dropping back to the team car to carry water bottles and fuel packages to the rest of the team, to allowing the leader or other more important members of the team to draft behind them, in their slipstream, while the domestique does all of the hard work in front.

At its most intense, super-domestiques, talented riders themselves, will expend every ounce of energy on mountains or in sprint finishes to stages of the race, to enable other team members to take the glory of winning a stage or indeed the race overall.

Of course many of these riders do this in order to prove themselves, in pursuit of a role as a leader in the future. But many never make it and become career-long domestiques. Suffering at the altar of one of the toughest athletic feats in sports, only for someone else to be victorious.

It’s not as pure as in cycling but football is a lot like this. It is the reason why I fell in love with the sport. Each unit on a football team is a union of eleven players who must function as a team to be successful. You must do your job, or someone else cannot do theirs.

I remember quoting Shakespeare in an early sporting report I wrote about a football team I was a part of:

“From this day to the ending of the World,

We in it shall be remembered,

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me,

Shall be my brother.”

A little over-the-top, I know. But the best football teams are brotherhoods and it’s the fire of relying completely on the man next to you that forges this bond.

It’s also why I’m passionate about the players on a football team who do the unsung work, who allow others to succeed with their excellence, but who, through the nature of the statistics that pervade football analysis - focused on production, never get the recognition they deserve.

Derek Wolfe epitomizes this and it was his contract situation in unrestricted free agency this year that inspired me to create this new statistic – LOSDA or Line of Scrimmage Defensive Assist.

There are assist data-points in many sports, in football you could argue that all Quarterback statistics are assists, as the QB is facilitating others to be successful by distributing the ball. But there’s been enough written about and given to Quarterbacks.

Von Miller has talked extensively about how important Derek Wolfe was for him, in the sacks he amassed in Denver. Wolfe has only continued his unselfish play in Raven purple but he still found himself devoid of suitors this free agency period, eventually signing back with the Ravens for a modest, given his superior play, $4m AAV.

There are countless other players like him around the league. The Ravens have, for a long time, had a defense predicated on stopping the run as a unit and using exotic pressure packages to scheme free rushers at the QB. It is likely this that has seen many productive Raven defenders go on to secure big paydays elsewhere, yet never matching the kind of production they saw in Baltimore.

It would surely be useful to quantify then, the players that enable the success of others, so that they can be appropriately valued and not unwittingly let go, causing a downturn in production. The Ravens have historically been good at identifying their unsung heroes. And, I do suspect that teams track defensive assists in the same way I have been attempting to do, so I’m not sure that this is a groundbreaking idea but it should be out there in the public domain, all the same.

What is LOSDA?

The most important plays for a defense are sacks or run stuffs. For this purpose, I’m defining a run stuff as a tackle for loss, tackle for no gain or tackle after 1-yard gain. Both sacks and run stuffs can be drive killers and put the offense behind schedule. Both will be credited to the player who makes the take-down but often, other players were instrumental in the play, or sometimes the main reason for the play.

A LOSDA, as I’m defining it, is when another player is instrumental in a big defensive play. Important to note here that I am not evaluating secondary play here – I do believe there could be a defensive assist developed for play in the secondary that leads to an incompletion, pass breakup, or interception but I’m not focusing on that here. This is just for assists made at or near the point of attack and the line of scrimmage.

In my research for the post, I have watched all of the sacks and run stuffs by three teams in 2020. There is a laundry list of potential reasons a LOSDA can be awarded, a few of them listed below:

*4 technique DL on the play-side resets the line of scrimmage against an outside zone run, taking away the bang on this play, forcing the runner to cutback into the arms of a waiting defender who has played the back-side assignment well.

*1 technique NT, processes quickly pre-snap, identifies a coming double-team early, positions quickly, holds up at the point of attack and occupies the double team. Stopping the OL on the combination block from getting to the second level, allowing a free Linebacker to make the play in the backfield.

*A stunt/game is called on one side of the DL, the DE crashing inside takes both the OT and OG with him, creating a clear lane for interior DL looping outside.

*As well as players earning LOSDA’s, scheme and coverage could also be awarded an assist. This would be when a zone blitz was the sole reason for a free rusher or when no pass-rusher marked themselves out with their play and the QB had to hold the ball and move in the pocket, after going through all his progressions.

*Edge defender, sets a hard and physical edge with outstanding burst and use of hands with leverage to compress his gap and force the back to make a move that he doesn’t want to/isn’t aiming for.

Essentially a LOSDA is when a player who wasn’t credited with the run stuff or sack does two things:

*Plays his assignment with high competence, wins his personal battle emphatically

*Is close to the point of attack and affects the play

As I continued the research I realized that LOSDA covered too many eventualities and there were differing degrees of contribution that players made, some of which were less consequential than others but still warranted some credit. So I made a binary distinction between Primary and Secondary LOSDA.

A Primary LOSDA being when a player clearly meets the two criteria set out above, a Secondary LOSDA being when one of the two criteria were more marginal i.e. the player wins his battle emphatically but was slightly too far away from the point of attack to make much of an effect on the play. Or, the player was close to the point of attack but only played his assignment marginally well and wasn’t dominant.

An example of a secondary assist might have been setting the edge with power and dominance but the run went through the A gap, it perhaps caused a momentary hesitation for the back who wouldn’t be able to bounce the play outside because of the edge defender’s play, but ultimately was still looking to run it up the gut.

Identifying LOSDA is resource-intensive, it takes time to fully understand the offensive play, defensive assignments and watch each player’s contribution to determine it’s value to the play that was made. For this reason, and the fact that we can’t always know exact assignments or play-calls, LOSDA is subjective, open to interpretation and therefore requires some daylight to perfect it as an accurate measure.

Defenses like the Ravens are predicated on assist-makers, which is why I wanted to start this study with the Ravens. I’d like to lay out my plan here to open LOSDA up to that aforementioned daylight and have others engage with it over this season to get to a more concrete rationale.

Here’s the plan:

Step 1: Publish this article as an introduction

Step 2: Publish a second article, breaking down the Ravens 2020 Line of Scrimmage Defensive Assists

Step 3: Publish another article, breaking down the Steelers and the Bears 2020 Line of Scrimmage Defensive Assists and how that compares to the Ravens

Step 4: Every four weeks during the season, clip together run stuffs and sacks from the Ravens 2021 season and discuss what I’m seeing, with others, on the Two Guys Watching Football channel to allow people to challenge the criteria for a LOSDA and my evaluation of those plays

Step 5: Recap at the end of the season

Hope you join me for ride and question/feedback if you have ideas about how to make this better.