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Lions safety Don Carey quietly led the league in solo tackles on special teams.

(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)

ALLEN PARK -- Want to know how many catches Calvin Johnson had last season? How many rushing yards Ameer Abdullah averaged per attempt? How many tackles Theo Riddick broke? How many passes Eric Ebron dropped?

Want to know how long Matthew Stafford held onto the football, to the hundredth of a second?

No sweat. Someone, somewhere, keeps track of all that stuff.

But in this era of hyperinformation, special teams statistics still go oddly overlooked.

Consider this: Detroit Lions safety Don Carey actually led the league in solo tackles on special teams. But nobody seems to know that. Even Don Carey didn't until special teams coach Joe Marciano told him after the season.

"Joe actually had to come to me and let me know," Carey said. "There are some websites that follow them, but they're unofficial. But he came to me and let me know. He keeps track from the official stats.

"He shook my hand and was like, '(You) own that title for this year.' So it's awesome."

Even then, there seems to be some discrepancy in the statistics.

Carey says Marciano counted either 12 or 13 unassisted tackles. But according to the NFL's Game Statistics Information System, he had 14.

The world knows how far the ball travels through the air every time Stafford fires a pass, but no one seems to agree on how many times a guy tackled another guy on special teams.

"People care more about Matthew Stafford and his ranking and how long he takes to throw the ball, than they do about Don Carey getting downfield and beating a double-vice to make the tackle," Carey said. "That's just the reality of life."

Carey played in all 16 games this year and finished with 21 tackles. It was a relatively quiet season for the sixth-year veteran -- though maybe that also says something about what we're paying attention to.

Because although he wasn't an impact player on defense, he seemed to have a very good year on special teams. Even if no one really noticed.

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