As the draft draws near, we'll heard a lot of talk about how the Seahawks still need help at defensive end. Part of the reason is because Jadeveon Clowney remains unsigned. But the other part is that last year's first round pick, L.J. Collier, was so invisible during his rookie season that the position he plays is still seen as a major need.

I'm not here to tell you that Collier was bad as a rookie. The pick was unpopular from the outset, and a year later that dissatisfaction has grown rather than decreased. This isn't another Bruce Irvin situation.

I'm interested in how bad Collier was as a rookie, and whether there are examples of other players whose careers had similarly underwhelming starts. If there are other players who had similar rookie seasons, but improved later, that gives us some precedent for optimism about Collier's growth trajectory.

I noticed a couple of months ago that despite his injury issues early in the year and his healthy scratches late in the year, Collier had still seen 152 defensive snaps for the Seahawks defense. I did a double-take at that number, because it seemed like more than I expected. He was on the field for roughly 1 in 7 of Seattle's defensive plays. Maybe that doesn't seem significant, but that's not the point I'm getting to - the point is that while he was on the field for 152 defensive snaps, he was only credited with 3 combined tackles (2 solo, 1 assisted). Those tackle numbers struck me as low. But I wanted to know how low.

Pro-Football-Reference.com starts displaying the snap counts of defensive players from 2012. My methodology was this: I looked up every player drafted since 2012 who was A) listed as a defensive end, B) listed at or above 270 pounds, and C) taken in the first 3 rounds of the draft. I wanted players who were as likely as possible to be in a similar situation to Collier. If they're taken relatively high in the draft they're somewhat more likely to play early, whether for their talent or because of team needs. I also only looked at defensive ends above 270 lbs because I wanted to focus on players who were more likely to be drafted with a 'strong against the run' note on their prospect evaluations. I did this hoping to take a more representative sample by focusing on players more likely to play a 5-tech role, which is what we drafted Collier to do.

I then simply compared total tackles to defensive snaps. It's admittedly a rough metric. I chose to omit special teams snaps from the metrics, because it's unsual for players to rack up high ST tackles, and because tackling statistics aren't differentiated by which phase of the game they are made. It creates some potential blurriness in the final numbers, but I'm not trying to create a perfect or definitive statistic - I'm just looking for rough comparisons, and I think it's good enough for that.

Looking at snaps-per-tackle gives an idea of how often a player is involved in a defensive play. It doesn't account for whether those are tackles behind the line of scrimmage or 10 yards down the field, and it doesn't differentiate between sacks and lower-impact plays. It doesn't say anything about how valuable a player's tackles are. However, a lot of good players will have lower rate stats: the lower the number, the more often a player is involved in a tackle. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the best players on this list will have a lower number of snaps-per-tackle. This just means that they are involved in tackles at a higher rate. I hope that is clear enough, because that is the main premise of this exercise: generally and roughly speaking, better players should be involved in tackles more often.

To start, here is what the Seahawks other defensive ends posted in 2019. I've included Clowney for the sake of further reference, because although he's listed under 270, he usually played 5-tech for us and is best-regarded for his run defense.

Clowney: 19.5 snaps/tackle

Rasheem Green: 20.2 snaps/tackle

Branden Jackson: 20.9 snaps/tackle

Quinton Jefferson: 22.6 snaps/tackle

And now without further ado, here are the snaps-per-tackle rates of all the other rookie defensive ends drafted since 2012 who are listed at least 270 pounds or more:

2019

Zach Allen ( 65th overall, AZ 2019) - 18 snaps/tackle on 144 snaps

Jaylon Ferguson (85th overall, BAL 2019) - 16.1 snaps/tackle on 499 snaps

2018

Breeland Speeks (46th overall, KC 2018) - 19.8 snaps/tackle on 476 snaps

Tyquan Lewis (64th overall, IND 2018) - 26 snaps/tackle on 338 snaps

Chad Thomas (67th overall, CLE 2018)* - n/a snaps/tackle on 22 snaps

(*since 22 snaps wouldn't stand out as a snap/tackle rate, Thomas' failure to record a statistic doesn't tell us anything)

Rasheem Green (79th overall, SEA 2018) - 22.3 snaps/tackle on 201 snaps

2017

Myles Garrett (1st overall, CLE 2017) - 16.7 snaps/tackle on 518 snaps

Solomon Thomas (3rd overall, SF 2017) - 17 snaps/tackle on 696 snaps

Jonathan Allen (17th overall, WAS 2017) - 15.9 snaps/tackle on 159 snaps

Taco Charlton (28th overall, DAL 2017) - 21 snaps/tackle on 399 snaps

Demarcus Walker (51st overall, DEN 2017) - 14.3 snaps/tackle on 100 snaps

Tanoh Kpassagnon (59th overall, KC 2017) - 11.3 snaps/tackle on 158 snaps

Jordan Willis (73rd overall, CIN 2017) - 14.4 snaps/tackle on 360 snaps

Chris Wormley (74th overall, BAL 2017) - 24 snaps/tackle on 120 snaps

2016

Joey Bosa (3rd overall, SDG 2016) - 13.7 snaps/tackle on 563 snaps

DeForest Bucker (7th overall, SF 2016) - 13.8 snaps/tackle on 1006 snaps

Emmanuel Ogbah (32nd overall, CLE 2016) - 16 snaps/tackle on 849 snaps

Jihad Ward (44th overall, OAK 2016) - 21.2 snaps/tackle on 636 snaps

Leonard Williams (6th overall, NYJ 2016) - 12.8 snaps/tackle on 807 snaps

Carl Nassib (65th overall, TB 2016) - 27 snaps/tackle on 540 snaps

Bronson Kaufusi (70th overall, BAL 2016) - 6.4 snaps/tackle on 32 snaps

2015

Arik Armstead (17th overall, SF 2015) - 20.8 snaps/tackle on 375 snaps

Mario Edwards (35th overall, OAK 2015) - 14.2 snaps/tackle on 596 snaps

Owa Odighizuwa (74th overall, NYG 2015) - 42 snaps/tackle on 126 snaps

Henry Anderson (93rd overall, IND 2015) - 14.5 snaps/tackle on 449 snaps

2014

Stephon Tuitt (46th overall, PIT 2014) - 23.3 snaps/tackle on 397 snaps

Kony Ealy (60th overall, DEN 2014) - 30.1 snaps/tackle on 361 snaps

Scott Crichton (72nd overall, MIN 2014) - 8 snaps/tackle on 16 snaps

Kareem Martin (84th overall, ARI 2014) - 22.7 snaps/tackle on 182 snaps

Will Clarke (88th overall, CIN 2014) - 20.7 snaps/tackle on 62 snaps

2012

Quinton Coples (16th overall, NYJ 2012) - 16.8 snaps/tackle on 503 snaps

Vinny Curry (59th overall, PHI 2012) - 9.8 snaps/tackle on 88 snaps

Tyrone Crawford (88th overall, DAL 2012) - 14.8 snaps/tackle on 296 snaps





And now for anyone who didn't do the math at the top, here's L.J. Collier:

L.J. Collier (29th overall, SEA 2019) - 51.6 snaps/tackle on 151 snaps

Woof.

It's not just the worst mark on the list - it's the worst mark by a lot. That is statistically the single least-productive rookie season on this list. There is one exception in Chad Thomas, who did not record a statistic in his rookie year, but also only played 22 snaps total. It is too few snaps to provide any comfort as an additional outlier, as 22 snaps is itself in range with the number of snaps usually occuring between tackle involvement. There are 8 other players on this list who recorded fewer snaps than Collier, and every one of them beat his snaps-to-tackle rate.

The closest statistical comparison is Owa Odighizuwa, drafted 74th overall by the Giants in 2015. His tackle rate was 42 snaps/tackle on 126 snaps, and he was out of the league after two years. The next-closest is both A) not actually very close, and B) another bust: Kony Ealy. No one else on this list had a number above 30.

Now, of course, this list and metric are not definitive. I'm also not posting this just to pile on. But what it can perhaps show is how much ground Collier has to make up in order to get back to the pack - to get back at least to that 20 snaps/tackle range. Because averaging 51.6 snaps between being involved in a play means that opposing offenses were extremely successful at keeping him out of plays last year.