Inside the Numbers - Cowboys @ Washington Football Team

"Inside the Numbers" gives you a deep statistical perspective on what I'm thinking is important for the Cowboys and Washington Football Team

Let's go Inside the Numbers for Sunday's 1 PM ET showdown between the 1-5 Washington Football Team and the 2-4 Dallas Cowboys. 

I. Chase Young is the highest graded rookie in the NFL per ProFootballFocus.com (PFF)

Highest-graded rookie defenders:
1. Chase Young - 79.3
2. Julian Blackmon - 74.1
3. Jordan Fuller - 72.4
4. Antonie Winfield Jr. - 69.7 pic.twitter.com/viL9QHYWbk

— PFF (@PFF) October 24, 2020

The overall difference between Young and Julian Blackmon who is 2nd is 5.2 overall. 

Has Young been dominant so far? I wouldn't say that. Has he been impactful? Yes. 

II. Young is a bright spot overall

At 79.3 overall, Young is the 2nd highest ranked defender per PFF on the Washington Football Team behind Kendall Fuller at 84.5. 

He's comfortably ahead of Kevin Pierre Louis who is No. 3 at 72.9.

Young has the 2nd highest run defense grade via PFF among players with at least 200 snaps on the team. 

III. Quarterbacks are/aren't us!

A look at some QB Metrics per ProFootballReference.com (PFR)

Dwayne Haskins had a 6.7 "Intended air yard per pass attempt (IAY/PA) - Average depth of target, completed or not."

Kyle Allen is at 5.4 with a much smaller sample size of 146 attempts to 55.

Alex Smith in his 17 attempts sits at 5.7 IAY/PA.

In "completed air yards per completion" or (CAY/Cmp.) the difference is much tighter but still in favor of Haskins at 4.1 to 3.9 for Allen and a Negative 0.2 for Smith. 

These numbers measure the air yards the ball travels past the line of scrimmage until completion  and average depth of target. 

Here's a startling number but the eyes and tape do matchup at least somewhere in the neighborhood on this. 

Haskins had a 24.3% bad throw percentage per PFR or 35 bad throws on 146 attempts. 

Allen's bad throw percentage so far is 9.8%. 

Smith's bad throw percentage is high too at 23.5%. For context, Smith had what was considered a bad throw four times on 17 attempts. 

Allen has a bad throw five times on 55 attempts. 

Furthering the difference between Haskins and Allen, per PFR, Haskins had an on-target % of 68.8%, defined as "Percentage of on-target throws per pass attempt"

Allen's on-target % is 84.3%. That's obviously a huge difference.

Haskins was sacked 13 times on 159 pass drops (146 attempts). His average pocket time between snap and throw or pressure collapsing the pocket was 2.2 seconds. Allen is at 2.5 and Smith was even lower than Haskins at 2.1, but remember Smith played against Aaron Donald and the Rams.

Haskins was blitzed 40 times on 159 pass drops, Allen has been blitzed 17 times on 60 pass drops.

Haskins was blitzed 25.1 % of the pass drops he had while Allen has been blitzed 28.3% per PFR Advanced Stats.  

Chris Russell is the Publisher of this site, a part of SI.com. He can be heard on 106.7 The FAN in the Washington D.C. area and world-wide on Radio.com. Chris also hosts the "Locked on Washington Football Team" Podcast and can be read via subscription to Warpath Magazine. You can e-mail Chris at russellmania09@Gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @Russellmania621