NFL: Jason Babin, IDP Sleeper?

by Arif Hasan

Justin Babin, IDP Sleeper? Photo credit NFL 

IDP scouting and advice is always hairy. Defensive players accumulate statistics sporadically and without a lot of reliability. Offensive players have dozens of statistics by which to measure their performance and become fantasy mavens, while defending players can accumulate good statistics regardless of their overall ability. As an example, Roman Harper and Dawan Landry both scored highly in tackle-heavy leagues, while Kerry Rhodes was not a starter in many leagues.

While defensive linemen doing a better job scoring points relative to their overall skill level, they still don’t repeat their performance from year-to-year. As a good measure, one can look at the 2009-2012 rankings for a system that gives two points for sacks, one point for tackles and 1.5 points for tackles for loss.

Year	First	Second	Third	Fourth	Fifth
2008	Justin Tuck	Trent Cole	Jared Allen	Julius Peppers	Mario Williams
2009	Jared Allen	Elvis Dumervil	Andre Carter	Trent Cole	Will Smith
2010	Justin Tuck	Osi Umenyiora	Ndamukong Suh	Jared Allen	Jason Babin
2011	Jason Pierre-Paul	Jared Allen	Terrell Suggs	Rob Ninkovich	Calais Campbell
2012	J.J. Watt	Cameron Wake	Geno Atkins	Elvis Dumervil	Jason Pierre-Paul

The only player to appear in the top five in at least three of those five years is Jared Allen, although Jason Pierre-Paul also makes a strong case for his repeatability as a defensive line pick. Running backs and wide receivers are much more predictable, and fantasy owners who have never played IDP might not understand this. Even from game to game, IDP players experience much more variability.

There’s some hope, though. While sacks themselves are not a useful predictor of success, total pressures and pressures per snap are a great predictor of future fantasy value—they are much more consistent from year to year.

Look at the top five in PFF’s Pass Rush Productivity, a measure that looks at hurries, sacks and hits and weights them before dividing them by the total number of pass-rushing snaps they took (min: 200 pass rushing snaps):

Year	First	Second	Third	Fourth	Fifth
2008	John Abraham	Dwight Freeney	Leonard Little	Jared Allen	Julius Peppers
2009	Dwight Freeney	Robert Mathis	John Abraham	Styles G. White	Ray Edwards
2010	Charles Johnson	Ray Edwards	Trent Cole	John Abraham	Jason Babin
2011	Trent Cole	Jason Babin	Chris Long	Carlos Dunlap	John Abraham
2012	Brandon Graham	Cameron Wake	Geno Atkins	Charles Johnson	Chris Long/Derrick Morgan

Given that Cameron Wake was a high-level outside linebacker at rushing (ranked above Babin in PRP in 2010), you could count him as a success for the statistic as well.

When looking at total pressures, the picture becomes even clearer:

Year	First	Second	Third	Fourth	Fifth
2008	Jared Allen	John Abraham	Julius Peppers	Mario Williams	Aaron Kampman/Kevin Williams
2009	Dwight Freeney	Ray Edwards	Justin Smith	Jared Allen	Trent Cole
2010	Charles Johnson	Trent Cole	Chris Long	Dwight Freeney	Chris Clemons
2011	Chris Long	Julius Peppers	Justin Smith	Trent Cole/Jason Babin	Jared Allen/Chris Clemons
2012	Geno Atkins	Cameron Wake	Chris Long/J.J. Watt	Charles Johnson/Jared Allen	Derrick Morgan

In all, these provide different snapshots in what to expect from our defensive linemen. There’s some noise: players like Justin Smith consistently produce pressures but don’t rack up numbers, which is a relic of two-gap systems.

For the most part, this largely means two things: find 4-3 defensive ends who produce pressure. The only exception to this would be a two-gapping 4-3 player like Red Bryant (who didn’t produce much pressure, anyway) or a one-gap 3-4 player like J.J. Watt (who produced the 22nd most pressure of all defensive linemen in 2011).

Given that system changes robbed players like Dwight Freeney and Mario Williams of their ability to repeat their fantasy value, counting pressures instead of fantasy points is even more useful than the tables might imply.

Jason Babin is a player who tends to struggle on the fringe of fantasy respectability, and could be dismissed because he’s moving teams and therefore schemes (particularly because he no longer operates in Jim Washburn’s much-publicized “Wide 9” scheme).

Babin has only ever produced big numbers when playing in a Wide 9 defense, so it stands to reason that moving away from a Washburn-influenced line should permanently decrease his fantasy value.

Not so fast.

Gus Bradley, the head new coach at the Jacksonville Jaguars, is intent on installing the defense he ran at Seattle, a hybrid 4-3/3-4 defense. What’s unique about the defense is that it only has one position designed to create sacks instead of the two or three that fans typically see in a 4-3 defense. That position produced two-thirds of Seattle’s sacks (split between Chris Clemons and Bruce Irvin) in 2012.

Jason Babin will play that role in the Jacksonville defense—called the “Leo” position in their parlance. The Leo is almost identical to the Wide 9 defensive end, lining up further away from the formation and almost assured of a one-on-one matchup with the tackle. In 2011, Babin used this one-one-one matchup to rank 4th in total pressures, second in pass-rush productivity and third in sacks. Now, he’ll play the role Chris Clemons did for Seattle, but with better tools.

Chris Clemons ran a 4.68 40-yard dash with a 1.72 10-yard split and produced 18 reps at the Combine back in 2003. Jason Babin ran a faster 40 (4.62 seconds) and had a much faster 10-yard split (1.62 seconds). More than that, he had ten more reps than Clemons.

While Clemons was spelled by Irvin, Babin looks to be relatively free. Yes, he’ll have to compete with an athletic Andre Branch for snaps, but Branch has wanted for production. With one sack to his name and ranking 58^th out of 62 4-3 defensive ends in pass-rusher productivity, it looks like his technical chops don’t match up to his physical play. Irvin stole snaps from Clemons despite being one-dimensional by playing to his one dimension extremely well. Don’t expect Branch to do the same. Behind them on the depth chart are wastelands.

Babin won’t provide you with top-end defensive end production—only a player like Jason Pierre-Paul or J.J. Watt can do that. But if you’re looking for a DE2/DL2, it’s hard to look away from a player that’s being placed in a system perfect for him: split out wide and serving as the only pass-rusher. He won’t produce a lot of tackles, so he’s much more valuable in sack-heavy leagues; the difference in his 2011 points between a three-point sack league and a two-point sack league is the difference between the third-best defensive lineman and the seventh-best.

He could start off the season against very good tackles, but he also has the opportunity of playing against the Colts twice, and the Cardinals, Chargers, Titans and Bills as well. He should find plenty of time to get enough pressures and turn them into sacks.

In the end, Babin is definitely worth consideration in your IDP leagues; much more than he’s being given credit for. Babin goes unranked at the IDP Guru, ranked 24th in Fantasy Pros, and ranked 26th by Pro Football Focus. It wouldn’t be unheard of to see Babin rack up 16 sacks, in which case he should be filling out the top ten. More realistically, a 13.5 sack season will make him a top-15 player in most leagues and top ten in sack-friendly leagues.