<\/p>\n
With the FTN Football Almanac 2025 nearing its release date\u2014pre-order here!<\/a>\u2014it\u2019s time we finish up our preview of the league\u2019s advanced passing stats.\u00a0 We\u2019ve already covered passing<\/a> and receiving plus-minus<\/a>, as well as YAC+<\/a>, all from the offensive side of the ball.\u00a0 We\u2019ll wrap things up by looking at how the league\u2019s defenses performed in each stat.<\/p>\n In all honesty, defensive numbers here bounced around more than offensive ones do, because these are primarily offensive stats.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that a defense can\u2019t be particularly good at tackling and stopping teams from wracking up tons of YAC, or that there aren\u2019t shutdown corners out there that can make catching a pass all that much more difficult, but the defensive versions of these numbers are less consistent year to year.\u00a0 From 2023 to 2024, defensive plus-minus had a -0.07 correlation, and defensive YAC+ had a +0.07 correlation.\u00a0 That\u2019s a bit low, historically speaking, but it\u2019s rare we see anything above +0.15 here; there\u2019s plenty of noise in the data.\u00a0 The offensive versions had correlations of +0.45 and +0.48, respectively, in 2024, and those numbers rise if you limit it to teams which kept the same quarterback from year to year.\u00a0 For these particular stats, it matters far more who is throwing the ball and who is catching it than the coverage trying to prevent that from happening. If you were unlucky enough to draw the AFC North last season, you had a much harder time stopping receptions than if you drew the AFC East.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean this data is meaningless. Nor does it mean defenses that did particularly well shouldn\u2019t be applauded, as a good season is a good season regardless of what it means for the future. What does it mean if your team was near the bottom of the league? Well, have hope\u2014these things often bounce back just as the schedule turns. A bad score here wasn\u2019t good for your defense in 2024 but could mean you\u2019re primed for a rebound in 2025.<\/p>\n As a refresher on these two statistics, plus-minus is essentially \u201ccompletions above expected,\u201d while YAC+ is essentially \u201cyards after catch above expected.\u201d Plus-minus allows us to provide context to completion percentage allowed by comparing completion percentages in each area of the field to historical baselines. These statistics do not include passes listed as \u201cThrown Away,\u201d \u201cBatted Down,\u201d \u201cMiscommunication,\u201d \u201cHit in Motion,\u201d or \u201cQuarterback Drops Ball\u201d by FTN Data charting. Metrics are based on how often a pass is completed based on the pass distance, the distance required for a first down and whether the ball was thrown to the left, middle or right side of the field. YAC+, on the other hand, estimates how much YAC a receiver gains relative to the YAC expected from an average receiver. We do not specify YAC+ based on particular routes, but the statistic provides a holistic approach to understanding which defenses allow more or less yards after the catch.<\/p>\n The Eagles take home the twin crowns of plus-minus and YAC+ champion, as their secondary shut everyone down a year ago on their way to the Super Bowl. Especially considering how poorly they ended 2023, we can\u2019t give enough credit to Philadelphia\u2019s secondary when we\u2019re talking about how dominant its defense was last season.\u00a0 Cooper DeJean<\/a> was outstanding, finishing 11th with a -25.8% coverage DVOA. Quinyon Mitchell<\/a>, C.J. Gardner-Johnson<\/a> and Darius Slay<\/a> weren\u2019t far behind, either. When your secondary\u2019s weak link last year was Reed Blankenship<\/a>, you\u2019re doing pretty damn good for yourself.<\/p>\n The last team that pulled off the double, leading in both plus-minus and YAC+, was the 2017 Vikings.\u00a0 That\u2019s mostly remembered for being the Case Keenum<\/a> miracle year, but they had a -21.7% pass defense DVOA that year and had Xavier Rhodes<\/a> and Harrison Smith<\/a> as All-Pros in their secondary. They fell from first to 13th in plus-minus and first to 18th in YAC+ the next season as the year-to-year variance hit them. It turns out, it\u2019s tougher to stop Tom Brady<\/a>, Russell Wilson<\/a> and Aaron Rodgers<\/a> than it is to stop Joe Flacco<\/a>, Brett Hundley<\/a> and DeShone Kizer.<\/a> This is one of those deep insights you\u2019ve come to expect from the experts at FTN.<\/p>\n The Eagles secondary, as good as it is, is likely to be more challenged this season. While the Eagles had to take on both Lamar Jackson<\/a> and Joe Burrow<\/a> in 2025, both of whom are tough draws, their 2024 slate includes Josh Allen<\/a>, Patrick Mahomes<\/a>, Jared Goff<\/a> and Justin Herbert<\/a>, none of whom exactly scream \u201ceasy out.\u201d\u00a0 And even the teams they played in both years are bound to be better, as they\u2019re not likely to get two Cooper Rush<\/a> games again when they play Dallas. It\u2019s not a murderer\u2019s row all the way through or anything, but it would be reasonable to expect Philadelphia to allow more catches and yards after the catch next season, simply because the Eagles are facing better offenses.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean that the Eagles defense is bound to collapse or anything\u2014we still have them projected to be very good, even against a tough schedule. And those 2017 Vikings, while they fell in these numbers the next season, still had a top-three passing defense in 2018.\u00a0 It\u2019s a low correlation, not a negative one. And it\u2019s usually a little stronger than it was in 2023-2024, so we\u2019d expect better defenses to be stickier going forward than they were last year, rather than jumping all around our rankings. But part of winning a Super Bowl is having everything go right, and a healthy shut-down secondary is another one of those things the Eagles had work out for them a year ago. I\u2019d personally be more concerned about losing Gardner-Johnson and Slay than I would be about seeing a stat that might regress toward the mean, but if the 2025 Eagles end up failing to repeat, worse secondary performance is likely to be part of it.<\/p>\n Here are the 2024 numbers for plus-minus and YAC+ allowed, sorted from best plus-minus to worst. Remember that the numbers are from the offensive point of view, so negative numbers are better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the FTN Football Almanac 2025 nearing its release date\u2014pre-order here!\u2014it\u2019s time we finish up our preview…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,7,6170,6,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-170494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-football-outsiders","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","14":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114772735650779605","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}