FanPost

Mining CFF Signature Stats and Henry Anderson

I normally leave the scouting reports to Reno. He does a fantastic job and I just can't even come close to the awesomeness that is contained in every report he gives us. I am normally a stats guy and have typically found the availability and quality of college football stats a little annoying. Well apparently I was not the only one because at the request of some NFL teams Pro Football Focus created College Football Focus and while they aren't providing everything to us they are giving us some signature stats. Basically I wanted to introduce everyone to them and do a little digging into them.


I wanted to start with a player that I had not heard of until I listened to the first CFF podcast (accessible in the above link), Henry Anderson. I listened to that podcast before they dropped the signature stats but I heard something I found amazing, one of the guys was saying that he did not see a significant difference between Henry Anderson and possible best player in the draft Leonard Williams! "Dude has to be giving some crazy hot take to get attention for the new football focus," I rationalized but then the stats dropped and I could see where he was coming from.

So lets start with the Signature States for Interior Linemen. If you are accustom to PFF these should be pretty familiar to you, Run Stop Percentage is the percentage of plays where the player tackled a ball carrier to prevent a successful run and Pass Rushing Productivity is the percentage of plays where the player got a pressure, hit, or sack. So in general a player who is good against the run will probably have a high run stop percentage and a good pass rusher will have a good PRP. Now there is naturally cases where teams actively avoid certain player, running to the other side or rolling away from them but its a pretty good stand in.

If we look at CFFs top interior run stop percentage players we see some familiar names like Leonard and Malcom Brown but there are a lot of other guys from smaller schools. This makes sense, if you are playing a bunch of guys who might be employed by Enterprise in a few months you better dominate them but it puts the guys playing better competition at a dis-advantage. Not to worry CFF thought of this and provided a break down of the run stop percentage against just top 5 power conferences ( RSPaPC)! With that change the name recognition did not get any better but one two players that were tops in both were Leonard and Anderson with RSPaPC's of 13.9% and 12.3%.

So we are starting to see why someone might be making the claim that Anderson is comparable to Leonard they both play in the PAC 12 so against the same competition and the put up similar run stopping percentages. What about rushing the passer you say? Well funny you should ask as in that area Anderson actually kicks Leonard's ass posting a hefty 12.2% PRP v top 5 conferences while Leonard wasn't even in the top 10 with PRP of 7.8%.

Now the next question I had is well maybe Leonard just has all the physical tools and Anderson doesn't. Sometimes the guys who just look at tape miss some projections because the don't realize the player is just missing the required athleticism for the NFL. So lets compare:

Hieght Arm Length Weight Hands 10 Yard 40 Yard Vertical Broad 3 Cone Drill 20 yard Shuttle
Henry Anderson 6' 6" 33.5" 294 lbs 9.75" 1.63s 5.03s 30" 111" 7.20s 4.19s
Leonard Williams 6'5" 34.75" 302 lbs 10.625" 1.72s 4.97s 29.5" 106" 7.59s 4.53s

We can see that physically they are a lot alike Anderson is obviously a little thinner he has a inch on Williams and weighs 8 lbs less but across the board Anderson is the same or better than Williams athletically. So this begs the question what made Anderson so effective and why did CFF like him so much? Well I went over to Draft Breakdown to see if I could get an idea.

Active Hands

It took all of 3 plays for me to realize why Anderson was so productive, his hand are just crazy good.

This is a great instance of him going to one side engaging with his right hand with a quick punch to the centers left shoulder and then going back to the inside swiping away the centers left hand with his right.

Just Keep Swimming

This play is one of my favorites and is another example of great hands. He swipes away the centers hands then swims over the smaller back on his way to the QB. He uses the swim move quiet a bit from what I've seen and its a nice smooth fluid motion that I could watch all day. Just in the Oregon St game video I saw him use the swim move at least half a dozen successful times.

Holding Strength

I would not call Anderson strong at least not in the sense we think of Suh or other dominate DTs as strong but he holds well at the point of attack like in this play from the game against Utah.

On this play he stands up the guard and then uses his good hands to get free and make a crucial tackle.

So whats wrong with him?

Well NFL.com's weakness for him are

Slender legs, tight hips and boring feet. Feet will stall at contact when squared up against the run. Initial punch by an offensive lineman will jostle him. Lacks power to play inside. On the ground far too often. Must improve hand usage as pass rusher. Can be blocked by tight ends. Benefited from team-oriented defensive scheme. Doesn't gain much ground with initial steps as pass rusher. Relies on hustle sacks and lacks counter moves.

Some of these complaints are not unreasonable. As I said above his strength is not over powering and he will never be "strong" but he makes up with that with smart body positioning. In the two games I watch of him I never saw him blocked by a tight end but he does have very stiff hips and has no bend when rushing from the outside. I could not disagree more about the counter moves as I thought he had quiet a few and used them well and I thought his first step was fine. He does end up on the ground A LOT I my rough count from the two games I watched was 13 times where he ended up on the ground but I don't see that as a lack of strength like the NFL.com scout seems to. In most of the situations he was just going hard and that is why ended up on the ground but a few times it was because he is a tall guy and got too high.

CBS currently has him projected in the 4th round. I see the danger of just looking at his stats because the Stanford D was a team based defense and his sacks were often garbage sacks. He had three sacks in the Utah game and two were coverage but I thought he played the best at the 3 technique and struggles playing 5,9, and 0 techniques which he played each and everyone in both games I watched. I have to say I can see why CFF was so high on him but I guess the concern is that he isn't going to be much better in the NFL than he is now in college football. Even if he is 25-50% as effective in the pros as he was this past year in college he would be a borderline starter and a likely steal in the 4th if the Lions trade down or do something to get another draft pick between now and the draft.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pride Of Detroit or its writers.