Cowboy cornerback Trevon Diggers swept the league in the second season of his career, completing 11 interceptions in just 15 games.
How powerful is that? Due to the change in the offensive play of the new century, this season's Diggs is only the ninth single-season interception in the new century to reach double digits, and has set a new high in this century; only 13 times in history have a higher number of single-season intercepts than Diggs; if the remaining two games complete three more interceptions, they can equal the single-season interception record set by "Night Train" Rennes in 1952. It's amazing!
After successfully entering the Pro Bowl list, Diggs' name also appeared in the discussion of DPOY and the best team, but the PFF website did not buy it, because his PFF staring score only ranked 45th of all cornerbacks.
It is undeniable that Diggs used a large number of interceptions to create a good opportunity for the cowboy to convert attack and defense, but he may not have a cornerstone effect on the cowboy's defensive system.
High risk and high reward
Diggs' staring rating is much lower than you might think because he's released a lot of yards. How many yards? Now that the season is not over, the 962 yards released by the Diggs defense zone have set a new high in the past 16 years.
Despite being a cutter, only two cornerbacks have had more passes this season than Diggers. That means the quarterback doesn't take the interceptor seriously at all, or that his defense is easy to get a catch. Mahoms passed 10 goals against the Chiefs and 8 against saints, and although it was possible to cause interceptions, it turned out that the opponent was not afraid of him at all.
Of course, the Cowboys are a strong team and have been in the lead for a long time, so the long soft zone defense makes Diggers' defensive pass stats embarrassing? In fact, Diggs released the most yards in the first quarter and the first three quarters of the league. Among the cornerbacks in the league with more than 100 slots, Diggs ranked third from the bottom in the number of yards released in each gear, and even released five touchdowns.
A simple fact is that the balls he releases are basically large sizes. Diggs has averaged 18.2 yards of catches this season, about 40 percent of which are propulsion after receiving the ball.
Diggers is also the only cornerback in the league to have double-digit foul numbers, with seven of 11 fouls coming from staring at the defensive and two fouls from poor startline pullers.
Because of the foul Diggs white sent the opponent 11 first attacks, but these did not appear in the statistics of the defense pass, a large part of the reason is that the defense of the pass is too aggressive and sloppy. There are only two cornerbacks this season who have released more first attacks than Diggs, and if fouls are counted, Diggers is the most in the league.
Obviously, the interception in the anti-pass offsets a lot of negative effects, and the cowboy seems to be willing to sacrifice some anti-pass data to let Diggs take the interception and win higher returns. But the PFF data takes into account both implications.
Valuation
In the case of the recent big win last week, Diggs completed the interception in the first defensive gear of the game, but lost a 48-yard large size against Diamy Brown at the end of the first quarter. The interception was great, but the rookie receiver who had only received eight balls in the roster season lost such a large number of yards that the security guard's bag did not save Diggs' poor defense.
In addition, Diggs' defensive run is also very bad, due to his size and racing style, his PFF defensive score this season is only 30.4, and 130 cornerbacks rank fourth from the bottom.
Since it is a cornerback, why should it care about anti-running? The problem is that the average range of yards released when cornerbacks make big mistakes is 13.5 yards, and Diggs has made ten such mistakes this season.
Except for the interception, it seems that Diggs is useless, so finally we will talk about his interception. The interception itself is of great significance to the defensive team, but the wonderful fish jump interception and the interception of the ball bouncing into the hand after refraction are the same, but the process of scoring the players is fundamentally different. The former relies on strength and can be copied, while the latter relies on luck and is difficult to copy.
From the video highlight above, you can see that two of Diggers's 11 interceptions first touched the receiver and three of them were passed directly into his arms, so the gold content of his interceptions should be questioned.
However, his wonderful performances are also many. The swiftness of the second week's interception of Herbert's ball reflected his strength. But for pirates and patriots, luck is really good.
summary
Diggers has played nearly a thousand defensive gears so far this season, and the number of interceptions in just 11 slots is too small to fully summarize his defensive performance, nor can it be evidence that he is an elite cornerback.
Diggs tried his best to complete 11 scribbles to give the Cowboys a lot of ball transfers, but making a lot of mistakes is also hurting the team.
Look, this season's Diggs is highly likely to be selected for the season, but that doesn't mean he's already in the league's elite cornerbacks.