Disruptive Plays- Who Will Be the Next Devin Phillips

There is an interesting new statistic making the rounds on the internet. It’s called Disruptive Plays, or DP. It’s a cumulative total of several key defensive stats that are used; Tackles for Loss, Sacks, Interceptions, Passes Broken Up, Passes Defended, Quarterback Hits, Fumbles Forced, Fumbles Recovered, Blocked Kicks, and Safeties. This doesn’t take into account the amount of yards involved in an interception or fumble return – just the number of instances.

For the DP number, each of these counts one point, and points are added together to get DP’s for a game or season. There could be an argument here that some of these should count more points than others. An interception may be better than a pass defended, or a sack should count more points than a quarterback hit. But sometimes, a quarterback hit leads to an interception, so to keep this simple, each category counts the same. Furthermore, this isn’t an official statistic anyway, so let’s just go with it.

A review of JSU's DP numbers for the last five years shows some interesting trends. Keep in mind, it can work differently for different schemes. For some defenses, the linebackers or defensive ends will be near the top, for others, it could be a safety or cornerback.

Here are the numbers for the past 5 seasons:

2004
Team Total – 249
LaMarcus Rowell – 27.5
Russell Green – 25.5
Dexter Sistrunk – 19
Skylar Mansfield – 18

2005
Team Total – 231
Derrick Sistrunk – 22.5
Devin Phillips – 22
Kenny Brown – 19
Haneef Haqq – 19
Darren Williams – 19

2006 (Numbers were down across the NCAA this year due to changes in rules for the play clock)
Team Total – 209
LeMarcus Rowell – 29
Greg Green – 20
Aaron Jones – 19
George Summers – 16

2007
Team Total – 248
Devin Phillips – 36
Carnell Clark – 21
TJ Heath – 16
John Scott – 14

2008
Team Total – 250
Carnell Clark – 23
AJ Davis – 21
TJ Heath – 21
Alexander Henderson – 17

In looking at this, a few things jump out: 1) Devin Phillips made some plays in 2007. 2) The defense is trending up the last couple years. 3) TJ Heath made the top 4 as a freshman in 2007. But most of all: – the top 4 from last year are all back. In addition, there are several guys that could disrupt a lot of offenses. Brandt Thomas, Jamison Wadley, Morrell Jones, Josh Davis, BigTexas Garrot, just to name a few. Stay tuned- maybe we will track this during the season.