Last week we looked at a neat little stat from our friends at Football Outsiders: Amobi Okoye actually placed within two of the league leader in run defeats. I opined then and there that the stat likely overvalued Okoye's total worth to the run game.
Well, it turns out Okoye has a bit of a split personality. He makes some great plays against the run, and then he also makes some bad plays against it:
↵↵A tackle that takes place after a long gain isn't always a poor play by the player in question; for example, it's hard to fault Amobi Okoye when Mike Thomas rips off a 17-yard end around, but when Okoye runs downfield and is the player who tracks Thomas down, that tackle shows up in his numbers as a non-stop. Okoye's place on this list is sort of interesting for other reasons. I know it surprised some people when he showed up last week on the list of players with the most Run Defeats. Okoye's high Defeats total combined with low Stop Rate shows his plays came all over the place, and he had a habit of getting credited for an assist on a lot of 5-8 yard runs.
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What does it all mean? It all plays rather conveniently into the idea that Okoye is an enigma. But it also shows that there is still some raw talent there waiting to be molded, and that perhaps the right coach could get a lot more out of him than Frank Bush did.
↵Too bad there's that whole pesky "lockout" thing going on to keep that from happening with Wade Phillips.
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