{"id":92368,"date":"2020-08-01T14:20:36","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T18:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/?p=92368"},"modified":"2021-03-26T20:49:04","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T00:49:04","slug":"justin-simmons-is-2019s-most-valuable-defensive-player-per-pff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2020\/08\/01\/justin-simmons-is-2019s-most-valuable-defensive-player-per-pff\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Simmons Was 2019&#8217;s Most Valuable Defensive Player, Per PFF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The dog days of summer are upon us, and the regular season is still over a month away. During this lull in the NFL calendar, the fine folks over at Pro Football Focus have been working on a Wins Above Replacement stat, or WAR. According to this metric, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/nfl-teams2\/broncos\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Denver Broncos<\/a> star safety\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/S\/SimmJu00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Justin Simmons<\/a><\/strong> was the most valuable defensive player in football.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Most valuable defenders in 2019, per PFF WAR:<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udd38 Justin Simmons<br \/>\ud83d\udd38 Richard Sherman<br \/>\ud83d\udd38 Anthony Harris<br \/>\ud83d\udd38 Jamal Adams <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/O8oJfZRGcn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/O8oJfZRGcn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; PFF (@PFF) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PFF\/status\/1289622710868295680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 1, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>PFF: Justin Simmons the Most Valuable Defensive Player in Football<\/h2>\n<p>WAR is far from a perfect stat, but it&#8217;s a good measure to show just how good Simmons was in 2019. Now, it&#8217;s also worth mentioning that &#8220;most valuable&#8221; does not necessarily mean &#8220;best&#8221;. Nobody would argue that Justin Simmons is a better player than\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/D\/DonaAa00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Donald<\/a><\/strong>, but Simmons&#8217; work in coverage is more valuable than Donald&#8217;s work in the trenches. PFF <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pff.com\/news\/pro-pff-data-study-coverage-vs-pass-rush\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">performed a study<\/a> a while back suggesting that pass coverage is more important than pass rush, and the analytics community seems to agree with that conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>As one might expect from the 2019 Defensive WAR leader, Justin Simmons had a season for the ages last year. While taking his game to another level, Simmons started all 16 games, recording four interceptions, 15 pass breakups, two tackles-for-loss, and 93 total tackles. Traditional stats don&#8217;t tell the whole story, as most of a safety&#8217;s impact cannot be accounted for in traditional stats. According to PFF, Simmons ended the season with the second-highest grade among safeties, trailing only\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=HarrAn01,HarrAn20&amp;search=Anthony+Harris&amp;utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Anthony Harris<\/a><\/strong> by the smallest of margins. As seen in the tweet above, Harris was the third-most valuable defender in the league last year despite having a higher grade. This difference probably comes down to total snaps, as Simmons saw the field more often than Harris.<\/p>\n<p>Simmons was supposed to hit free agency in the 2020 offseason, but\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/E\/ElwaJo00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Elway<\/a><\/strong> used the franchise tag to keep him in town. The two sides couldn&#8217;t come to a long-term deal, so Simmons will play on a one-year, fully-guaranteed deal before testing the market in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Main photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"TVGOOlxLSX9JpmCtYQ2dmA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1196602497\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'TVGOOlxLSX9JpmCtYQ2dmA',sig:'sIBzXs8IxxjtnIc_VOXENWN9fOiW58Gf6qfIbJfwiis=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1196602497',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Denver Broncos safety Justin Simmons was the most valuable defensive player in the league, according to the fine folks at Pro Football Focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2376,"featured_media":92370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[450,3361,266,61,1435,5455],"class_list":["post-92368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broncos","tag-aaron-donald","tag-anthony-harris","tag-denver-broncos","tag-football","tag-john-elway","tag-justin-simmons"],"modified_by":"David Latham, Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}