If the key to great play is keeping LVE healthy, how do the Dallas Cowboys make sure LVE stays healthy? No. In his most healthy season since 2018, his missed tackle rate fell to 9.4 percent, with most of the misses coming early in the season. This relationship becomes even clearer when you look at LVE’s numbers from 2021. It’s not exactly making a leap to say health is related to strength, strength is related to missed tackle rate, and missed tackle rate is related to quality of overall play. In his 10 games in 2020, it extended to 16.7%. In the nine games he played in 2019, his missed tackle percentage ballooned to 15.3. It’s no surprise that when the injuries hit, the missed tackles started piling up as well. There’s a reason most linebackers with low missed tackle percentages have short arms, and it’s the same reason that made LVE so dang special as a rookie. His 81 inch wingspan (which puts him in the 96th percentile) was used to grab and drag down ball careers on a regular basis. His 6.7 percent missed tackle percentage was amongst the best in the NFL and frankly, those numbers don’t even do him justice. If he got his mitts on you, you were not escaping. As a rookie, Vander Esch was long, strong, and an impenetrable wall. Looking at LVE’s professional career, it’s impossible to not notice the injuries and the impact those injuries made in his game. There’s reason to believe that 11-game stretch was not an anomaly but rather a product of putting Vander Esch in the right situation. Aidan Davis at Blogging the Boys pointed out last week that over the last 11 weeks of the season, LVE played like a top-10 linebacker (check it out see a 2018/2021 season comparison). More importantly, he played more like his rookie-self last season. For the first time since his rookie year he played the entire season. So when Dallas passed on his fifth-year option, nobody, not even Vander Esch, seemed surprised.īut last season offered a glimmer of hope. ![]() ![]() ![]() Whether Injuries, supporting cast, or simply regression to the mean were to blame, the play on the field was undeniable. In 20, he graded as a below-average linebacker by PFF and it’s hard to argue with the verdict. After exploding onto the scene in 2018 as a rookie, LVE’s stock has cooled considerably. The indifference towards re-upping Vander Esch is understandable. There’s reason to believe Leighton Vander Esch is in store for a big season with the Dallas Cowboys in 2022 The re-signing of Leighton Vander Esch falls into that category. In the rare occasion a retention made headlines, it was usually buried somewhere between the Life and Style section and the Obituaries. Instead of seeing roster additions populate the newsfeed, Cowboys fans were treated to an onslaught of subtractions. The Dallas Cowboys made headlines this past offseason for all the wrong reasons.
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