You often see defenders’ individual stats bandied about like badges of honour after games, but in truth, they don’t really mean much. Defensive stats such as tackles or interceptions made are often a better indicator of a defender’s style rather than their actually quality. Mark (
@ETNAR_uk) has done a tonne of work on evaluating defenders using statistics and he hasn’t really been able to find defensive statistics that correlate well with how good he thinks defenders are at preventing shots.
This leads on to another point about individual statistics, which is that they’re often more a description of style than anything else. Take dribbling for example. If a player X dribbles twice as much as a player Y, does that make him a better player? Not really. Maybe he’s a better dribbler? Maybe the other player has a style of play that revolves more around passing than moving with the ball? Even then, you should still try to break these statistics down to percentage success rates to try to work out which player is a better dribbler. Does player X or player Y bypass more players on average when dribbling? You can almost always go into more detail and context, and it’s important to do so.
For individual defensive stats such as tackles made and interceptions, it’s also helpful to try and adjust them based on the player’s side’s possession, as Ted Knutson explains in this piece:
“If your team has possession of the ball, you can’t rack up defensive rate stats. Teams that have a ton of possession don’t give their opponent the ball very often, and thus can’t accumulate defensive stats. What do you do when you know the basic rate stats are meaningless? You adjust them.”
