DT Development

[dadmg]

After reading Kubiak's recent comments about the importance of Amobi Okoye stepping up on defense, I finally became motivated to do some research I'd had kicking around in my head for awhile now. Based on casual observation, I've always felt like DT was a position that tends to take awhile to develop. It seems like every year some of the top players are well into their 30s. n the last five years, my mind thinks of guys like Pat Williams, Ted Washington, Sam Adams and many of these guys don't seem to hit their peak until their 30s. But I've never seen any research on this supposed trend so today I decided to do a little informal work.

Big disclaimer up front: the only statistic I used to measure success was Pro Bowl selections. I realize there are many shortfalls to using this award as a measurement of success, but given the lack of solid statistics for measuring DT success (especially for the big space-eater types) I felt it was the best measure. The two most notable shortfalls with using Pro Bowls are that its a popularity-based award, so there is a tendency to overvalue players based on past performance (or undervalue them on lack of past notoriety) and to overvalue sack totals over run-stuffing. These considerations might be part of the reason that some of the DTs that make their first Pro Bowl later in their careers tend to be more towards the Pat Williams/Ted Kennedy mold than the Tommie Harris mold. If you want to keep these things in mind while reading my results and want to adjust accordingly, I don't blame you.

What I Did: I wanted to determine how long it takes DTs to develop into Pro Bowl caliber players and what should be the expected prime of their careers. Using ProFootballReference.com as a resource, I profiled every player to reach the Pro Bowl between 1989-2008 (originally I just researched 1999-2008, but later decided to expand my list to 20 years to see if much changed). For each player, I recorded the first year of their career that they reached the Pro Bowl, the age they were when they first reached the Pro Bowl, the amount of Pro Bowls they achieved and their Pro Bowl span (years from their first to last Pro Bowl.) The reason for including span was that I felt like if a player achieved the Pro Bowl in 5 years in an 8 year span its likely (although not always true) that they were playing at a pro bowl caliber level for the entire span. Maybe one year they didn't make it because injuries limited their numbers or because there were lots of good candidates in one year and some people got squeezed out despite playing just as well as before.

I also profiled each season, determining how old the average Pro Bowler was, what season of their career they were in and who were the youngest and oldest Pro Bowlers.

The Results: Parts of my research really surprised me, while other parts confirmed some of my gut instincts. There were, as I realized, more than a few players who didn't develop until later in their careers. On the other hand, I didn't realize how many players emerged as Pro Bowlers in their 2nd or 3rd years.

The mean age for a DT's first appearance in the Pro Bowl in the past 20 years was 25.73 years old, or 4.25 seasons of experience. The average Pro Bowler achieved 2.93 Pro Bowls and had a Pro Bowl span of 3.55 seasons. The median and mode ages for first Pro Bowl also came out at 4 seasons and 26 years old. From this, we can say that the prime of the average Pro Bowl DT's career is probably between 26-30.

Looking at the Pro Bowl performers by season, in any given year, the average Pro Bowler was 4.69 years into their career and 27.2 years old. In recent years, these numbers have been skewing older, although some of that might be because of Pat Williams. In the last five years, the average age/years have been:

2004 - 4.5 years in the league, 26.83 years old
2005 - 5 years experience, 27.43 years old
2006 - 5.14 years experience, 28.00 years old
2007 - 5.38 years experience, 28.13 years old
2008 - 6.5 years experience, 29.33 years old

This year's class of Pro Bowl DTs was one the oldest group of Pro Bowlers by several measures in the last 20 years. As I mentioned, part of that was Pat Williams. Aside from the last three years in which Pat Williams was the oldest Pro Bowl DT at 34, 35 and 36, there were only two DTs to make the Pro Bowl at an age of over 31 years old: Ted Washington, who went to the Pro Bowl at 32 and 33 years old in 2001-02 and John Randle who went to the Pro Bowl in 2001 at 34 years old. Not surprisingly, that 2001 class with Randle and Washington is the only class with an average experience higher than this year's class (the average that year was 7 years in the league.)

That said, it wasn't just Williams skewing this year's class. Jay Ratliff and Albert Haynesworth were the youngest members of this class at 27 years old. There was only one other class with the youngest member over 25 years old, when Trevor Pryce was the youngest member of the 2001 class at 26 (he was also the youngest member in 2000 at 25.) The six member of this year's DT Pro Bowl class were Ratliff (27, 1st appearance), Haynesworth (27, 2nd), Kevin Williams (28, 4th), Shaun Rogers (29, 3rd), Kris Jenkins (29, 4th), and Pat Williams (36, 3rd).

What Might this Mean for the Texans?
As you all know, next year's projected starters are Amobi Okoye and Travis Johnson.

The young Okoye will be 22 by the start of training camp and entering his third season in the league. His age is obviously much younger than the projected prime age I mentioned earlier of 26-30 and if he really takes that long to develop, he likely won't last with the Texans. Entering his third year in the league, Okoye is also below the average first Pro Bowl year, which occurs most in Pro Bowler's fourth year in the league.

Looking on the positive side, 12 of the 28 DTs to make the Pro Bowl in the last 10 years did so by their third season in the league, so it's not out of the question. That number goes up to 19 of 28 by the end of year four. However, only two of those players were 22 or younger at the time of their first Pro Bowl appearance, Tommie Harris and Darrell Russell. So the big question with Okoye will be which factor will matter more: the development of his body or his experience in the league? By either factor he's considerably more likely to breakout in 2010 than 2009, but the likelihood of an '09 breakthrough is considerably more likely if the big factor is experience. Arguably the player most comparable to Okoye to make the Pro Bowl is Eric Swann who achieved his first Pro Bowl in his fifth year at age 25.

I'm sure most Texans fans have given up on former first round pick Travis Johnson as a potential Pro Bowler and they're probably right. On the positive side, though, Johnson should be entering the prime of his career right now as he's 27 and entering his fifth year in the league. Sure that prime likely won't include Pro Bowl caliber play, but if he can continue to improve into a solid starter, that could certainly help the Texans. And, unlike Okoye, the research tends to suggest that his time is now.