New Orleans made a contract move on the defensive side of the ball yesterday, extending linebacker Demario Davis through the 2024 season. It's a quiet move for an underrated defender, but he's plenty known to those in IDP leagues.
Davis doesn't put up the kind of monster tackle numbers as Bobby Wagner, nor will he rack up the kind of sack totals as the better pass rushing linebacker, ala T.J. Watt. But year after year, he posts among the league's better numbers from the position in both areas.
I turned to the search engines at pro-football-reference.com to find the league's best players over the past five seasons. First I searched for linebackers who had at least 500 tackles and 20 sacks in that span. There's only one: Demario Davis.
I altered the searches down until I came up with a nice grouping of about 20 linebackers. That I could do by dropping down to 400 tackles and 5 sacks. From that group, nobody has more total sacks than Davis (21) and only five have more total tackles (580).
When you include data for quarterback hits and tackles for loss from that group, Davis comes in 1st in both categories. (Table sorted by total tackles.)
LINEBACKERS WITH 400 TACKLES AND 5 SACKS, 2017-2021 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Player | G | Solo | Ast | Comb | Sk | TFL | QBHits |
Bobby Wagner | 79 | 441 | 297 | 738 | 9.5 | 36 | 39 |
Joe Schobert | 77 | 387 | 246 | 633 | 10.5 | 22 | 23 |
Blake Martinez | 67 | 381 | 236 | 617 | 12.0 | 35 | 17 |
Zach Cunningham | 76 | 377 | 219 | 596 | 6.5 | 29 | 12 |
Eric Kendricks | 71 | 350 | 231 | 581 | 7.5 | 29 | 15 |
Demario Davis | 80 | 401 | 179 | 580 | 21.0 | 58 | 57 |
De'Vondre Campbell | 80 | 370 | 190 | 560 | 9.5 | 26 | 19 |
Lavonte David | 71 | 397 | 161 | 558 | 8.0 | 48 | 24 |
Darius Leonard | 58 | 343 | 195 | 538 | 15.0 | 30 | 20 |
Jaylon Smith | 74 | 330 | 206 | 536 | 10.0 | 21 | 16 |
Roquan Smith | 61 | 348 | 176 | 524 | 14.0 | 43 | 17 |
Jordan Hicks | 68 | 326 | 177 | 503 | 8.5 | 34 | 21 |
Myles Jack | 72 | 317 | 172 | 489 | 6.0 | 18 | 15 |
Cory Littleton | 79 | 297 | 178 | 475 | 9.0 | 26 | 16 |
Shaq Thompson | 72 | 296 | 172 | 468 | 10.5 | 36 | 24 |
Tremaine Edmunds | 61 | 293 | 170 | 463 | 5.5 | 26 | 15 |
Foyesade Oluokun | 64 | 272 | 190 | 462 | 5.0 | 12 | 18 |
Jonathan Bostic | 66 | 232 | 183 | 415 | 7.5 | 21 | 18 |
Nick Vigil | 69 | 241 | 168 | 409 | 5.0 | 19 | 10 |
Davis probably won't rank among the top 20 linebackers for tackles, and he might not make it there for sacks, either. But few are more well-rounded, probably finishing in the top 25 or 30 in each. Nice, safe pick at the position.
--Andy Richardson