Unless you’re a quarterback in a redshirt rookie year, being the second overall pick in the NFL draft carries massive day-one expectations.
David Bailey is learning this firsthand. Not only is the Texas Tech product stepping into the pressure-cooker known as the New York media market, a challenge for any young athlete, but he is tasked with being a savior for a franchise that has not made the playoffs since he was seven years old.
Salary cap-wise, though, the expectations are quite fair. Bailey has a cap hit of $9.9 million this season, the fifth-highest on New York’s roster, trailing only Garrett Wilson ($10.0M), Breece Hall ($11.5M), Jamien Sherwood ($11.5M), and Brandon Stephens ($14.0M).
In that sense, it’s reasonable to expect Bailey to be one of the Jets’ better players right off the bat. Of course, Bailey deserves time to develop and gradually progress toward his NFL ceiling, like any young player, but when you’re drafted that high as a non-quarterback, you’re expected to be an above-average starter from the jump; you’re paid like one, after all.
Has Bailey been an above-average starter?
Different numbers will tell you different stories.
Bailey is a complex evaluation for New York. On one hand, he’s racked up enough box-score production to separate himself as the Defensive Rookie of the Year favorite through seven weeks. On the other hand, the film and certain advanced metrics point to a raw young player whose growing pains have been a detriment to the Jets’ defense in certain ways.
Which side of the coin is more accurate?
David Bailey: The Good
In terms of traditional metrics, Bailey looks quite impressive so far. It’s why he is favored to join Sauce Gardner as the Jets’ second Defensive Rookie of the Year in five seasons.
For starters, Bailey has a whopping 5.5 sacks, good enough for fifth in the NFL. It’s also the best mark among rookies.
Bailey has complemented his sack production with an unusually high level of overall activity. His 35 total tackles are a lofty number for a top-tier sack producer; the only other defensive lineman with 4+ sacks and 35+ total tackles is Jeffery Simmons, a perennial All-Pro defensive tackle for the Tennessee Titans.
If you expand the criteria a bit, Bailey is joined by some elite company. The only other edge rushers with 4+ sacks and 30+ total tackles are Will Anderson and Byron Young, who were both Pro Bowlers last season.
To boot, Bailey is tied for the NFL lead with three forced fumbles. Among edge rushers, only Gregory Rousseau has forced as many fumbles.
Beyond the sacks, Bailey also stands out in terms of pressures, regardless of which statistical outlet we look at. Pro Football Focus has him with 26 total pressures, tied for 11th among edge rushers, while NFL Pro has him with 34, placing fifth.
Altogether, it’s quite a feat for a rookie edge rusher to rack up 30-ish pressures, 5.5 sacks, three forced fumbles, and 35 total tackles in seven games. You rarely see that type of production from 23-year-olds.
The question is whether those numbers paint an accurate picture about his impact.
David Bailey: The Concerns
The first caveat to Bailey’s surface-level numbers is the legitimacy of his sack total.
While Bailey has 5.5 sacks (six total), only two of his six takedowns were “quality” sacks, both coming against the Cleveland Browns in Week 5.
Three of Bailey’s sacks were cleanup sacks in which he chased down a scrambling quarterback; these resulted in a combined loss of just 2 yards. He also had a sack against the Browns in which he was completely unblocked off the edge.
Bailey absolutely deserves credit for his motor to rack up those chasedown sacks, and he did a nice job of finishing the play on Browns QB Deshaun Watson when he was unblocked. These plays certainly aren’t valueless.
However, those types of sacks are more replaceable and less valuable than legitimate one-on-one wins off the edge for big losses of yardage. So, it is important to contextualize sack totals by analyzing the quality of those sacks. There is a wide spectrum as to what type of impact a player actually made on a play where they were credited with a sack.
The next concern regarding Bailey is the legitimacy of his pressure total.
Pressures are a strong metric for taking a step beyond the surface-level nature of sacks to evaluate a player’s true pass-rush impact and consistency. It helps to weed out players who rack up sacks but are silent otherwise, while highlighting players who may struggle to get sacks but still consistently affect the QB.
So, typically speaking, when we see a player with numbers like Bailey’s—a lot of sacks and a lot of pressures—the pressure total would legitimize his sack total, showing that he isn’t just a “sack merchant” (someone who profits solely off sacks), as the kids might say. Bailey is a unique case, though.
Bailey isn’t just benefiting from lower-quality sacks; he is also benefiting from lower-quality pressures.
Just like his sacks, a large portion of Bailey’s pressures were chasedown plays in which he did not actually win as a pass rusher to disrupt the QB’s progression and flush him out of the pocket.
According to NFL Pro, Bailey’s average pressure has occurred 3.24 seconds after the snap, the second-longest time among edge rushers with at least 20 pressures. He trails only former Jets edge rusher Jermaine Johnson (3.43), who had a reputation in New York for struggling to win one-on-one reps but making up for it with athleticism and a high motor.
Three-and-a-quarter seconds is an eternity in the NFL. How much do a player’s pressures really matter if they take that long to develop?
In fact, Bailey’s time-to-pressure being that long calls into question whether we should even be charting many of those plays as “pressures” at all. If you haven’t gotten home in three seconds, it seems like a stretch to label anything beyond that as “pressure”, unless the QB gets sacked by holding the ball too long, at which point we technically have to give the defender credit for a pressure, since sacks get lumped into that pie.
Again, give Bailey credit for his high motor. He certainly plays harder than most defensive linemen in the NFL, and when you couple that with his athleticism, it allows him to find his way to the football much more frequently than most other edge defenders. There is value to that.
However, at the end of the day, chasing the quarterback to the sideline more than 3.2 seconds after the snap just doesn’t do very much to impact the game. Most of Bailey’s sack and pressure production came on plays like that. Outside of those plays, Bailey has struggled to make noise as a pass rusher.
Per PFF, Bailey has a pass-rush win rate of 8.9%, placing 68th among the 80 edge rushers with at least 100 pass-rush snaps. This metric presents a more accurate evaluation of a player’s ability to win one-on-one reps in a quick and clean enough fashion to legitimately disrupt the QB’s progression. Bailey isn’t getting the job done in this area, which is a major problem, considering that it’s where edge rushers most directly impact games.
The next concern with Bailey is his run defense, which was the biggest hole in his profile coming out of Texas Tech. It has continued to be an issue in the NFL, despite positive flashes here and there.
In certain ways, the numbers can be twisted to portray Bailey as a great run defender. Among edge rushers, he is actually tied for the most solo tackles against the run with 20, while his eight run stops are tied for the 12th-most.
The film doesn’t lie, though. On a weekly basis, we can see numerous instances of Bailey sacrificing his gap to play hero ball or getting bullied off the ball by tight ends.
The best metric to encapsulate the nature of Bailey’s run defense is his average depth of tackle in the run game: 3.8 yards. That’s the fifth-highest mark among the 35 edge rushers who have played at least 100 snaps against the run this season.
It essentially shows that Bailey is often meeting the football well beyond the line of scrimmage, indicating that he is frequently being moved off the ball. So, give him credit for hustling and racking up plenty of stops, but those stops often come after he surrendered space for the run to be successful.
This fits the same theme as his sack and pressure production. His hustle and athleticism are helping him rack up numbers, but those numbers are somewhat empty.
Bailey’s final problem has been a proneness to penalties. He already has four of them, tied for the second-most among edge rushers. Bailey has been called for roughing the passer, illegal use of hands, and two neutral zone infractions. Two of those penalties yielded third-down conversions, while the other two put the Patriots inside the Jets’ 10-yard line to set up touchdowns.
Verdict
Some clear themes emerge throughout the analysis of Bailey.
His motor and athleticism deserve immense credit. Through a combination of elite speed and sheer hustle, Bailey certainly knows how to get to the football. One way or another, the man finds ways to rack up an outstanding quantity of sacks, pressures, and tackles, so give him props for that. Three punch-outs in seven games is also the stuff of a future star.
However, if your analysis of Bailey stops at the box score—or even after you see his pressure numbers—you’re missing a plethora of important caveats that show how far the rookie still has to go before he can be considered a plus starter.
Bailey is struggling to consistently record high-quality reps in either phase. His pass-rush win rate is low, showing that few of his sacks and pressures were quick, clean wins in which he blew up the play on his own. Having only two “quality” sacks is one thing, but the more crushing reality is that Bailey sometimes goes entire games without even a single noteworthy pressure, let alone a sack.
In the run game, while Bailey gets plenty of tackles, they often occur downfield after getting moved off the ball. He has made a handful of stops, but they are sometimes the byproduct of gambling to chase down the play, which frequently comes back to bite him. He is struggling to fulfill his responsibility within the scheme and play disciplined, team-first run defense.
Overall, it can be argued that Bailey has actually been a net-negative for the Jets’ defense.
According to RayCarp, the Jets’ defense allows 0.00 EPA (Expected Points Added) per play with Bailey on the field compared to -0.08 EPA per play with Bailey on the sidelines. For reference, the mark with Bailey on the field would be equivalent to this year’s 16th-ranked defense (between the Jaguars and Giants), while the mark with Bailey off the field would be equivalent to this year’s fourth-ranked defense (between the Buccaneers and Broncos).
None of this is to say that Bailey is a bust, has no NFL future, or should be shipped off to the CFL (or whatever other “FL” that The Rock or Random Celebrity 52 is sponsoring nowadays). He is seven games into his career. The man has plenty of time to continue improving as a professional football player.
Not to mention, even with his struggles, Bailey has already accomplished significantly more through seven games than many other future stars accomplished in the same time frame. It isn’t uncommon for young defensive linemen to go through growing pains, even highly drafted ones. Jets fans will remember that Quinnen Williams’ rookie year was nothing to write home about.
The fact that Bailey has managed to accumulate so many sacks, pressures, tackles, and forced fumbles before even picking up the fundamentals of NFL pass rushing and run defense sets an extremely high ceiling for him moving forward. If he can find the football this much right now, imagine what he would do if he honed his pass-rush repertoire and solidified his run-game instincts.
Spewing positive or negative hot takes about Bailey at this point would be to ignore both sides of his play so far. Labeling him a guaranteed superstar would be premature, given how many concerns he still has to address, but it would also be premature to label him a lost cause and the wrong pick at No. 2; he’s shown far too much potential for those conversations to be had this early.
Ultimately, Bailey’s first seven games have shown that he certainly has the superstar-caliber ceiling to justify being chosen second overall, but for a No. 2 pick, he’s also a relatively iffy bet to hit that ceiling. While he can become one of the best edge rushers in the league, he has quite a long way to get there.
