From where I sit, it's hard to honestly judge Barron v 'Tree, esp when you consider strength of opponent and the fact that we only have a small sample size with Barron. 'Tree has clearly had the tougher assignments and the longer track record. But did anyone notice the 49ers running O?? No?? Well THAT'S BECAUSE IT NEVER HAPPENED!! 15 rushes for 10 yards?!? Embarassing!! The Browns did only slightly better with 19 rushes for 56 yards, but not much. That's just a miserable all-day-long FAIL.
So let's thrown some PFF and their imaginary stats into this to see if that clarifies anything.
- PFF has Ogletree rated at -1.8 for the year, which puts him right at 50% of 4-3 OLBs. This is pretty consistent with his career performance, where he was -3.5 last year which is honestly not that bad. He has 15 "stops" (a tackle which constituted an offensive failure) in 266 snaps and 4 missed tackles.
- Mark Barron, on the other hand, is at +6.0 in only 201 snaps which ranks him as the #6 4-3 OLB. More remarkably, if you do this on a per-snap basis (statistically valid), Barron would be 2nd only to NE's Dont'a Hightower. Not bad for a guy just learning the position. Dig in a bit more, in Barron's 201 snaps, he's had 19 stops and only 1 missed tackle. That's having a serious impact on defense!!
If everyone sees what I see, this consistent with how you'd rate them. Barron is FLASH + IMPACT (and PFF loves FLASH players). Ogletree is PURSUE + PUNISH. But with the small sample size, one could reasonably argue that Barron is having more of an impact.
Can Barron keep this up against better opponents, teams that run for a living (read: Vikes!)? That's the question of the day. If the answer is yes, then you kinda wonder if Ogletree will get his WIL back when he returns (see what I did there?).
