Opponent-Adjusted Evaluation of NFL Pass Protection and Pass Rush

Abstract

Evaluating NFL pass protectors and rushers is difficult because observed win rates reflect both player performance and the difficulty of the blocking assignments each player faces. Using Hudl player coordinates and blocking annotations from the 2021 NFL regular season, we estimate blocker and rusher strength jointly from initial blocking matchups. A ridge-regularized Bradley--Terry model uses early pass rush wins and losses within 2.5 seconds of the snap, while a multinomial extension models full-play losses, wins, pressures, and sacks. To summarize full-play performance, we use the outcomes' conditional associations with offensive expected points added (EPA) to weight predicted probabilities, giving ratings of expected disruption produced by rushers or allowed by blockers. In held-out Weeks 16--18, the early and final models reduce log loss by 4.5% and 3.6%, respectively, relative to historical matchup baselines whose smoothing strengths are selected by cross-validation; 95% game-bootstrap intervals for both reductions are above zero. The resulting ratings place observed success in the context of opponents and protection help, with game-bootstrap intervals quantifying sampling uncertainty in early strength and full-play disruption.

27 pages, 6 figures, 13 tables