This week
E.J. is hosting BUF. We project 2.6 tackles. The number comes out of a drive-level simulation of the game rather than a season average — it asks how many possessions his side is likely to get, what they do with them, and how much of that flows through him.
How much he's on the field
54% — that's E.J.'s average snap share over 20 games. That's a rotational-to-starter share. It's the number most likely to move his projection week to week, because a swing of ten points of snap share moves everything downstream with it. This is the number to check first on any football page. Everything else here is downstream of it.
What kind of linebacker he is
E.J. has 95 tackles across 20 games — 4.8 a game. Linebacker tackle counts track team context as much as ability — a defense that's on the field a lot, or one whose line occupies blockers, inflates them. The model reads volume against how many plays his defense actually faces rather than treating tackles as a raw total.
His last 5 games
Over that stretch E.J. has 13 tackles. Worth noting: his snap share is trending down — 39% lately against 54% overall. A handful of games is thin evidence in a seventeen-game season. It nudges the projection; it doesn't drive it.
How the model reads him
E.J.'s projection starts with the game, not with him. We simulate the matchup drive by drive — how many possessions each side gets, how far they travel, how often they score — and then ask what share of that flows through him given his role. That ordering matters: a productive player on a team that runs 55 plays a game has a lower ceiling than a lesser one on a team that runs 70.
What we'd flag
Read this knowing the limits. A seventeen-game season makes every rate noisy; game script can invert a player's usage inside one afternoon; and depth-chart changes often surface too late to be in the projection.