This week
L'Jarius is hosting DEN. We project 3.5 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
L'Jarius has averaged 93% of his team's snaps across 20 games. That's a full-time role. Snap share at this level is the most stable input we have — it changes slowly, and it survives a bad game in a way that yardage never does. Opportunity is the first thing the model reads and the last thing it gives up on — production without snaps is noise, and snaps without production usually corrects.
What kind of defensive back he is
L'Jarius has 84 tackles across 20 games — 4.2 a game. Tackle volume is a strange stat for a defensive back: the best coverage players sometimes post the fewest, because nothing is thrown their way. A rising tackle count can mean he's playing well in run support or that receivers are catching the ball in front of him, and the box score can't tell you which.
His last 5 games
Over that stretch L'Jarius has 20 tackles. In a sport with seventeen games, a five-game window is closer to an anecdote than a trend — which is why usage, not this, anchors the number.
How the model reads him
The number on L'Jarius is a share of a simulated game. First the matchup: possessions, field position, how each offense is likely to move. Then his slice of it, set by usage rather than by reputation. How those pieces are weighted is ours and gets re-tuned against results; the output is published and graded, which is the half you can check.
What we'd flag
Football's sample sizes are brutal — seventeen games a season means a "trend" is often four data points. Injuries and game script move usage more than talent does week to week, and a blowout can erase a starter's second half.