No projection this week
Sam doesn't have a projection right now — either his team is on a bye, the week's slate hasn't been simulated yet, or he isn't in a position to draw usage. His game log and the usage read below are the real record either way, and this page picks him back up as soon as there's a game to simulate.
How much he's on the field
26% — that's Sam's average snap share over 13 games. That's a limited role, and it caps everything else on this page. A player on a third of the snaps can't produce like a starter no matter how efficient he is, and the projection reflects the opportunity rather than the talent. This is the number to check first on any football page. Everything else here is downstream of it.
What kind of defensive lineman he is
Sam has 1 sack and 7 tackles across 13 games. Sacks are the stat everyone quotes and the least stable one on this page — they arrive in bunches, they depend on coverage holding up behind him, and a lineman can win every rep for a month without one. Snap count and pressure rate describe a pass rusher far better than a sack total does, which is why his projection moves less on a big game than you'd expect.
His last 5 games
Over that stretch Sam has 7 tackles and 1 sacks. 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
Sam'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. For Sam specifically, he's on the field for a minority of snaps, which caps the projection regardless of how he's playing.