Silver And Black Pride
If someone just picked up the box score from the Las Vegas Raiders’ Week 13 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, they might think that Devin White had a great game, since he ranked second on the team with 11 total tackles. However, a deeper dive tells a different story.
According to Pro Football Focus, White’s four missed tackles were the most among linebackers for the week (pre-Monday Night Football), and he allowed three completions on four targets for 30 yards and a touchdown to earn PFF’s lowest grade at the position (28.0).
Clearly, there’s more to the story than what originally meets the eye, so let’s flip on the tape and dive into the seven-year veteran’s performance.
We’ll start with one of the best plays White made on Sunday, coming up with a big stop on fourth and one. However, this play is more about what the Chargers do wrong than what the linebacker does right.
This is after Justin Herbert broke his left hand, so Los Angeles has to be in the shotgun for a short-yardage situation. Meanwhile, Las Vegas loads up the box where the defense is guaranteed to have an unblocked defender since there are six blockers to pick up seven defenders. Ideally, the offense leaves Jamal Adams unblocked since Adams is the defender furthest from the running back, and they only need one yard to keep the drive alive.
However, the Chargers’ right guard gets too involved with the backside defensive tackle instead of picking up the crashing linebacker, allowing White to get penetration and make the play. So, while White does a good job of taking advantage of the mistake, this is an example of how even one of his quality tackles is slightly misleading.
Penalties were part of the reason why the veteran’s PFF grade was so low. Here, he has a great read on the split-zone run from the Chargers, meeting the running back at the line of scrimmage to make a tackle for no gain. However, the extra circulars after the whistle, climbing over the running back instead of just getting up and celebrating with his teammates, turn a positive play into a negative one.
Speaking of plays that dropped White’s PFF grade/overall performance, this rep certainly tanked his score by combining a missed tackle with his second penalty of the game.
To the linebacker’s credit, he does do a good job of adjusting his assignment by working underneath the tight end’s block—instead of staying on the outside of it—and shooting the gap to be in a position to make a tackle for loss after Tyree Wilson misses. However, White doesn’t break down after getting into the backfield, leading to him having a narrow base and the arm tackle when the running back bounces outside.
Still, Isaiah Pola-Mao makes a nice tackle to keep this to a three-yard gain. The problem is that on White’s miss/arm tackle attempt, he gets a piece of the running back’s face mask to turn what...
