PFF's Best Pass Coverage Award goes to...

[TN05]

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Winner

Luke Kuechly, LB, Carolina Panthers

Luke Kuechly’s name keeps coming up during PFF’s award week, and that should tell you all you need to know about the kind of season he posted. As a coverage linebacker, he is a completely different proposition than most other LBs in the NFL. Offenses scheme to try and match up their receivers on linebackers, because they know that is a mismatch in their favor. Kuechly can cover backs and tight ends—and swing the pendulum back the other way, making it a mismatch in favor of the defense.

He picked off a pass against Dallas QB Tony Romo this season because Romo saw he had Jason Witten running down the seam against a linebacker—usually a big win for the offense—but the linebacker was Luke Kuechly, and it evolved into a turnover. By the end of the season, Kuechly had allowed a passer rating of just 57.8 into his coverage—the best among all LBs—despite that number being hurt by his matchups with Julio Jones late in the season, a receiver even the best defensive backs in the league can’t cover, let alone a linebacker. The league average passer rating surrendered by a LB this season was 102.5, so targeting Kuechly as opposed to any other linebacker immediately causes a 45-point drop in passer rating.

We may typically think defensive back when discussing pass coverage, but there was no better player in that department than Carolina Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly this season.

PFF loved Kuechly this season. Their third-runner up for best player of the year (behind Aaron Donald, Antoio Brown, and Carson Palmer), runner up for DPOY (behind Donald). Up until the Falcons game, he was actually breaking their scale (better than 100 in a 0-100 scale). 

[Daeavorn]

The thing I love about Luke is he isn't even done getting better yet! Simply amazing that he's evolved into such a great coverage guy.

 

[CarolinaSock]

Am I the only one that finds it sad that this thread has one reply but the one about "slighting" Cam is four pages and counting even though it's only an hour older? Why do so many people just ignore any positivity about the team and cling to every perceived slight they can find, especially when it's about Cam?