The concept of the DVD, or Defensive Victory on Down, is simple. While there are advanced metrics such as success rate and EPA, on any down where the defender deflected the pass, sacked the quarterback, or tackled an offensive ballcarrier behind the line of scrimmage the defense “won” that down unambiguously. The Codex keeps track of all of these scores individually, of course (and it breaks out interceptions, as well), but it also records the total number of DVDs generated as a simple and rough estimate of a player’s “total disruption” on defense.

Obviously no one measure can assess a defender’s impact (just as the yards and touchdowns of a tight end or wide receiver don’t reflect blocking). However, this aggregate metric does try to capture more or what a defender does without getting too far into the weeds.