2016 Legion of Defense Stats Released
LEGION – The final 2016 stats have been released for the Legion of Defense, and they show a highly competitive league, with no single team dominant across multiple stat categories. Instead, showing the relative parity of the league this season, several teams show up in the top tier of each category, with five different teams accounting for the #1 rank in each of the four stats the Legion tracks, including a tie for number 1 overall for fumbles forced and recovered. The Legion tracks IDP stats in the categories of interceptions, sacks, and FF/FR; and total defensive scoring – both IDP and team defense combined.
The 2016 Legion Bowl IV winner and Legion Champion, Suspension Freaks come in first in IDP interceptions with 16 total on the season, well ahead of the Battering Rams’ and Sleeper Agents’ 12 INTs that put them in a tie for second place. Suspension Freaks won the weekly Pick Magnet Award for interceptions, 3 times in 2016, including twice for a pair of 4 interception games. Those two performances, coming back-to-back in Weeks 2 and 3, tie with multiple teams for 3rd on the list of INTs/game in the Legion record book. The Freaks’ 16 picks are good enough to put them at 2nd all-time on the list of interceptions in a season.
It was Suspension Freaks’ Championship opponent coming out in first place on the coveted total sacks list, Insane Clowney Posse‘s 47 IDP sacks, were the best in the league for 2016, and helped them to haul in 5 QB Killer Awards for their weekly sack totals, far more than any other team. The Clowns’, the 2016 Premier Division Champion, came up 5 and a half sacks short of the all-time league sack record, but their 47 sacks puts them at number 2 on that list. In another display of the parity of the 2016 teams, the three teams chasing them on the season total list, Mighty Pats (44), Animal Kingdom (41.5), and Suspension Freaks (37.5), each posted a 6 sack game in 2016 which will put all of them in the record books tied for third in the sacks/game category.
Battering Rams and Animal Kingdom tied for best in the league in the fumbles forced/recovered category. With 18 combined for each of them, Animal Kingdom posted a whopping 13 forced fumbles and added another 5 recovered, while Battering Rams recorded 9 each, forced and recovered. Both will tie at 2nd, all-time in the Legion record books, distant to Battering Rams’ 25 combined FF/FR record set in the 2015 season. Again, along the theme of league parity in 2016, Suspension Freaks, Insane Clowney Posse, and Mighty Pats were all close on the Rams’ and Animals’ heels in the race, recording 17, 16, and 16 combined FF/FR’s, respectively.
In the category of defensive scoring, the Legion of Defense tracks all on-the-field scoring by both IDP players and Team Defense, including defensive and return touchdowns, safeties, and PAT returns, calculating them at the amount of their field value rather than their ff points value. In this category, it was the Gates of Delirium coming out of the 2016 season as the clear-cut best. Their defense accounted for a total of 51 field points, far superior to the 34 and 32 points generated by the next teams on the list, Suspension Freaks and Chinese Bandits. the Gates’ 51 points will tie them for second place with Sacks Fifth Avenue in the record book, but doesn’t approach the 72 point benchmark of the all-time record set by 2015’s phenom team Public Enemy.
All of the #1 marks set by Public Enemy’s phenomenal 2015 season, in fact, are untouched in the record book. The 1,086 points Public Enemy amassed in their single season also remains to be eclipsed, Suspension Freaks, the leading scorer of the 2016 season falling 147 points short of the benchmark with their 939 point season total. With so many records still left to be broken, the distant rumblings of war are already rolling in preparation of the Battle of 2017…..just 270 days away.
