Colts Captain Given Shocking Rank Despite Breakout Season

Indianapolis Colts linebacker Zaire Franklin has been a bit of a lightning rod for discussion over the last couple of years.

As a player, he became a success story for the Colts. Drafted in the seventh round of the 2018 draft, he eventually became a special-teams standout and ultimately a team captain. In 2022, with Shaquille Leonard's back surgery causing him to be largely unavailable, Franklin got his shot to become a starter and responded by breaking the franchise's single-season tackle mark.

There is no doubt that, as a player, despite some warts in his game, he's outperformed his draft status. However, those warts on the field and his outspoken nature off of it have caused some externally to skew his worth as a player.

Franklin earned his first-career Pro Bowl nod and was also named a Second-Team All-Pro for the first time in 2024. Many have debated the validity of those elections, but overall, Franklin is widely regarded as at least one of the better and more productive linebackers in the NFL.

Because of that, it was quite surprising to see Franklin rank as low as 27th in Pro Football Focus' latest NFL linebacker rankings.

"Franklin continues to be a tackling machine with impressive volume, posting more than 500 total tackles over the past three seasons," Mason Cameron wrote. "However, he is largely hampered by a high rate of negatively graded run snaps (14% since 2022) and subpar PFF coverage grades. Limiting mistakes in 2025 could raise his profile beyond just a tackler."

Criticisms of Franklin's game are fair. He could definitely clean up his missed tackle numbers (11.6% MT rate in 2024) -- there are times where he genuinely misses bringing the ball carrier down or isn't close enough to the ball -- as well as get better in coverage, but to insinuate that he's "just a tackler" is not fair and requires more than observing his PFF metrics.

While yes, Franklin does have a high volume of tackles -- his 173 led the league in 2024 -- he also was tied for the most forced fumbles in the NFL with five, which creates turnovers and is the most valuable thing you can do on defense. He also had a career-high 3.5 sacks, two of which came on third downs in Colts wins.

Since becoming a full-time starter three years ago, Franklin's numbers have been terrific, averaging 173.0 tackles (8.7 for loss), 2.7 sacks, 4.3 QB hits, 3.0 forced fumbles, and 6.0 pass breakups per season, and he snagged the first two interceptions of his career in 2024.

He's missed just one game over this time, dealing with a knee injury that caused him problems in 2023 and led to some of his non-tackle numbers dipping, although he was on pace for a much higher tackle number.

Tackling was clearly the first thing Franklin excelled at in his career, but the rest of his game is slowly taking shape as well. He has gotten better at identifying things in coverage, which has helped put him in a better position. Last year, he attributed this to film study and more communication before and during games.

The 2025 season is a big opportunity for the reigning Pro Bowler to prove he's more than "just a tackler."

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