A thought occurred to me as I was preparing for my coverage of defensive linemen and linebackers. You really can’t get a great look at either unit until you put the two units together.
For one, you are talking about different employment of players. When teams use four down linemen, they will likely rotate in four other guys regularly. When they use four linebackers they might do the same.
So, when we put these groups together we can easily look at the top fourteen defenders between defensive linemen and linebackers. Therefore, we can lean into whatever each team chooses to do.