Please provide a compelling argument as to why a tackle is not a great statistic? I look forward to reading your summation with some interest.
I agree that having a very large number of tackles is not necessarily a very good thing.
Would you rather see the Patriots get 50 tackles a game or 100?
100 is larger. That's better right? What if Mayo had 25 of those 100 tackles?
50 tackles is usually far preferable. Usually, it means you are stopping the opponent and getting the defense off the field. 100 tackles a game is really, really bad.
Or, 50 tackles could mean that you give up a lot of touchdowns, and your defense never tackles anyone. Or that you have a ground-control time-consuming offense, and your opponent has a quick-strike vertical offense, and their drives last five plays to your fifteen. It could mean a lot of things.
You tend to measure running backs by yardage and especially yards-per-carry. If you are looking at ILB performance, you may want to consider yards-per-tackle average. A YpT average of under 5.0 might be good, weighing coverage and rushing. Or it might vary quite a bit in an offense with, say, a Ted Thomas and Roman Phifer, with Phifer mostly in coverage and Thomas mostly attacking the line.
When comparing college LB's, you tend to look at tackle totals, but need to consider high tackle numbers on terrible defenses.
For example:
2009: Matt Mayberry from Indiana had 108 tackles to Brandon Spikes' 68. 2008: Frantz Joseph from Florida Atlantic had 154 tackles to Rey Mauluga's 79.
2007: Thaddeus Washington from Colorado had 137 tackles.
2006: Tim McGarrigle from Northwestern had 156 tackles.
I don't know whether any of those guys are in the NFL. None converted those high tackle numbers into high draft picks, because those stats didn't correlate with capabilities or projected performance. It certainly didn't mean that Mayberry was better than Spikes, or that Joseph was better than Mauluga.
According to this stat:
2010 NFL Team Total Stats - National Football League - ESPN
New England is listed at #32 in total defense, having given up 4390 yards. That's a stunning 1700 more than #1 San Diego, or 62% more.
OK, skewed because only six teams have played 11 games.
In terms of Yards per Game, they are at #30.
Both Kyle Orton and Carson Palmer have more passing yards than Tom Brady. Who is the better QB?
David Garrard has more Yards per Attempt than Brady.
Michael Vick has more Yards per Game than Brady.
Line up those five QB's: how many pick Orton, Palmer, Garrard, or Vick over Brady?
In baseball, Pitcher Felix Hernandez had a 13-12 record.
Philip Hughes with NYY had an 18-8 record. Wins is one of the most important stats for a pitcher -- it's the first pitching stat listed on the ESPN baseball stats page.
2010 MLB Team and Player Stats - Major League Baseball - ESPN
Clearly Hughes is the better pitcher.
Until you compare their ERA's, which were 2.27 and 4.19. One stat in isolation, wins, is out of context with total performance.
So, it's hard to correlate really high tackle numbers for Mayo with performance.
It doesn't mean people think he is over-rated.
But if you want to assess comparative performance, you need a more robust statistic.