10-16-2021, 09:32 PM
(10-16-2021, 11:34 AM)fredtoast Wrote: There is a guy who ranks O-linemen based on "sacks allowed+holding penalties". His logic is that a holding penalty usually means the blocker was getting beaten bad enough to allow a sack. I'd like to see how many holding penalties Hendrickson has drawn.
Plus he had a sack against Jacksonville wiped out by a penalty on one of our DBs.
He is absolutely killing it.
I always defended the value of Carl Lawsons pass rush. Even though he did not put up big sack numbers his pressure had a big impact on the passing game. But there is no way I would have given Lawson a big contract with history of injuries. We struck gold with Hendrickson, but even he would not have as may sacks if we still had Daniels and Covington at DT.
It makes my head swim to look at our D-line and think what all of us would have said just two years ago if someone would have told us. "Don't worry about our D-line. We will restock it with 3 free agents getting yearly salaries of $15 million, $13.3 million, and $6.2 million." It is like a whole new world around here.
No doubt. It's very different to look at the defense and see Hendrickson, Reader, Ogunjobi, Awuzie, Bell, and Hilton (a starter for all practical purposes) filling out the first string defense and all of them being significantly expensive outside free agents, developed by other organizations. This doesn't even take Waynes into account, and even his backup is an outside guy, as is the guy they just signed to possibly replace Apple.
The best thing is that it worked. The old conventional wisdom in the NFL was always that you couldn't just buy a defense. It seems like that's exactly what they've done, in addition to actually drafting well at linebacker.
