The Arizona Cardinals should have a better defensive line in 2020 than they did in 2019. After all, they were decimated by injuries last season. Darius Philon was released after his arrest for assault. Robert Nkemdiche showed up to camp overweight and was cut. Zach Allen, Jonathan Bullard and Clinton McDonald all ended up on injured reserve.
But they signed Jordan Phillips and drafted Leki Fotu and Rashard Lawrence in the fourth round.
Even still, the defensive line is a slightly below average unit, according to Pro Football Focus.
In their rankings of all 32 defensive line units, the Cardinals come in 18th.
PFF looks at the interior defenders and the edge rushers, so they get extra consideration because Chandler Jones is included.
Chandler Jones is the star player on the Cardinals’ defensive front. Jones is always just outside of the very best edge rushers in the league in terms of total pressures or PFF grade, but he has managed to consistently generate more sacks than his pressure total should generate — something that is typically not a skill. Last season, Jones posted a pass-rush grade of 90.0, good enough to rank in the top five among edge rushers, and he pressured the quarterback 75 times.
He is by far the team’s best pass-rusher and should be among the league leaders in pressures again in 2020. The lack of help for Jones could be a significant problem, as nobody currently on the roster had more than 26 total pressures a season ago. Jordan Phillips had 10 sacks and might be confused for a legitimate pass-rush presence, but those sacks represented 10 of the 26 total pressures he managed all season long. The tape shows a series of unimpressive plays on those sacks. Phillips hasn’t topped 30 total pressures in a season and will likely be a run defender only this season.
Corey Peters offers the same type of impact, albeit a more proven version, and fourth-round pick Leki Fotu makes a trio of run-focused interior defenders. Second-year player Zach Allen may be the player most likely to take a step forward and make an impact, but his rookie season lasted an underwhelming four games before injury landed him on injured reserve. Allen needs to show major improvement for the Cardinals to be anything more than reliant on the skills of Jones again in 2020.
PFF is not as high on Phillips as the Cardinals. They did not pay him $10 million a year to be just a run defender. They also believe Fotu has some pass-rushing upside as well. Allen does need to make some sort of an impact for the defensive line to improve because Peters shouldn’t play more than about 40% of the snaps at his age, although he is still solid. It’s just that other guys need to step up and be better.
Although he did not grade out all that highly according to PFF, Jonathan Bullard was surprisingly effective in 2019 before his injury. Despite playing in only nine games, he had a career-high in sacks, tackles for loss and QB hits.
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Ep. 267
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