On Chase Young, and why sacks don’t always matter

Ohio State’s Chase Young is perhaps the best defensive prospect in this draft class. So, let’s talk about more than his sack numbers.

INDIANAPOLIS — Ohio State edge-rusher Chase Young has a resume that’s just about unassailable. In 2019, despite serving a two-game suspension after it was discovered that he violated the NCAA’s (utterly stupid) rules by accepting a loan from a family friend, he broke the Buckeyes’ single-season sack record with 16.5. Young also did this despite going without a sack in his final three games — against Michigan, Wisconsin, and Clemson — which has made him the consensus best defensive player in his draft class. You could argue for cornerback Jeffrey Okudah, Young’s Ohio State teammate, or Clemson linebacker Isaiah Simmons, but it’s Young who will most likely be taken off the board before any other defender in the 2020 draft.

Still, when it comes time to evaluate prospects, part of the process is to nitpick and tear them apart. In that regard, the sackless streak will undoubtedly come up. Young was asked about it during his media session at the scouting combine this week, and his answer was not only defitive, but absolutely correct in his case.

“I had a lot of quarterback hits, a lot of pressures,” he said. “If you understand football, you would see that. You’ll see how they changed their whole offensive game plan for one guy. A lot of people might not know how to really study a tape or may not know how to watch football, but if you know football,  I made an impact in those games.

“Being the best defensive end isn’t about sacks, it’s about being the most disruptive player on the field. You can do that without having a sack.”

Dec 7, 2019, INDIANAPOLIS: Ohio State Buckeyes defensive end Chase Young (2) grabs the arm of Wisconsin Badgers quarterback Jack Coan (17) as he throws during the fourth quarter in the 2019 Big Ten Championship Game at Lucas Oil Stadium. (Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports)

Young has a point. It wasn’t just about the 16.5 sacks, which he accomplished in just 320 pass-rushing snaps, down from 470 in 2018. Young also had seven quarterback hits and 31 quarterback hurries, which projects to 10 hits and 46 hurries, pretty much in line with his 2018 totals of 14 and 50, if you give him the same amount of snaps. Sports Info Solutions’ tracking is even more favorable. Per SiS, Young led all draft-eligible edge-rushers with a Sack Rate of 5.4%, which means that 5.4% of his pass rushes resulted in a sack. He also had a pressure rate of 20%. And SiS had Young with the same number of quarterback hits (29) as he had in 2018.

It’s not like Young was shut out or shut down in a traditional sense through that three-game stretch — as Michigan offensive lineman Jon Runyan said during his combine media session, the Wolverines altered their entire offensive game plan just to deal with Young.

“We knew our game plan was we were going to slide to where he was and they figured out that really early, so they started putting him to the 3-technique side where he usually plays on the weak side, so they kind of shut that off, so we were sliding to the 3-technique and the guard wasn’t able to help because the 3-technique was playing outside. They found out our game plan so we started incorporating chip stuff in there. It kinda started working. He did get me one time on an inside move in empty protection and thankfully it was a quick throw. We were just trying to give him different looks. You do what you can to eliminate one of the best players in the country and that’s what we did. He’s a great physical player. Lot of respect for him. He’s going to do great things in the NFL.

Michigan did on a lot of sliding to Young in certain situations, and let’s just say there were some creative interpretations of the NCAA’s holding and intential grounding rules in that game. As to how to defend him individually, Runyan talked about working speed against speed. Which not every offensive lineman can do against this kind of quickness.

“I just relied on my technique. Chase is a phenomenal player, obviously. I kinda understood his game from evaluating film. He’s a huge body, that’s pretty evident. I kinda knew his game. He’s not that big bull-rushing guy. He’s going to try to beat you with speed. When he does beat you with speed, he’s going to burn you and he’s going to hit the quarterback hard. He got me one time and he planted [quarterback] Shea [Patterson]. Shea got the ball off in time and I felt so bad because I heard him pick him up and put him on the ground. I heard Shea exhale and that felt so bad. I looked at Shea and apologized to him right there. It was third down. I was able to get in a rhythm against him. I knew I had to get off on the snap count. I felt like I did pretty good for myself going against the second overall pick, seemingly.”

Against Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl, Young had a number of impactful pressures. At times, he was able to rock quarterback Trevor Lawrence off his spot to cause an incompletion. On other occasions, Young’s hurries would have caused an incompletion were it not for some unfortunate breakdowns in the defensive backfield.

So, and this is true for any pass-rusher at any level of football, let’s please leave the subject of sacks aside as the ultimate arbiter of quality and impact. It’s a piece of the puzzle, and there are enough advanced metrics proving that point to elevate the discussion.

Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”