Anyone who watches football at anything more than a cursory level will tell you that the quarterback sack is an incomplete and misleading statistic when it comes to determining the effect of a pass-rusher on a defense. While it’s nice to have a guy who can get to the quarterback, it’s even better to have a guy who provides consistent pressure at a level that can destroy the intentions of offensive coordinators on a week-to-week basis. There are also those plays in which an edge-rusher will affect an offense in ways that open things up for teammates — plays that don’t show up in the metrics at all, but make a difference on the field.
So, when we look at the season totals for Seahawks defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, there’s the traditional way, which is to say that he’s been a disappointment with just three sacks in 489 snaps. The wider view shows his 44 total pressures, when you add in his nine quarterback hits and 32 quarterback hurries. The even wider view is to posit that when the Seahawks traded for Clowney on August 31, they had to transition him from the “spinner” role he played with the Texans to a more traditional edge or LEO role that has been a staple in Pete Carroll’s defense.
“It’s just different,” Clowney said in his first press conference after the trade. “I get to get back in there going vertical, not dropping. Just really putting my head down and grinding. When you’re going forward, you don’t think about it a lot. That’s the best thing about this defense is you’ve got guys behind you that can make all plays and guys up front just getting moving and get going and cause havoc. That’s what I like about this.”
When the trade happened, I outlined what Clowney was to Houston, and what he could be to Seattle. Through the first nine weeks of Seattle’s season, Clowney had come close to a bunch of sacks; missing them by that much as he transitioned to Carroll’s ideology and the specific mechanics of his system.
“I thought he was penetrating and causing problems and making tackles,” Carroll said after the Seahawks suffered a 30-16 loss to the Ravens in Week 7. “He had a game where he had a chance to make a lot of tackles. I don’t know what his numbers wound up being, but he’s playing really hard.”
In that game, Clowney had four quarterback hurries, but no sacks, so it was a continuation of both the transition, and the frustration involved in any such transition. Tape showed that Clowney was anything but a bust, but his breakout game hadn’t yet happened.
In Seattle’s 27-24 win over the previously undefeated 49ers, it most certainly did. Coming into this game, Seattle’s defense had put up just 14 sacks, with 17 quarterback hits and 107 quarterback hurries. If any defense was “due” for an explosion of meaningful quarterback pressures, it was this one. And against San Francisco, Seattle amassed six sacks, four quarterback hits, and 14 quarterback hurries. All was once again right in Carroll’s world, in which meaningful quarterback disruption is a non-negotiable factor.
Clowney was absolutely the star of the show, with one sack, all four of Seattle’s quarterback hits, and six of the team’s 14 hurries.
“He’s been active since we started,” Carroll said after the game. “I think he understand where to take advantage of the scheme moreso now, about where we send him — we move him a lot and do a lot of things with him to try to get him in the spaces. He knows better how to use that to make the most of it. He’s an exciting football player. He can do so much stuff and sometimes, he does the wrong… he takes the wrong [gap], because he just hasn’t been with us enough. But he is maximizing moreso and that’s why I would like to think he had a big night tonight.”
No argument here, and as much as the stats tell a positive story, they don’t tell the whole story. On at least two occasions, Clowney affected 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo enough for other Seattle defenders to swoop in for their own sacks. Let’s see what the tape shows.
