As a six-time Pro Bowler, Gerald McCoy knows what it’s like to be a consistent force on the inside of the defensive line.
Washington has two good first-round tackles in Daron Payne and Jonathan Allen, who are two of the highest-paid Commanders- but Payne, in particular, signed a four-year deal coming off a 2022 where he had 11.5 sacks and 18 tackles for loss – but has just eight sacks and 18 TFL in two years since.
Commanders fans are upset by that, but should we be measuring impact at that position simply by stats?
“You have to look at impact – my first Pro Bowl, I had five sacks and I was voted in. None of my Pro Bowls came as an alternate, and that should be taken into account,” McCoy said. “Guys who are voted in originally take pride in it, as opposed to being an alternate. To go back to it, a lot of what I did was my impact on the game: disrupting plays, pressures, things of that sort.”
McCoy argued that this year’s AFC Championship Game was ‘the best game Chris Jones ever played,’ but the Chiefs star’s stat column isn’t what makes it so.
“If you look on paper, it's not gonna show that. It was because of what he was doing during the game; he was taking those offensive linemen and putting them three or four yards in the backfield,” McCoy said. “What does that do? It disrupts the flow of the offense. The offense has a schedule they like to stay on – running backs are reading D-tackles when they make cuts, but if he’s in the backfield every play, you have to speed up the operation.
When a quarterback gets into his drop, you can't even get through your reads because you're worried about whether this guy is gonna be here.”
That affects play calling, and McCoy noted that some of the best quarterbacks of this era all hated pressure up the middle for that reason – after all, it’s called a pocket, not an umbrella.
“When we’re looking at the tackles, I think we should look more at the disruption of what are they doing to disrupt the game,” McCoy said.
“If it's in the run game, if they take on a double team, are they getting knocked back or are they holding the point to where this running back just ran into a wall that allowed somebody else to go make the play? In the pass rush, are they getting pressure up the middle and it's not always coming free? You might put the guard in the quarterback's face, and that's making him have to flush out. Those are the things that people should start looking at. Sacks are a great stat, but they're not all created equal.”
So as for Payne specifically, don’t let the numbers, or lack of them, fool you.
“Payne’s one of my favorites to watch, so y’all shouldn't write him off,” McCoy said. “Everybody has ups and downs, and it’s a year-to-year league.”