Beyond free agency and the draft, the NFL offseason is all about endless opinions, rankings and lists.
Some of that media mass-produced football filler brings about anger, like New England’s Mac Jones recently being ranked as the NFL’s 25th-best QB by one qualified expert.
Other times, a list can create a sense of pride, even for a team like the Patriots that’s striving for significant improvement in oh so many areas.
An example of the latter would be The Athletic asserting this week that Bill Belichick’s team not only has one of the best groups of edge rushers in the NFL, tied with the Cowboys for No. 4 overall, but that New England fields “arguably the NFL’s best pass-rushing duo” in Matthew Judon and Josh Uche.
While that seems a rather bold statement, it certainly can be backed up by statistics.
Judon finished tied for fourth in the NFL with a career-best 15.5 sacks this season to earn his fourth straight trip to the Pro Bowl, his second in a row in a New England uniform. Meanwhile, Uche had a breakout third season for the Patriots, hitting for 11.5 sacks to rank tied for 12th in the NFL.
The duo’s 27 combined sacks led a New England pass rush that recorded 54 sacks. That number not only tied the Cowboys for third in the NFL, but was the best a Patriots’ defense has produced under Belichick and fifth-most in franchise history.
The Patriots have a lot of needs and concerns this offseason, but the top of the edge rusher depth chart isn’t one of them. Unless, of course, you’re looking ahead to the kind of contract that Uche might warrant after next season if he remains on the sack pace he created with his breakout second half of 2022. Because Judon is no longer a one-man pass rush show with Patriots, Uche joined the sack party this fall and the NFL world has taken notice of the former second-round pick’s production.