In a film room episode about the Eagles declining pass rush, I mentioned that I didn’t think Haason Reddick is an elite pass rusher. A commenter asked why I thought Reddick isn’t elite so I thought I would address that. It will be important to think about as Reddick enters the last year of his contract with rumblings that he’s unhappy with his current deal, all while turning 30 next season.
When you watch players like Micah Parsons and Myles Garrett on film, it’s clear that these guys are different animals on a field that is already full of freak athletes. But let’s put some numbers to it.
HAASON REDDICK SACK & PRESSURE RATES
When looking at edge rushers, sacks are the money makers. Sack totals dictate contract negotiations and perception about players around the league. Eagles fans know this first hand as Brandon Graham has been one of the best at generating pressures throughout his career, but his low sack totals have led to him being relatively underrated throughout the league. If you want to be in the conversation as an elite edge rusher, you have to get sacks.
Since switching from linebacker to full time edge rusher in 2020, Haason Reddick has been one of the most consistent edge rushers generating sacks. Only Reddick and Myles Garrett have recorded 11 or more sacks in each of the last four seasons. Part of that is due to health, as guys like Nick Bosa and T.J. Watt have had injuries during the past four seasons, and Micah Parsons has only been in the NFL for the past three. But the other part is that Reddick is just very good at finishing when he does generate pressure.
Here are his sack rankings among edge rushers since 2020:
- 2020 – 2nd
- 2021 – 12th
- 2022 – 3rd
- 2023 – 41st
His ability to bend and accelerate at the top of his rush allows him to close on sacks that a lot of other edge rushers wouldn’t be able to.
While his sack rates have been great, he hasn’t been as consistent generating pressure. Here are his pressure rankings since 2020 (via Sports Info Solutions):
- 2020 – 22nd
- 2021 – 59th
- 2022 – 12th
- 2023 – 52nd
He’s much streakier when it comes to generating pressure. Although pressures aren’t as valuable as sacks, they’re still extremely important. Pressure leads to rushed throws and happy feet in the pocket. The timing off the offense gets thrown of and passes are often inaccurate. Turnovers and pressures are highly correlated. Every year there’s a couple outliers, but most QBs experience a significant drop in the QB rating when pressured.
Pressures are much more common than sacks as well. The top sack rates are usually around four percent while the top pressure rates are generally around 20% each year.
One other thing to note about Reddick’s 2022 season, Brandon Graham was second and Josh Sweat was ninth in sack rate. BG was 10th while Sweat was 29th in pressure rate. 2022 was a career year for pretty much everyone on that defense.
HOW DOES REDDICK COMPARE?
I’m not going to list every sack and pressure ranking for the top edge rushers in the NFL, as that will take up a lot of space. What we can look at is their combined pressure and sack rates since 2020. I’ve included seven edge rushers who have stood out among the rest since 2020.
A couple things to note, T.J. Watt’s 2022 season was an outlier compared to his other seasons as he was dealing with injuries that caused him to miss or play almost the entire season with the injury. He achieved his lowest combined sack and pressure rate of his career that year. Still, including that season he has a significantly higher combined sack and pressure rate than Reddick has.
Nick Bosa was injured for almost all of 2020, so I substituted his 2019 season, his rookie year.
When compared to other top edge rushers, Reddick isn’t affecting the QB as frequently. It should also be noted that while Reddick and Garrett are the only edge rushers to have 11 or more sacks in the past four seasons, Reddick is fifth in total sacks and sack rate out of the seven edge rushers. Reddick would likely be sixth in total sacks if not for Micah Parsons only entering the NFL in 2021.
QUALITY CONTROL
Let’s take this a step further. Fans generally stop at basic sack and pressure numbers, but that can often paint an inaccurate picture.
Brandon Thorn is one of, if not the best content creator in regards to offensive line play and analysis. If you don’t know who Brandon Thorn is, he’s more than just a content creator, as he does a lot of work with Duke Manyweather’s annual OL summit, one of the largest gathering of offensive linemen in the NFL (and non-NFL linemen) each offseason. He provides breakdowns and scouting reports of top offensive and defensive linemen in the NFL. Among the many offensive linemen Manyweather trains is Lane Johnson. Thorn is well respected in the space and a great resource to learn from.
I say all of that to talk about his True Sack Rate (TSR) and True Pressure Rate (TPR) rankings he has been doing annually since 2020 and 2022 respectively.
Here’s the idea behind creating TSR and TPR rankings: not every sack or pressure is equal. Sometimes a pressure will result from a highly skilled move to beat a blocker, other times it may be as a result of simply being unblocked.
Thorn has gone through every sack and every pressure of usually the top 50 or so players in regards to sack and pressure totals every year and assigned grades to each sack. Here are the grades:
Rare High Quality (RHQ) – Winning a 1-on-1 rep over a very good or elite pass blocker. The win has to be a result of the pass rusher’s skill or athletic ability. Think wins over Lane Johnson, Penei Sewell or Andrew Thomas.
High Quality (HQ) – Winning a 1-on-1 rep that is the result of the pass rusher’s skill or athletic ability.
Low Quality (LQ) – These are plays that require no skill or pass rush moves to generate a pressure or sack. Think when a player is unblocked or the QB runs into the area the defender is already occupying.
Coverage/Cleanup (C/C) – Sacks that are a result of the coverage forcing the QB to hold on to the ball for a long time or a missed sack from a teammate. Note, coverage/cleanup grades are only counted for sacks.
Here is an example of each type of grade.
With that out of the way, let’s look at the numbers among our seven edge rushers.
I’ve added every season of sack and pressure quality grades for the seasons each defender qualified. Not every defender qualified every year, again due to injury or not meeting the threshold to be included in the charting.
This helps us really separate who is winning via skill, who is winning via scheme and who is beating elite competition most often. Thorn has also added a Pass Rush Quality Ranking (PQR). This takes all of the HQ and RHQ snaps and divides them by the amount of LQ and C/C snaps. Doing this helps give us a better view of who is generating their sacks and pressure on their own merit compared to those generating more based on scheme and unblocked opportunities.
There are two people who stand head and shoulders above the rest, Myles Garrett and Micah Parsons. It’s quite obvious on film as well. Those two just play with a different level of strength and burst. Garrett in particular, is the prototype edge rusher that you would build in a lab. He has the ideal blend of height, weight and arm length combined with an uncanny flexibility for a man his size. He has also developed into a very skilled edge rusher as well.
Micah Parsons, while smaller than Garrett, has an elite combination of burst and play strength. He looks like a combination between a rabid animal and the Energizer Bunny trying to get after the QB. The dude just powers through every type of block and has no quit in him. Have you ever played fetch with a dog, and when you throw the toy close to the wall the dog ends sliding into the wall because they’re so hellbent on getting the toy? That’s Micah Parsons pass rush personified.
It’s scary to think about how much better he is than everyone not named Myles Garrett, considering he is probably the worst technician of the group. Still, he has used his elite athleticism to build a pass rush plan that works for him.
Both Garrett and Parsons are beating elite tackles at a high rate as well.
I was quite shocked to see T.J. Watt fifth in terms of PQR, but that’s why raw counting stats should also be considered. Watt is still third behind Garrett and Parsons in HQ sacks per season.
He is dinged more in the PQR rating due to his team’s scheme that helps him rack up more LQ opportunities. He’s still producing at an extremely high level, though it is interesting that he has zero RHQ victories in the three seasons he has been charted.
Reddick is next to last in terms of PQR. He is fifth in high quality sacks per season and last in high quality pressures per season. He also doesn’t have any RHQ wins in the four seasons he has been charted.
Now, RHQ wins require that you go against elite opponents, so it’s not always the fault of the rusher if they’re not matched up against elite tackles. But Reddick has really faced an easy schedule of pass rushers since he’s been on the Eagles. The only very good or elite pass blocker he’s faced consistently in a game since joining the Birds is Penei Sewell. He obviously generated 0 RHQ sacks or pressures. In place of RHQ wins, I’d like to see a higher frequency of HQ victories, but Reddick is last in total HQ wins. That includes Parsons, Bosa, Crosby and Watt each only qualifying for three of the four seasons.
Whether you want to say Reddick is elite or not is up to you, but there’s a clear tier break between Garrett and Parsons. If I’m breaking these guys into tiers, this is how I’d rank them:
Tier 1
- Myles Garrett
- Micah Parsons
Tier 2
- T.J. Watt
- Nick Bosa
- Maxx Crosby
Tier 3
- Trey Hendrickson
- Haason Reddick
EVALUATING REDDICK
Haason Reddick is still one of the best pass rushers in the league. Again, these are comparing the best seven since 2020. There are some young guns to watch out for like Josh Allen, Aidan Hutchinson and Bryce Huff, but we need to see longer sustained success from those guys to include them in this list.
Reddick is a very good and highly skilled rusher. He has great bend, burst and technical skills. But he is undersized. He doesn’t have near the same size, weight and length as most of the guys on this list. He’s giving up 30-40 pounds to some of those guys.
While he does have underrated play strength, his strength still isn’t at the same level as most of the other guys on the list. And all of those guys are great technicians like Reddick (well maybe not Parsons so much). Reddick is going to be a streakier player just due to some of his physical limitations.
CONTRACT IMPLICATIONS
It’s important to keep this in context as Reddick enters the final year of his contract. There’s been some indications he’s unhappy with his contract and there may be a potential for a hold out. If I am the Eagles, I wouldn’t be too keen to hand out a contract in the range of the Tier 1 and 2 edge rushers.
Here are the annual average value (AAV) of each of these edge rushers contracts:
- Nick Bosa – $34M
- T.J. Watt – $28M
- Myles Garrett – $25
- Maxx Crosby – $23.5M
- Trey Hendrickson – $21M
- Haason Reddick – $15M
Micah Parsons is on a rookie contract, but he’s sure to reset the edge rusher market when he’s up for a new deal. Reddick’s contract is certainly a steal for the Eagles. I imagine he’ll get north of $20M if he re-signs with Philadelphia.
However, Reddick is entering his age 30 season, and though edge rushers usually have a longer life cycle than other positions like RB or WR, some regression should be factored in. We’ll take a deep dive into Reddick’s contract situation as the offseason kicks up, but if I were the Eagles, I’d make a move for Bryce Huff and let Reddick’s deal play out.
Stay tuned for the Reddick contract and a Bryce Huff scouting report.
