One of the Jaguars’ star players ranks among the best at his position group in this key defensive metric.
Jacksonville Jaguars’ defensive end Josh Hines-Allen is putting together another highly productive season.
Entering Week 15, Hines-Allen has recorded 72 quarterback pressures. Among his position group, that is the fourth-most league-wide.
Sacks are great, but pressures can be quite disruptive as well, throwing off the timing and rhythm of the play for a quarterback, and lead to mistakes.
The raw production from Hines-Allen speaks for itself, but in order to put up those kinds of numbers, a pass rusher has to win his matchups regularly — which Hines-Allen is doing.
Along with being fourth in total pressures, he also ranks seventh in pass-rush win rate, according to Pro Football Focus.
Also not to be overlooked are Hines-Allen’s contributions in the run game. He ranks tied for 11th among defensive ends in run defense tackles.
While Hines-Allen leads the way up front for the Jaguars, the pass rush unit as a whole has been much more disruptive over the last several weeks.
That’s a credit to the players up front, but assisting the defensive linemen has been the sticky coverage on the back end, as well as Anthony Campanile’s defensive game plans.
Over the last two weeks, the Jacksonville defense has again been taking the ball away at a high rate, and since the bye week, this collective unit has been operating at a consistently high level.
“The Jaguars’ defense is 13th in success rate, seventh in points per drive and seventh in EPA per play,” ESPN’s Ben Solak said about the Jacksonville defense. “Quite simply, they have been good.”
For a defense, the name of the game is winning the line of scrimmage, and Hines-Allen has consistently done that.