{"id":35614,"date":"2025-05-09T05:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T05:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/35614\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T05:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T05:39:14","slug":"year-2-jump-needed-from-maason-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/35614\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 2 jump needed from Maason Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Jacksonville Jaguars need a Year 2 jump from this second-year defender.<\/p>\n

A Year 2 jump from Jacksonville Jaguars’<\/a> defensive tackle Maason Smith is going to play a key role in getting improved play from the defensive front as a whole.<\/p>\n

Collectively, this was a Jaguars<\/a>‘ defensive line in 2024 that ranked 32nd in ESPN’s <\/a>pass rush win rate metric and 27th in run stop rate. The thought this offseason was that the defensive tackle spot was going to be prioritized, but that wasn’t the case.<\/p>\n

No defensive tackle additions were made in free agency or the NFL draft.<\/p>\n

Moving Arik Armstead back<\/a> to tackle from defensive end should provide a boost, but Smith making a leap in his sophomore NFL season will be a big part of that equation as well.<\/p>\n

Smith was a second-round pick by the Jaguars in last year’s draft. He appeared in 11 games, totaling 14 pressures and three sacks. By PFF’s pass rush win rate<\/a> metric, Smith ranked 99th among defensive tackles, and in run-stop rate, he ranked 124th.<\/p>\n

Those stats certainly aren’t the be-all-end-all, but in totality from the defensive tackle position, the Jaguars need more.<\/p>\n

“We certainly look forward to seeing guys being in different positions than they’ve been in the past and that being an element that activates different sides of them,” GM James Gladstone said via the team site. <\/a>“Their whole approach has been great so far, so we’re looking forward to it.”<\/p>\n

When a defense has a strong presence along the interior, every other defender on the field benefits when that player is generating push, eating up space, and taking on blockers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Jacksonville Jaguars need a Year 2 jump from this second-year defender. A Year 2 jump from Jacksonville…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2060],"tags":[247,265,13592,1749,10838,12,388,7,379,212,125,2401,213,13591,8253,248,267,88,6,245,537,530,2383,9,266],"class_list":{"0":"post-35614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville-jaguars","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-arik","11":"tag-arik-armstead","12":"tag-armstead","13":"tag-espn","14":"tag-espn-inc","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-inc","17":"tag-jacksonville","18":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","19":"tag-jacksonvillejaguars","20":"tag-jaguars","21":"tag-maason","22":"tag-maason-smith","23":"tag-national","24":"tag-national-sports","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-nfl","27":"tag-overall","28":"tag-overall-positive","29":"tag-positive","30":"tag-smith","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-sports-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114476270662948544","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}