{"id":636681,"date":"2025-12-29T03:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T03:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/636681\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T03:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T03:01:13","slug":"rashan-garys-production-has-been-worse-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/636681\/","title":{"rendered":"Rashan Gary\u2019s production has been worse than you think"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout the year, I\u2019ve been keeping tabs on Rashan Gary\u2019s production because<\/a>, despite recording some clean-up sacks early in the season, his down-to-down rate of generating actual pressure has been terrible. Don\u2019t believe me? Let\u2019s take a look at some data for the Green Bay Packers pass-rusher.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with this chart. The X axis measures how many pass-rush attempts players have posted in edge alignments (per NFL Pro) in the 2025 season. The Y axis is how many quick pressures (defined as pressures generated in three seconds or fewer, per NFL Pro).<\/p>\n

Obviously, Gary sticks out like a sore thumb. No player in the league gets more opportunities to rush the passer than him, while also having less of an impact on the quarterback within three seconds of the snap.<\/p>\n

Why does three seconds matter? Well, first of all, every NFL team in the league is averaging a time to throw under three seconds, except the Kansas City Chiefs. So, in general, that\u2019s about how quickly you can expect the ball to be out in this league, unless a quarterback gets thrown out of rhythm (likely by a quick pressure!)<\/p>\n

I looked at NFL Pro\u2019s data, which dates back to the 2018 season, to try to answer this question: Has anyone ever done less with more opportunities than 2025 Rashan Gary? The answer is yes, but barely.<\/p>\n

Since 2018, there have been 206 edge defenders who have, in a single season, played at least 377 snaps as pass-rushers, like Gary. Among those players, the average was 24 quick pressures per season. Gary has just six in 2025. The average quick pressure rate in this group was 5.5 percent. Gary is at 1.6 percent.<\/p>\n

So, Gary is playing at less than one-third of the efficiency of a player who typically commands his level of playing time, which is maybe one reason why he was finally out-snapped by both Lukas Van Ness and Kingsley Enagbare in Week 17<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Out of those 206 edge defenders, only two posted fewer than six quick pressures in a single year:<\/p>\n

2022 Cameron Jordan2021 Malik Reed<\/p>\n

After the 2021 season, Reed only made four more starts in his NFL career, spending the next two years with three franchises. He has been out of the league for the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

From a quick pressure percentage standpoint, only four seasons from this group (of 206 players, mind you) have been worse than Gary\u2019s 1.6 percent rate:<\/p>\n

2020 Cameron Jordan2022 Cameron Jordan2021 Malik Reed2021 D.J. Wonnum<\/p>\n

After spending four years with the Minnesota Vikings, D.J. Wonnum signed a two-year, $12.5 million ($6.25 million APY) deal with the Carolina Panthers, where he\u2019s posted six sacks over 21 starts. Those numbers are well below both Gary\u2019s $24 million APY and his $28 million cap hit in 2026.<\/p>\n

At one point (specifically 2022), Gary was a great pass-rusher. Those days are now over.<\/p>\n

Even using an eight-year window, it\u2019s hard to find a lot of comparisons for Gary\u2019s production this season. To add on top of that, Jordan, Reed and Wonnum certainly didn\u2019t get to play with Micah Parsons, who was one of the more productive pass-rushers in the league this year (maybe only second to Myles Garrett).<\/p>\n

Last night\u2019s game against the Ravens, where Gary shifted into the third defensive end role for the first time since Za\u2019Darius Smith and Preston Smith were the team\u2019s starters, was probably the last time that we\u2019ll see Gary in green and gold at Lambeau Field.<\/p>\n

Gary has an $18 million salary in 2026, which just isn\u2019t worth the cost of his production. The Packers can save $11 million in cap space immediately with a pre-June 1 release of Gary, which is probably the option that Green Bay will take this offseason.<\/p>\n

The Packers took Gary with the 12th pick, the highest the team has selected since 2009, to hopefully turn him into the pass-rusher of the future. After a couple of years of development, Gary became one of the better bull-rushers in the league. Just as quickly as he turned into a star, though, his play began to fall off, potentially because of his 2022 ACL tear. Unfortunately for Green Bay, this fit hand-in-hand with the timing of Gary\u2019s 2023 mid-season extension.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it\u2019s hard to make the case that the selection and extension of Gary was a net positive for the team, but for a time, it did look like the draft-and-develop plan for him was going to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout the year, I\u2019ve been keeping tabs on Rashan Gary\u2019s production because, despite recording some clean-up sacks early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,52919,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-636681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-green-bay-packers-analysis","12":"tag-greenbay","13":"tag-greenbaypackers","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115800630353354751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636681","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=636681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}