Exit Interviews: Hutchinson had made jump from good to elite; Smith decision looms in search of a complement
To wrap up the Detroit Lions’ 2024 season, we’re doing a position-by-position evaluation of the roster. Today, we’re focusing on the play of the team’s edge defenders.
The straightforward stats
Aidan Hutchinson: Five games, 19 tackles, 7.5 sacks, 45 QB pressures
Za’Darius Smith: Eight games, 12 tackles, 4.0 sacks, 36 QB pressures
Josh Paschal: 14 games, 21 tackles, 2.0 sacks, 31 QB pressures
Al-Quadin Muhammad: Nine games, 11 tackles, 3.0 sacks, 24 QB pressures
Marcus Davenport: Two games, two tackles, 0.5 sacks, seven QB pressures
Advanced metrics
Hutchinson reached another level to start his third season. Not only was he leading the league in pressures and sacks when he suffered a season-ending injury, but also win rate, defined as the percentage of pass-rush snaps he beat his block. He was at 38.3% when he went down. To add context, Myles Garrett, the 2023 Defensive Player of the Year, led qualifying rushers at 23.1% this season and 27.3% last season.
Smith offered a respectable 18.4% win rate between his time in Detroit and Cleveland, while the team’s remaining edge rushers struggled to regularly beat their blocks. Paschal’s 5.5% win rate was particularly disappointing.
Paschal partially made up for his deficiencies rushing the passer by pacing the Lions with 10 run stops — a tackle on a run play constituting a failure for the offense (fewer than 4 yards on first down, less than half the remaining yardage on second down, and short of a conversion on third or four down). Still, that tally didn’t crack the top 60 among edge defenders around the league.