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laram

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dzrams
The Rams D would have been bottom third last year without AD.

No division title, no playoffs.

He led the league in QB pressures. He had more than edge defenders....from the DT position.

IMO, that negates any argument about positional value.

Edge defenders are highly paid b/c they rush the QB. If you rush the QB better than they do, you're worth at least their money.

A huge chunk of the sacks Longacre, Quinn, Barwin, and company picked up were b/c AD flushed the QB into their hands.

He is the engine of the D.

So yeah, he's absolutely worth it.

If I was AD's agent I'm asking for highest paid defensive player money anyway, even without the Suh contract.

Regardless of the fact that its supposedly a passing league football still comes down to running the ball and stopping the run.

IF you can do that you gotta chance, just look at the teams in the final four.

The Rams couldn't stop the run during the season and it hurt them in the playoffs.

But I think you are totally discounting the option of having a better run defender with let's say half the sack and pressure output of Donald would have done.

The great Deacon Jones would always tell me "you can rip a teams heart out by running the ball down their F'ing throats"

Play action is ineffective if you can't run the ball so in most cases the run sets up everything.

And I have yet to see anyone quantify pressures.

Pressures are great but did they lead to in-completions, sacks, turnovers or completions?

Its BAD cap management to allocate that much of your resources to a position that plays maybe 70% of snaps.

I'd agree that stopping the run is important. Good thing that AD is one of the best run defending DL in the game.

AD has been a league leader in run stuffs since his rookie season. He was 6th in '16, 3rd in '15, and 5th in '14. I don't have the '17 numbers but it was his most dominant season yet.

PFF has consistently ranked him as one of the best run defenders among interior DL.

Did pressures lead to incompletions, sacks, turnovers or completions? All of the above.

I already mentioned how many of the LBs sacks were a clear result of pressure from Donald chasing the QB into their waiting arms.

Also, pressure quite clearly led to incompletions. Go back and look at the first half of the Atl. game.

Donald was a wild man, getting pressure on nearly every pass play, which was disrupting everything and led to many incompletions. The announcers said he had 10 pressures in the 1st half alone. Without him that game is a blow out.

Ironically, I believe his first half dominance is partially why they decided to implement our kryptonite and run the ball down our throats in the 2nd half. The pass wasn't working credit to AD.

But I hear you when you say pressures are not quantified. We like everything to be quantified and when it's not, it's easy to discount it.

However, it's only us fans who can't quantify it. Teams keep track of those things and both GW and Wade are on record as saying that pressures are in a way MORE Important than sacks precisely because they lead to incompletions and interceptions.

(PFF also quantifies pressure but I won't bore you with that since you don't like them. )

If a great DC like Wade is saying that pressures are more important, I'm paying attention. You can go ahead and dismiss that if you want.

73.56%. That is the percentage of snaps that he plays and guess what? That's among the highest percentage of all DL.

It's time to pay the man.