The NFL’s most box-office player today is … an offensive tackle? | Oliver Connolly
Saquon Barkley jumps over defenders. Fred Warner hits everything in sight. Everywhere you look, Lamar Jackson is slinging fire. And yet the best showing in the NFL for 10 weeks has been one of the big boys up front: Lions right tackle Penei Sewell.
It can be easy to miss tackles. They do much of their best work in the shadows. If, like a good official, you can get through a game without noticing them, without a commentator saying their name, you know they’ve done their main job: keeping a quarterback upright. But Sewell has ascended to box-office status as the Lions work their way through the league.
Even as the league becomes more sophisticated, there is still a simple beauty in watching a lineman jump, pull and race into the open field – and no lineman is as destructive along the way as Sewell. He is one fencer extraordinary, and the best draft tackle in the NFL. He is the rare lineman who can turn the sport into a spectacle.
Jared Goff may be the Lions’ most important player, but Sewell is the team’s best. The Lions feed off their rushing attack, and Sewell serves as Detroit’s alpha and omega in the run game. Two years after becoming the youngest starting tackle in league history, Sewell has emerged as the league’s most imposing blocker. Whether he’s digging up people in the trenches or galloping into space, Sewell destroys everyone before him. Sometimes you don’t know whether to wince at the collisions or weld your eyes open, Clockwork Orange style, so you don’t miss a single step. He’s reached a point where smaller defenders jump off him in the open, as if he’s bringing actual death and terror. sometimes they bump into their teammates to prevent the big man from making a clean attack.
The Lions know they are dealing with something special. Coaches love the axiom “players don’t play.” At critical moments, they abandon their carefully crafted plan and try to put pressure on their star. Normally this means drafting something for the team’s best receiving threat. Regardless of the reporting, they are counting on their best player to win. But for the Lions, that player is their agile giant.
Last week, with the Lions in a 10-point hole on the road in Houston, they turned to Sewell. On third-and-long late in the third quarter, when the Texans had a chance to ice the game, Detroit offensive coordinator Ben Johnson put the game in his tackle’s hands and feet.
Hoo boy. There’s Sewell, a 6-foot-4, 335-pound lineman who leads the offense on a screen play … and keeps pace with one of the league’s most explosive running backs. He starts by dropping an edge defender to the ground before darting into space to seal off a Texans defender, opening a corridor for running back Jahmyr Gibbs. But his work is not done there yet. Sewell continues to churn, matching Gibbs step by step and mopping up a third Texan to allow Gibbs to gain a few extra yards.
Johnson kept things moving in the red zone. Needing a touchdown to get within striking distance, the Lions doubled down on their strategy: put Sewell in space.
Let it simmer, big guy!
The NFL has seen a surge of ultra-athletic offensive linemen over the past five years. Hot-shot play-callers find new, creative ways to get those players involved in as many actions as possible. But even in a league full of one percenters, Sewell lives in a world of his own. It has the feel of prime Shaq. How can someone so big be so much more athletic than everyone else?
It’s enough for Goff, a player who early in his career had to deal with Aaron bleeping Donald every day in training, to say that Sewell is as good as he’s seen. “He might be the best athlete in the league,” Goff said earlier this season. “Pound for pound, you find someone who runs like that, who can move like that, who wobbles a little bit like him. He’s as good as I’ve ever seen.”
The Lions weaponize Sewell’s athleticism in a way that would make even Kyle Shanahan and Trent Williams blush, pulling out every trick to make the tackle. To cap off a close matchup against the Vikings, Detroit turned to their star lineman as their go to recipient. In a blowout win against the Cowboys earlier this season, they again looked to Sewell in the passing game, setting up a hook-and-ladder play designed to get S.ewell dances in the end zone. Without the flag, it would have been Sewell’s first receiving touchdown. His movement in the run game, the screen game and as a potential pass catcher creates paranoia in a defense, making life easier for Goff when he drops back to throw.
The side dishes are tasty. But the main course is Sewell shooting people off the ball. There has been a nearly 18% increase in running plays across the league this season. No team has invested more in their squad than the Lions. And no individual run play has been more successful this season than a running back scooting behind Sewell. According to Pro Football Focus, 52.5% of runs targeted behind Sewell this season have gone for a first down or touchdown. No other Lions lineman reaches the 40% mark and only one other tackle in the league, Denver’s Garett Bolles, has surpassed the 45% threshold. You can count on one hand the number of tackles in the recent history of the competition that have taken the lead first.
All the focus on his brilliance in the run game can (somewhat) obscure Sewell’s excellence in pass protection. He comes out of his stance explosively and makes it to the corner before an edge rusher can clear a path to the quarterback. Try to run through his chest, and he will take out even the strongest bull rushers. Even with his size, he can shuffle his feet with the best of them. It seems to be the only answer to bypass Sewell at this point embrace sorcery.
That’s the point. Sewell is not perfectionT pass protector, but he’s close enough – he’s only coughed up a 4% pressure rate this season. When Sewell loses, the such extraordinary athletic display of approaching passersby still requires you to take your eyes off the screen.
As Thanksgiving approaches (my word, what a horrible series of games), forget about bickering with your uncle or throwing away the last piece of pie and instead gather the family to watch Sewell snatch souls.