The Raiders made a good decision when they hired defensive coordinator Gus Bradley in the offseason.
The equally wise decision was to give Bradley a few great players to work with on defense.
One of those great players is defensive end Yannick Ngakoue, who has four sacks this year and has pressured quarterbacks more consistently than any edge rusher in the league, according to Next Gen Stats.
Not only was Ngakoue leading the league in pressures going into the Raiders’ week 8 bye (along with Maxx Crosby), he also has the fastest get-off time in the NFL. Get-off time is an advanced statistic that calculates the time from when the ball comes off the ground at the snap to when the defender’s shoulders cross the line of scrimmage.
It might seem like a relatively insignificant statistic, but the top edge rushers in the league consistently react to the snap quicker than their counterparts around the league.
One other detail to remember is that Ngakoue was dealing with a hamstring issue early in the season. So he’s playing faster now than he was a month ago – something the Eagles became familiar with last week.
For reasons that don’t make a lot of sense now, not many teams made a strong push to sign Ngakoue in the offseason. The two-year, $26 million deal that he signed with the Raiders is modest compared to what the league’s elite edge rushers are making.
At the rate he’s harassing quarterbacks this year, you can bet that a handful of teams are regretting that they didn’t do more to try to sign Ngakoue, who just turned 26 in March, when they had the chance.
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