When talking about defensive front seven players and their impact on the game, sacks and pressures are usually the main stats most point to in order to discuss how well they affect the game and disrupt the opposing offense.
Using those numbers as a piece, along with other metrics including hurries and turnovers, Next Gen Stats ranked the top ten disruptors in 2021. And take a look at the name at the top of the list.
That would be Bengals EDGE Trey Hendrickson. Indeed, not Aaron Donald, not Myles Garrett or even 2021 Defensive Player of the Year T.J. Watt.
Hendrickson followed up his 13.5-sack performance — which helped him earn the No. 3 spot on this list a year ago — by registering 79 pressures and 14 sacks. His pressure rate (19.4%) is fourth-best in the NGS era (since 2016). What truly separated Hendrickson from the pack, though, was his ability to cause takeaways. Hendrickson forced five turnovers via pressure, tying with Markus Golden, Randy Gregory, Chandler Jones and Odafe Oweh for the league lead. Only one player from that group had a strong enough body of work to land on this list, and Hendrickson’s was good enough to put him at the top of it.
That contract has become more and more of a bargain by the day and to now see a list of defensive players where Hendrickson sits atop, ahead of all those big names (Donald ranked eighth!), Bengals fans have to feel extremely happy to have a player the caliber of Hendrickson.
