On defense, T.J. Watt had the most seismic leap in the NFL last season, and it's time to pinpoint who's next. While Watt's sack total only improved from 13 to 14.5, he was much more disruptive on a snap-to-snap basis and led the league with eight forced fumbles. He was a first team All-Pro alongside Chandler Jones at the edge rusher position.
My pick for the Watt-type breakout in 2020 is Saints outside rusher Marcus Davenport, another former Round 1 selection who plays on a team with an established, highly paid star -- 2019 second-team All-Pro Cam Jordan -- across from him on the edge.
It wasn't Davenport's fault the Saints used two first-round picks in a trade up to select him in the 2018 NFL Draft, but after a mediocre rookie campaign, there were rumblings he was headed toward bust territory, or just that his debut season indicated he'd never fulfill the expectations that come with a player when a team trades up in Round 1 to get him.
Davenport erased those concerns in a flash in his second NFL season, and before an injury led to him missing the final three games of the regular season, he was phenomenally efficient as a pass rusher across from Jordan. Per Pro Football Focus, from his rookie season to 2019, "Davenport's pass-rush win rate rose from 13.5% to 18.4%, and he increased his raw pressure count from 28 in his rookie season to 50 last year."
And that boost in production from Davenport is nearly identical to what we saw from Watt down the stretch in his second NFL campaign before his first-team All-Pro eruption in Year 3. From PFF in 2018, "Watt produced 25 pressures over the last eight games, with only four of them coming via scheme. Watt raised his pass-rush win percentage from 12.8% in the first half to 20.7% in the second half."
While Watt's sophomore year in the NFL finished with more than double the amount of sacks as Davenport's (13 vs. 6), the Saints edge defender was ironically about two times more efficient than Watt from a pressure-creation perspective:
| Pressures | Pass-Rush Snaps | Pressure-Creation Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watt (2018) | 51 | 902 | 5.60% |
| Davenport (2019) | 50 | 532 | 10.60% |
*Data via PFF
Those are some crazy figures for Davenport, right? And he has a leg up on Watt too because of the presence of Jordan. Watt rushes opposite former first-round pick Bud Dupree, who's very slowly come along in his NFL career but is not in the same tier as Jordan.
Teams will first and foremost gameplan to limit Jordan's production. According to ESPN's Seth Walder via Next Gen Stats, Jordan was double-teamed on 24% of his rushes in 2019. Only seven qualifying edge rushers (essentially "full-time" defenders at that position) were doubled-teamed more frequently.
From a stylistic standpoint, Watt is bendier than Davenport -- Watt's three-cone time was 6.79, Davenport's was 7.20 -- but Davenport is nearly two inches taller and weighed 12 pounds more at his respective combine. Both own a diverse arsenal of pass-rushing moves and play with plenty of pop on contact to drive offensive tackles backward into the quarterback.
Neither are chumps as run defenders either, which keeps them on the field, thereby increasing their chances to make plays behind the line and, of course, provides more pass-rushing possibilities as the league continues to smarten up about the benefits of early-down passing.
I'm not sure what it was -- maybe because of Jordan's presence, the relatively low amount of sacks, or because he didn't play in the final three regular season contests or New Orleans' home playoff loss -- but Davenport's sparkling second season flew under the radar.
The former first-round pick -- my No. 2 edge rusher and No. 20 overall prospect in the 2018 class -- came into the NFL advanced as a pass rusher, it just took him ample time to acclimate to the professional game after playing his college ball at UT-San Antonio against lesser competition.
On a rock-solid Saints defense with playmakers in coverage and Jordan on the other edge, Davenport is going to enjoy a 2020 season like the year Watt had in 2019.
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August 06, 2020 at 09:16PM
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Why Saints' Marcus Davenport will have a T.J. Watt-type edge rusher breakout season in 2020 - CBSSports.com
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