Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, it’s time to focus on Commanders pass-rusher Dorance Armstrong, who’s been one of Dan Quinn’s favorite players going back to their days with the Dallas Cowboys. Now, Armstrong is repaying Quinn’s belief with performances that mark him as the NFL’s best pass-rusher nobody is talking about.
Once
in a while as an analyst, you get these things right, and that’s a pretty good feeling.
Back in May, when intrepid editor Jeanna Kelley asked me to put together a series of “Hidden Gems” for every NFL team — one underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent acquisition, and one underrated draft pick — the underrated veteran for the Washington Commanders was an easy call. That was Dorance Armstrong, who followed Dan Quinn from Dallas with a three-year, $33 million contract including $16.125 million guaranteed in 2024.
Before Quinn became the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator in 2021, Armstrong was an afterthought — the 2018 fourth-round pick out of Kansas had never totaled more than 273 defensive snaps in a season. But Quinn saw something in Armstrong, and the snaps kept going up from 535 in 2021 to 618 in 2022 and 468 in an injury-abbreviated 2023 season.
Quinn knew that his new team was light on the edges, so he was happy to bring Armstrong along, and not just for the edge work. Quinn’s career as a defensive coordinator has often been accentuated by pass-rushers who can win from multiple gaps — Michael Bennett with the Seattle Seahawks is the most prominent example — and that’s how Quinn has deployed his veteran friend in the nation’s capital.
In 2024, Armstrong had a career-high 10 sacks and 51 total pressures in a career-high 450 pass-rushing snaps (747 overall) and he really ramped things up in the postseason. Four of his 10 sacks came in three playoff games, and overall, Armstrong was a major pain for opposing blockers from every gap — he lined up 13% of the time in the B-gaps, and the rest of the time outside. In Washington’s 45-31 Divisional playoff win over the Detroit Lions, Armstrong really went off with two sacks and a host of pressure.
Now, in his eighth NFL season, Armstrong appears to be better than ever. He has three sacks and 18 total pressures in just 72 pass-rushing snaps, and he’s doing it all over the place once again. Per Next Gen Stats, Armstrong’s 25.0% pressure rate ties him for the league lead with Al-Quadin Muhammad of the Detroit Lions (another Secret Superstar this week), and nobody has more total disruptions in the league through three full weeks of the 2025 season.
“I’m proud to see the camp that he had and how he started off onto the season,” Quinn said of Armstrong last week. “He’s worked hard, and with the versatility we have now, we can better feature players in different spots than maybe we were able to a year ago. And how we find matchups and go and [LB] Von [Miller] helps with that and [LB] Frankie [Luvu] and [DE] Jacob [Martin] and others, and having flexibility helps.
“How do you want to match up? How do you want to do things? But you also have to be smart enough to handle all that, and D.A. is right in the middle of all of that. So, I’ve loved that Von coming here has helped him. Also, he’s been the mentor to [DE] Javontae [Jean-Baptiste] now there’s other people to continue with his growth, and he’s off to a good start.”
Joe Whitt Jr., Quinn’s defensive coordinator, was quick to agree with all of that when he was asked on Sept. 4 of Armstrong’s impact on the Commanders’ defense.
“A complete football player. You know, he’s not just a rusher. He is not a guy who just can play the run. He can do it all. He can play [outside] on first and second down, on third down, you can kick him inside. You can play, you know, a six technique, nine technique with him, three technique. He’s just a complete football player. He’s a really smart man. I know he doesn’t say a lot, but he can communicate, and when we’re running games and when we’re changing things up front, he can communicate that with the other D-linemen. So, he’s one of the leaders on this defense. And he’s had a hell of a camp. It’s going to show up.”
The Commanders’ pass rush is hitting at a different level in 2025, and Dorance Armstrong is the primary reason. You couldn’t blame Quinn if he wanted to say that he saw it coming all along.
