The NFL is a league that loves to celebrate the big moments in a game.
Watch any highlight reel, and you will see:
- A long touchdown pass or run
- A big kickoff or punt return
- A quarterback sack late in the game
Those are all important, of course, but the game is made up of more than just big moments, especially when it comes to sacks.
Consider the following scenario. The offense is facing a third-and-long, and the quarterback drops back to pass. The defense doesn’t get a sack, but pressures the quarterback into either an incompletion or a pass that falls well short of the first-down line.
The defense
jogs off the field, mission accomplished, even if the play never makes the highlight reel.
This is a timely discussion when looking at the impact that Cleveland Browns defensive end Jared Verse has made during Cleveland’s 3-1 start to the season.
The Browns have tallied 12 sacks this season, with eight different players recording at least one sack. But Verse is not one of them.
The easy (and lazy) way to look at that is to conclude that Verse is not carrying his weight and the Browns will soon have buyer’s remorse.
But remember the earlier point about sacks not being the only defining stat? Well, it turns out that Verse, who came into the season with the fifth-most quarterback pressures among defensive ends since 2024, is the poster child for impacting a game without registering a sack.
Robert Mays and Derrick Klassen, co-hosts of The Athletic Football Show, made that argument in a recent video segment, comparing Verse to Jadeveon Clowney (who played for the Browns in 2021 and 2022) at his peak:
Jared Verse is just an awesome player. You are never going to fully understand his value by how many sacks he gets over the course of a season. This feels a lot like the way that we had to talk about Jadeveon Clowney when he was at his peak, where it’s like the sack numbers are just never really quite there. But he is always just around the quarterback and always pushing a tackle into the quarterback, and a good run defender who can take back space in that way. He does feel very similar to Clowney at his peak.
OK, you might be saying, “What do a couple of guys on a podcast know about rushing the quarterback? I want sacks!”
Fair enough. But what about Hall of Fame offensive tackle Joe Thomas? Seems like he might know a thing or two about line play in the NFL.
And Thomas echoes the thoughts on Verse in a recent video clip showing the impact that Verse had in Cleveland’s Week 3 win against the Carolina Panthers:
“Jared Verse has been a bust since the Garrett trade. That’s what the outside world is saying…. Zero sacks through four games. But he leads the Browns in pressures, and six of them came against Carolina, where his rush helped Mason Graham and Isaiah McGuire get home. Sacks are the receipt. The pressure is the purchase. We rolled the tape. Coaching point for every young lineman: a rush that moves the quarterback is a win, even when somebody else makes the tackle.‘
Verse and the Browns will certainly not be unhappy if he starts stacking sacks, and they will likely come as he is too talented not to get to the quarterback at some point.
But no one will be complaining if he keeps disrupting quarterbacks and helping the defense get off the field in a big spot.
Even if it means he is not making the weekly highlight film.
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