While sacks get talked about often, pressures are the truest measure of the effectiveness of a pass rusher. SISdatahub.com and pro-football-reference.com both track QB pressures, but they don’t agree. SIS is much more generous with pressures. Trey Hendrickson led the league according to both sites, but SIS credited him with 85 pressures while PFR credited him with 54.
An old debate in sports is would you rather have a consistently good player or a player that can be great in one game and terrible in the next. To evaluate this for the pass rushers in the league I used the SIS data and looked at the average pressures per game for the top pass rushers in the league (40 or more pressures) and then I also looked at the standard deviation of their pressure numbers.
There were 55 players who got 40 or more pressures in 2024. I also included Aidan Hutchinson who would have gotten more than 40 if he did not miss a large portion of the season with injury. He finished with 38, but had one of the best pressures per game numbers in the league. There were 59 games when an elite pass rusher got “shut out”, meaning that they got zero pressures in a game.
Before we get into the deep data dive, lets look at the Denver Broncos pass rushers from last season in terms of their overall pass rush stats.
Our two sacks leaders, Jonathan Cooper and Nik Bonitto generated 53 and 48 pressures according to SIS. Our team leader was Zach Allen, but he also had 586 instances of rushing the passer, so his 69 pressures, which was near the top of the league, meant that he was only generating pressure on 11.8% of his pass rush snaps. Our best front five player in terms of pressure rate was Dondrea Tillman who only generated 21 pressures, but did that on only 149 pass rush snaps (14.9%). Jonah Elliss was still learning that he needed more pass rush moves to succeed in the NFL. His 8.2% pressure rate was bad for an edge, but Baron Browning’s 5.6% while he was still on the Broncos was terribad. It’s the main reason he was sent packing.
The top rushers in 2024 are listed in the table below sorted by pressure rate.
The Broncos best rusher in terms of pressure rate for guys with 40 or more pressures was John Franklin-Myers. His 13.3% was the best among our high volume pass rushers. Nik Bonitto was only shut out once during the 2024 season - in game 2. Zach Allen got more pressures per game than any Bronco rusher, but he was somewhat inconsistent. While he didn’t get shutout in any game, he did have two games where he only got one pressure. Those were gamess nine and game seventeen (at Baltimore and at KC).
RANK Rusher Average Pressures per Game Standard Deviation of Pressures
1 Maxx Crosby 5.67 2.93
2 Micah Parsons 5.38 2.40
3 Trey Hendrickson 5.00 2.69
4 Alex Highsmith 4.45 3.21
5 Zach Allen 4.31 2.09
6 Jared Verse 4.24 2.17
7 Will McDonald IV 4.12 2.29
8 Nick Bosa 4.07 1.82
9 Chris Jones 4.07 2.05
10 Myles Garrett 4.06 2.51
11 Jonathan Greenard 4.00 2.12
12 Brian Burns 3.71 2.26
13 YaYa Diaby 3.71 1.16
14 Greg Rousseau 3.63 3.01
15 T.J. Watt 3.59 2.03
16 Osa Odighizuwa 3.59 1.84
17 George Karlaftis 3.38 1.71
18 Danielle Hunter 3.35 2.26
19 Carl Granderson 3.35 2.71
20 Boye Mafe 3.27 1.98
21 Josh Hines-Allen 3.25 1.77
22 Travon Walker 3.24 1.92
23 Kyle Van Noy 3.19 1.47
24 Jonathon Cooper 3.12 1.45
25 Chase Young 3.12 2.06
26 Will Anderson Jr. 3.07 2.06
27 Leonard Williams 3.00 2.22
28 Josh Sweat 3.00 1.59
29 Nnamdi Madubuike 3.00 2.18
30 Keion White 2.94 1.64
31 Jalen Carter 2.94 1.81
32 Khalil Mack 2.88 1.96
33 Quinnen Williams 2.88 1.89
34 Zach Sieler 2.87 1.41
35 Nik Bonitto 2.82 1.59
36 Cameron Heyward 2.76 1.48
37 Chop Robinson 2.76 2.84
38 Dayo Odeyingbo 2.76 2.39
39 John Franklin-Myers 2.71 1.65
40 Andrew Van Ginkel 2.65 2.32
41 Braden Fiske 2.65 1.69
42 Rashan Gary 2.65 1.73
43 Montez Sweat 2.63 1.15
44 Odafe Oweh 2.59 1.84
45 Derick Hall 2.59 1.42
46 Vita Vea 2.56 1.55
47 Dorance Armstrong 2.56 1.50
48 DeMarcus Walker 2.53 1.81
49 Arden Key 2.50 1.21
50 Jeffery Simmons 2.50 2.00
51 Leonard Floyd 2.47 2.03
52 Dre'Mont Jones 2.47 2.12
53 Kobie Turner 2.41 1.54
54 Dante Fowler Jr. 2.35 1.41
55 Maliek Collins 2.35 1.62
In terms of pressures per game among the 55 best, Zach Allen was the 5th best. Cooper was 24th. Bonitto was 35th and JFM was 39th. Cooper was not shut out. JFM was shut out twice, in the first two games of the season. He was not shut out after that. He averaged 3.1 pressures per game for the rest of the season with a low of two and a high of six which he did in games 14 and 16.
As a team the Broncos led the league in pressures and were second to the Cowboys in pressure rate.
Tm Att Cmp Yds TD Bltz% Hrry% QBKD% Sk Prss Prss%
1 Dallas Cowboys 512 349 3708 28 29.9% 12.4% 10.5% 52 180
2 Denver Broncos 606 393 3752 22 29.5% 8.5% 11.9% 63 195
3 Cleveland Browns 511 316 3611 26 26.4% 7.9% 13.3% 41 155
4 Detroit Lions 610 373 4148 18 34.6% 10.7% 11.3% 37 179
5 Kansas City Chiefs 569 375 3720 24 31.6% 9.0% 12.8% 39 171
6 Minnesota Vikings 637 415 4114 24 38.9% 8.7% 10.8% 49 180
7 Chicago Bears 503 325 3705 17 23.5% 7.4% 11.9% 40 142
8 Seattle Seahawks 569 371 3603 26 23.6% 7.3% 12.0% 45 160
9 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 630 418 4147 27 34.2% 8.6% 10.5% 46 173
10 Buffalo Bills 578 396 3843 28 19.1% 8.9% 9.5% 39 151
11 New York Jets 521 327 3275 18 25.6% 9.2% 8.1% 43 140
12 Cincinnati Bengals 573 372 3799 30 21.7% 7.8% 11.3% 36 152
13 Houston Texans 554 326 3417 31 24.1% 7.2% 9.0% 49 145
14 Washington Commanders 496 307 3221 25 31.5% 7.9% 8.3% 43 129
15 Baltimore Ravens 625 396 4150 27 20.3% 6.2% 9.8% 54 159
16 Green Bay Packers 565 381 3658 23 17.3% 8.5% 7.6% 45 143
17 Pittsburgh Steelers 582 382 3876 23 25.9% 5.8% 10.8% 40 140
18 New York Giants 503 349 3580 23 27.9% 6.8% 8.3% 45 126
19 New Orleans Saints 591 366 4055 19 20.6% 9.3% 7.3% 39 145
20 Los Angeles Rams 542 354 3793 29 23.1% 9.7% 6.3% 38 131
21 Las Vegas Raiders 561 370 3676 29 26.3% 8.6% 7.3% 38 133
22 Indianapolis Colts 545 378 3899 27 17.5% 7.7% 8.1% 36 127
23 Miami Dolphins 572 365 3582 22 23.6% 8.2% 7.5% 35 130
24 San Francisco 49ers 516 338 3278 25 17.7% 6.5% 8.3% 37 117
25 Atlanta Falcons 578 404 3817 34 20.6% 8.9% 7.3% 31 131
26 Los Angeles Chargers 565 367 3517 24 23.8% 5.2% 8.7% 46 129
27 Arizona Cardinals 539 370 3674 20 21.6% 7.1% 6.3% 41 119
28 Philadelphia Eagles 542 337 2961 22 19.1% 4.7% 7.6% 41 111
29 New England Patriots 533 346 3596 27 25.4% 7.3% 6.2% 28 104
30 Jacksonville Jaguars 580 389 4375 29 13.9% 6.5% 5.9% 34 111
31 Tennessee Titans 473 314 3014 27 20.9% 4.9% 6.8% 32 91
32 Carolina Panthers 530 360 3820 35 29.0% 5.9% 5.5% 32 96
Pressure helps coverage and defenses playing with a lead find it easier to rush the passer. I would not be surprised at all if the Broncos are at or near the top of the league again in pressures and sacks in 2025. The addition of Sai’vion Jones should allow Allen to get some more rest, which should keep him more effective as the season wears on. The additions of Jahdae Barron, Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga should force opposing QBs to make poor throw decisions and should lead to more interceptions and pass break-ups as QBs try to avoid both Patrick Surtain and Barron.