Carl Lawson is the victim of an outdated way of thinking of pass rushers.
Sacks are great, but really, they’re not everything. Think about it. A sack is finishing the job. Sometimes a quarterback is pressured and he runs into a defender, but not the one who initially created the pressure. That’s why pressure is so important.
And Lawson, who had only 5.5 sacks, created 64 pressures. Sam Hubbard finished second on the team with 32. After doing the math, I realized that’s only half as many! And after that it gets even worse. Carlos Dunlap was third with 13 pressures, and no one else on the defense hit double digit pressures.