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9th Season Coming Soon
Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, considered one of the NFL’s best defensive players, will sign with the Dolphins on Tuesday, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported Sunday.
Suh will become the highest paid defensive player in football, with a contract for $114 million and $60 million guaranteed. He will be paid $60 million in the first three years of a six-year deal, according to the ESPN report.
With Suh anchoring Detroit’s defensive line, the Lions were first against the run last season. The Dolphins were 24th against the run and were pulverized on the ground in several late-season games.
The Dolphins made improving their run defense a priority, and Suh will undoubtedly do that, while also boosting their pass rush. Miami was 13th in sacks per pass play on defense last season. Suh had 8.5 sacks, which was tied for 22nd in the league.
The Dolphins beat out the Lions, Chargers and several other suitors for the player considered the most impactful in this free agent class.
Suh has been named first-team All-Pro four times in his first five NFL seasons and has 36 career sacks. Over the past three seasons, Pro Football Focus rated him fourth, second and third among all defensive tackles.
He led all tackles with 37 quarterback hurries last season; he had 54 the year before. He is durable, having never missed a game due to injury.
Suh, drafted second overall out of Nebraska in 2010, also comes with a reputation. In a 2012 Sporting News poll, active players voted Suh the NFL’s dirtiest player.
Suh served a two-game suspension in 2011 after he stomped on the arm of then-Packers offensive lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith. A year later, Suh was fined $30,000 by the NFL for kicking then-Texans quarterback Matt Schaub in the groin during a Thanksgiving game.
Since 2010, he has been fined seven times for player-safety violations, for $216,875.
With Suh joining the Dolphins, it appears unlikely Miami would be able to afford to re-sign defensive tackle Jared Odrick.
The Dolphins also have not told defensive tackle Randy Starks if they will retain him; Starks has a $6 million cap hit if he’s on the team and $1 million if he’s not.
So what are the Dolphins getting in Suh?
Here's what Pro Football Focus had to say about him last week:
"The NFL hasn’t seen a defensive tackle of Suh’s caliber hit free agency since Albert Haynesworth. Undoubtedly the crown jewel of the free agent class after the tagging of Justin Houston, Suh has produced at a high level since Day 1. The second overall pick in 2010 has tallied 31 more pressures than any other defensive tackle since he entered the league and he’s collected the second most run stops over that same period of time (108).
If you’re looking for weaknesses in Suh’s game, you won’t find many. His pass rushing prowess has been well documented since he led all interior linemen in sacks his rookie season with 11. What hasn’t been as feared over the years is his undisciplined run defense.
He’s always been disruptive, but early in his career he had a bad habit of washing himself out of plays with his over-aggressiveness. The good news is that that player has evolved. He’ll still fire off the ball, but his awareness has improved by leaps and bounds.
In 2013 the Lions allowed 99.8 yards per game and 4.2 yards per carry and those figures dropped to 69.3 yards per game and 3.2 yards per carry last season. The emergence of Ziggy Ansah aided, but the team was also without Stephen Tulloch for the majority of the season.
Besides the obviously attractive feature of elite level play, Suh also offers scheme diversity. He’s been touted as a prototypical 3-technique in a 4-3 ever since college, but that wasn’t even his main position last season. Instead Suh’s primary role was actually left defensive tackle where he would bounce inside and outside of the right guard depending on the formation and defensive call.
He’s been in the Top 10 for Pass Rushing Productivity in all five seasons, finishing in the Top 5 the last three, with a high of 10.2 in 2013. Against the run he started off slow with a Run Stop Percentage of 6.0% from 2010-2012. Over the last two seasons, though, that number jumped dramatically up to 9.1%.
While those are both rate statistics, Suh also ranks highly in bulk numbers because he’s yet to miss a game due to injury in his career (missed two due to suspension in 2011). The defensive tackle has been durable all while carrying one of the heaviest workloads at the position. He’s averaged 894 snaps over the last five seasons, the second-highest over that span (Dontari Poe), with a high of 1,000 (2010) and a low of 772 (2011).
Any profile of Suh, though, would be incomplete without bringing up his history of dirty play. The impending free agent to has been fined $216,875 and lost $187,294 in wages due to on-field incidents over the course of his career according to the Detroit Free Press. The most recent transgression came in the NFC North title game and almost earned him a playoff game suspension.
This erratic behavior hasn’t won over many fans as he routinely is placed atop ‘Most Disliked Players in the NFL’ lists. Any team signing him will have to deal from the possible PR backlash from fans, even though there are zero locker room concerns following the veteran around. As is usually the case, though, fans are quick to forgive when the player is producing on the field."
At $19 million per year, only four players will earn more than Suh: quarterbacks Aaron Rogers, Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco and Drew Brees. He's the second defensive tackle (after Albert Haynesworth) to sign a nine-figure deal. The richest deal for a defensive player, before Suh's Dolphins contract, was Houston Texans linebacker J.J. Watt's $100 million contract.
Suh will become the highest paid defensive player in football, with a contract for $114 million and $60 million guaranteed. He will be paid $60 million in the first three years of a six-year deal, according to the ESPN report.
With Suh anchoring Detroit’s defensive line, the Lions were first against the run last season. The Dolphins were 24th against the run and were pulverized on the ground in several late-season games.
The Dolphins made improving their run defense a priority, and Suh will undoubtedly do that, while also boosting their pass rush. Miami was 13th in sacks per pass play on defense last season. Suh had 8.5 sacks, which was tied for 22nd in the league.
The Dolphins beat out the Lions, Chargers and several other suitors for the player considered the most impactful in this free agent class.
Suh has been named first-team All-Pro four times in his first five NFL seasons and has 36 career sacks. Over the past three seasons, Pro Football Focus rated him fourth, second and third among all defensive tackles.
He led all tackles with 37 quarterback hurries last season; he had 54 the year before. He is durable, having never missed a game due to injury.
Suh, drafted second overall out of Nebraska in 2010, also comes with a reputation. In a 2012 Sporting News poll, active players voted Suh the NFL’s dirtiest player.
Suh served a two-game suspension in 2011 after he stomped on the arm of then-Packers offensive lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith. A year later, Suh was fined $30,000 by the NFL for kicking then-Texans quarterback Matt Schaub in the groin during a Thanksgiving game.
Since 2010, he has been fined seven times for player-safety violations, for $216,875.
With Suh joining the Dolphins, it appears unlikely Miami would be able to afford to re-sign defensive tackle Jared Odrick.
The Dolphins also have not told defensive tackle Randy Starks if they will retain him; Starks has a $6 million cap hit if he’s on the team and $1 million if he’s not.
So what are the Dolphins getting in Suh?
Here's what Pro Football Focus had to say about him last week:
"The NFL hasn’t seen a defensive tackle of Suh’s caliber hit free agency since Albert Haynesworth. Undoubtedly the crown jewel of the free agent class after the tagging of Justin Houston, Suh has produced at a high level since Day 1. The second overall pick in 2010 has tallied 31 more pressures than any other defensive tackle since he entered the league and he’s collected the second most run stops over that same period of time (108).
If you’re looking for weaknesses in Suh’s game, you won’t find many. His pass rushing prowess has been well documented since he led all interior linemen in sacks his rookie season with 11. What hasn’t been as feared over the years is his undisciplined run defense.
He’s always been disruptive, but early in his career he had a bad habit of washing himself out of plays with his over-aggressiveness. The good news is that that player has evolved. He’ll still fire off the ball, but his awareness has improved by leaps and bounds.
In 2013 the Lions allowed 99.8 yards per game and 4.2 yards per carry and those figures dropped to 69.3 yards per game and 3.2 yards per carry last season. The emergence of Ziggy Ansah aided, but the team was also without Stephen Tulloch for the majority of the season.
Besides the obviously attractive feature of elite level play, Suh also offers scheme diversity. He’s been touted as a prototypical 3-technique in a 4-3 ever since college, but that wasn’t even his main position last season. Instead Suh’s primary role was actually left defensive tackle where he would bounce inside and outside of the right guard depending on the formation and defensive call.
He’s been in the Top 10 for Pass Rushing Productivity in all five seasons, finishing in the Top 5 the last three, with a high of 10.2 in 2013. Against the run he started off slow with a Run Stop Percentage of 6.0% from 2010-2012. Over the last two seasons, though, that number jumped dramatically up to 9.1%.
While those are both rate statistics, Suh also ranks highly in bulk numbers because he’s yet to miss a game due to injury in his career (missed two due to suspension in 2011). The defensive tackle has been durable all while carrying one of the heaviest workloads at the position. He’s averaged 894 snaps over the last five seasons, the second-highest over that span (Dontari Poe), with a high of 1,000 (2010) and a low of 772 (2011).
Any profile of Suh, though, would be incomplete without bringing up his history of dirty play. The impending free agent to has been fined $216,875 and lost $187,294 in wages due to on-field incidents over the course of his career according to the Detroit Free Press. The most recent transgression came in the NFC North title game and almost earned him a playoff game suspension.
This erratic behavior hasn’t won over many fans as he routinely is placed atop ‘Most Disliked Players in the NFL’ lists. Any team signing him will have to deal from the possible PR backlash from fans, even though there are zero locker room concerns following the veteran around. As is usually the case, though, fans are quick to forgive when the player is producing on the field."
At $19 million per year, only four players will earn more than Suh: quarterbacks Aaron Rogers, Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco and Drew Brees. He's the second defensive tackle (after Albert Haynesworth) to sign a nine-figure deal. The richest deal for a defensive player, before Suh's Dolphins contract, was Houston Texans linebacker J.J. Watt's $100 million contract.
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