All-Twenty Tuesday: Bucs DT Ndamukong Suh

Whatever opinion you have of Gerald McCoy, he is no longer a Buccaneer. As McCoy’s time in Tampa Bay came to and end, the time of Ndamukong Suh is just beginning.

McCoy and Suh have a lot of history. They were back-to-back picks at No. 2 and No. 3 overall in the 2010 NFL Draft, and because of it they have forever been linked. Suh has more career sacks than McCoy at 56 to 54.5, but those numbers are basically identical, especially considering Suh has played in more games than McCoy. But Suh’s tackle for loss and QB hit numbers are both significantly higher. Suh has 107 TFLs compared to McCoy’s 79, and Suh has 166 QB hits to McCoy’s 140. Even if you break it down in per-games-played percentages, Suh’s are still higher (but barely).

But beyond the stats, Suh has been the player Bucs fans have wanted for year – maybe nine years, even. They didn’t get him in 2010, but they have him now.

So what are they getting?

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First off, the Bucs are getting a stout run defender. Suh has been back and forth between being a pass rusher and a run defender throughout his career, depending on his landing spot. But here in 2019 it’s safe to say he certainly knows what he’s doing in gaps.

As a surprise to no one, this dude is still strong as an ox, and he seems to be fully in control of any single-man blocking concept.

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Suh’s hand placement and overall strength are tough to beat. Even when moving laterally, he can get his hands up and underneath offensive linemen to be ready to throw them off in a moment’s notice. His long arms make him even more of a problem.

Though football is getting more and more spread out, you have to be able to control the line of scrimmage. Suh definitely can. Since 2014 he hasn’t put up an overall season run defense score of lower than 84 in PFF’s grading system. For reference, McCoy has never posted a score of 84 or higher in his nine-year career, though 2018 was his highest career grade at 81.

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Now let’s get to the money plays: the sacks.

You know Suh as primarily an interior defensive lineman, right? Well, what if I told you that of the 4.5 sacks Suh accumulated in 2018, four of them came from a defensive end position?

See the clip above for the first.

It turns out that when you’re a freak athlete of great size, speed and strength you can play anywhere along the line. By placing such a massive man in a position like the one above where he can gain momentum and truly bull rush an offensive lineman harder than an actual bull can, it works.

In the play above, Suh lined up in an area you could consider a “wide-9 technique” which, for easy explanation, means far off the outside shoulder of the offensive tackle or the tight end. The reason you would do this is because it allows your edge rusher to rely less on bend and more on converting speed into power. That’s right up Suh’s alley.

As you can see, Suh generated so much power in his momentum that he was able to push his man back with just one arm extended before registering the sack.

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The clip above showed Suh in a similar position. Such a situation is a nightmare for any right tackle. They know they have to brace for everything Suh will bring them. Suh coming out of a normal defensive line position is hard enough to handle. Now imagine giving him a head start.

In the play above, Suh not only showed good get-off and speed off the snap, but also incredibly fast and strong hands to bat the offensive lineman’s initial punch away. After that it was just a simple shoulder dip – just kidding, a 6-foot-4, 315 pound defensive animal shoulder dipping like that is not simple at all, it’s amazing – and into the quarterback.

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Suh’s third sack of the year? Yep, you guessed it. It came from a wide-9 alignment.

In that play, the Seahawks tried to handle Suh on the edge by getting their tight end to block him initially and then using the running back as a second wave if the first failed.

Well, the first did, and so did the backup. Some of the best offensive linemen in the game have trouble blocking Suh. It’s very risky asking any tight end-running back combo to do so.

Though the clip was really just poor planning on the offense, it did intro us into a specific talking point. When the Rams put Suh at defensive end like that, especially out that wide, it gives the offense some problems. Blocking him with just a right tackle doesn’t work very often. So they attempted the “more bodies” route. That one didn’t work either.

Aligning Suh in a wider defensive end position is a nightmare for offensive lines. Todd Bowles has already shown he’s more than willing to play Suh at defensive end in practice, in addition to the 3-technique position that Aaron Donald played last year in Los Angeles.

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Suh’s last sack from the defensive end spot was not as exciting as the first three. It was more of a “right place, right time” kind of sack.

But I’ll make up for it with a clip of what was Suh’s half sack recorded in the other Seahawks game.

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In the clip above, Suh came from a 2-technique spot as what would be the nose tackle on this play. In it, his crossing of the offensive lineman’s face and hand movements were so strong and so violently fast that the guard had no chance.

Suh is a freak. There’s no doubt about it. He has the strength of a nose tackle and the speed of a defensive end. In theory, he’s everything the Bucs are looking for, including from a versatility standpoint. Expect Suh and Vita Vea, last year’s first-round pick, to be aligned in many different spots along the defensive line throughout the year with a goal of creating the exact same chaos and result we saw multiple times above.