Saquon Barkley is leaping over defenders. Fred Warner is hitting everything in sight. Wherever you look, Lamar Jackson is slinging fire. And yet the best show going in the NFL through 10 weeks is one of the big guys up front: Lions right tackle Penei Sewell.
It can be easy to miss tackles. They do a lot of their best work in the shadows. Like a good official, if you can get through a game without noticing them, without a commentator saying their name, you know they’ve done their primary job of keeping a quarterback upright. But Sewell has ascended to box-office status as the Lions rip their way through the league.
Even as the league becomes more sophisticated, there is still a simple beauty in watching a lineman skip, pull and race out into the open field – and no lineman is as destructive on the move as Sewell. He is a screener extraordinaire, and the best pulling tackle in the NFL. He is the rare lineman who can turn the sport into a spectacle.
Jared Goff may be the Lions’ most important player, but Sewell is the team’s best. The Lions feed off their rushing attack, and Sewell serves as Detroit’s alpha and omega in the run game. Two years on from being the youngest starting tackle in league history, Sewell has rounded into the most imposing blocker in the league. Whether digging people up in the trenches or galloping out into space, Sewell is laying waste to all before him. At times, you don’t know whether to wince at the collisions or weld your eyes open, Clockwork Orange-style, so that you don’t miss a single step. He has reached a point where smaller defenders are leaping off his way in the open field, as if he brings actual death and terror, sometimes crashing into their teammates to avoid the big man delivering a clean strike.
The Lions know they’re dealing with something special. Coaches are fond of the axiom “players not plays”. In critical moments, they ditch their carefully calibrated plan and look to force-feed a touch to their star. Ordinarily, that means drawing up something to the team’s best-receiving threat. No matter the coverage, they’re banking on their best player to win. But for the Lions, that player is their nimble giant.
Last week, with the Lions in a 10-point hole on the road in Houston, they turned to Sewell. On third-and-long late in the third quarter, with the Texans having a shot to ice the game, Detroit’s offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, put the game in the hands and feet of his tackle.
That’s the thing. Sewell is not a perfect pass protector, but he’s close enough – he has coughed up only a 4% pressure rate this season. When Sewell does lose, it requires such extraordinary displays of athleticism for approaching pass-rushers that you still take your eyes off the screen.
As Thanksgiving approaches (my word, what an awful slate of games), forget bickering with your uncle or scrapping over the last slice of pie and instead gather the family around to watch Sewell snatch souls.
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