Josh Sweat: Season Review/Preview

as training camp approaches we'll be reviewing several players performances in the 2023 season and discussing how they could impact the Eagles during the 2024 season today we'll be discussing Josh sweat next up on our series we are looking at Josh sweat definitely a polarizing figure you got some people that are still rooting for Josh sweat but you still you got some people on the other side saying that you know he had took a big downfall last year not only did he you know go from a career high 12 sacks to 6 and a half to this past season while also increasing his snapshare to the highest of his career add on to that his run defense was a little suspect I think you got some fans that are you know on the on the fence about him or some people that might be all the way out but let's take a look at what sweat did overall in 2023 and and and see if we can kind of figure out where he's at so out of the top 150 Edge rushers in 2023 he was 58th and pressure rate he was 34th and pass rush win rate his real pressure rate was 36th and his pass rush score that I give him was 45th out of 150 uh further into that if we look at some of his Run Stop metrics his Run Stop rate was 79th out of 150 his stuff rate was 123rd out of 150 uh his Run Stop rate seems pretty low which obviously it's in the bottom half it was the highest on the Eagles last year which you know I found a little surprising but when I look back on the film you kind of see why that ended up uh how that number ended up the way it did at the end of the day personally I'll just throw it out there I'm a Josh SWAT truther I think that he had a especially rough second half of the year after ending 2022 red hot and beginning 2023 red hot again I think there's a number of factors that went went into it and as we continue our series and go through the rest of the positions on the defensive side of the ball one thing that we're going to hear come up over and over again is just that the entire defense should the bed toward down the stretch and I think a lot of people a lot of people's production went down the drain with it including the best players I mean reck took a step back as well uh there wasn't really anyone that wasn't affected at that point in time but at the end of the day I still think sweat is a good but probably not great and definitely not Elite pass rusher he's probably a guy he's a good second pass rusher to add but you really do want to have another Ace you know and your and your unit he's still very skilled and he wins with a he has a plethora moves in his bag that he uses he's a polished guy and someone that is enjoyable to watch on film especially when you're looking at just pretty much the pass rush snaps uh and he consistently like Huff has one of the fastest get offs in the NFL so you line up puff on one side and sweat on the other side this is a fast unit to try and stop but there are some downsides with with sweat and I know Eric probably has a little bit to say about that so so what are your thoughts on him yeah and before I get into it I will just say the ability is there this guy has great tools you know he's the size you would look especially for a standup like Edge rusher in the fronts that they'll be using there's tons of examples on film where he looks incredible but the problem is is I think he's I don't know how to say this he's not a high football IQ player um and I saw specific examples where you could see offensive coordinators design plays where they're like we just know this guy is going to get sucked in um and then we can just easily take advantage of him like running to the outside now in a previous video you mentioned that sweat had a clause in his contract where had he got up to a certain number of sacks he would get like a 2 million bonus and over roughly the final seven weeks of the Season he just needed one more and he wasn't able to get it but it just showed up clear as day on tape that he was just freelancing any which way to try to desperately get this sack he um I saw specific examples where on stunts he would he would Loop inside he ended up in the opposite side a gap he was looping so far far um there were times where he would just charge up field um and get way out of position where he's like six seven yards down field and the quarterback's just easily escaping um where he's vacated or just stepping up into the pocket he had a couple boneheaded penalties um overall I think he's a goal player that the offensive coordinators could take advantage of now if you could harness his ability and there were times that in especially in 201 22 where he played more disciplined I think he could be really good that's what's most frustrating about it um so you know there was talks about how the Eagles might get rid of both him and reic this off season and I think we can directly attribute that to like some of that undisciplined play but they didn't have enough depth to be able to justify get getting rid of him um and they probably didn't get it they probably wouldn't get the return that he's worth considering that guys who have double digit sack potential who are I think he's still like in his mid 20s those don't just grow on trees so that's that's probably worth something pretty considerable now I I don't in terms of his contract it's he's done after this year do I think he's going to be coming back well that probably depends a lot on how some of these guys behind him look in limited snaps this year yeah of course I'm rooting for him to do great but you know for all the reasons I mentioned um I have big frustrations with them but they are easily correctable so if you bring in a a coach like fangio who's known to preach discipline who will have very little tolerance for some of the bad habits that sweat has maybe you can get the out of him yeah I agree with a lot of what you you're saying he he has the ability to be one of I don't think he's ever going to be a top 10 Edge rusher in the league if I had to pinpoint where he is right now I'd say he's probably top 30 uh somewhere in that range somewhere between 20 and 30 I think he's a guy if you can really lock things in can get into that top 20 range which is would be fantastic to pair with Huff but like you said a lot of the stuff he's doing it just seems like self-inflicted stuff like you mentioned him getting up field in his pass thresh that also happens in the Run game as well and team's game plan for it it's like he's playing pass first a lot of time and you'll see times where he just gets way up field he creates vertical seams and then runs hit right behind it or there'll be times when he has a guy locked out and he's holding the edge but then he'll dip his head back inside and then the guy just bounces right outside it's like he you can see so many plays where I mean I'm going to throw these up on the screen where he's taking on not just taking on and holding his ground he's standing up Tyron Smith you know he's holding his ground and and beating offensive tackles not just beating him but shedding and getting to the ball which is why he had a much higher uh Run Stop rate than everyone else on the team like all the other guys were and like the 100 ranked 130 and Below reick Graham uh Nolan Smith they weren't getting to the ball nearly as much as sweat was but s sweat just had a bunch of those kind of boneheaded plays that led to big plays for the offense because he was just undisciplined you know so he has all the ability in the world to not only be a good pass rusher but to be a much better run Defender personally I think he has the ability to be the best run defender on the out of the edge group on this team and it's going to be important because they're going to need him to play discipline disciplined next year so that they can improve their their defense next season um so that's something I'm going to be watching for and like you said maybe this was an issue of last year I mean you look back last year and the entire defense just became undisciplined as the year went on uh everyone was kind of you know it's been well documented everyone was kind of chasing Sack or getting out of their Rush lane or or just kind of playing a little selfishly it looked like um so hopefully a new regime a new year refocused together I do want to talk a little bit about you know some of his uh he always gets inevitably is going to get compared to reic um and I thought it was a little unfair that he got compared to reic just because he they Rush primarily on this on their opposite side so sweat was primarily going against left tackles and reck was primarily going against right tackles if you look at the list of the best tackles in the league they're almost exclusively left tackles you got pan suul and Lane Johnson at right tackle and then after that like the next 15 Ed uh tackles that you'd want to have on your team are pretty much left tackles if you look at the average rank PFF pass block rank of the tackles at sweat face last year the average rank was 25th redx was 52nd go back to 2022 sweat was 30th reck was 50th so he was going against extremely good left tackles much of the year you he had to face Tyron Smith twice he had to face who is an all proo is going to be in the Hall of Fame Trent Williams all proo gonna be in the Hall of Fame he had to face him as well he faced Andrew Thomas twice he was former allp proo he was top 10 in pass block grade last year faced Tristan wors who is an all proo former allpro so these are like this was a demanding schedule especially down the stretch and the thing was he didn't end up getting sacks I I think his last sack was the first Cowboys game which was week nine which was against Teran steel when he actually switched sides but he still was getting pressures he got three pressures against Tyron Smith and Tyron Smith is a good ass player he got a pressure against Trent Williams those are not easy guys to get pressures against and he was out there throwing moves and like winning with skill against these guys is he is he someone that the reason why you don't consider him an elite Edge rusher is because he wasn't winning consistently against the top guys and that's what you want to see again when you put uh sweat against some of the worst tackles or or some of the Lesser tackles and so he's not facing these top 10 tackles every week he makes plays happen he makes stuff happen so I think part of that is why you saw his decline in the second half of the Season just look at who he's facing towards the end of the year and it's like then you add on top of that they're facing good quarterbacks that just don't take sacks in general realistically I expect SWAT to bounce back I really expect him to be around that 10 SA range and I add on to that when you look at how fio does utilize his uh his Edge rushers last season he he their stunts were primarily used for Christian Wilkins and then they would put Bradley chub on the opposite side of Christian Wilkins and he would run a bunch of stunts as well which kind of freed him up so that chub was going against a lot of left tackles too but fangio was making his life easier for him sweat did run some stunts and he had some success with it last season but it's just going to be taken up a notch a little bit with fangio and I think he kind of fits in where Bradley chub fit in with the with the Dolphins last year and we're going to see similar similar usage uh from sweat going into next season so I really expect a bounceback at worse I think he's probably going to be in that six seven eight sack range which is still good it's not that's not horrible but it's not like you'd obviously want to hopefully get closer to that double digit sack range but again he was still affecting the quarterback in terms of pressure rate you know pretty consistently and I'll throw in one more stat of the top 100 pass rushers last year he was seventh in total pressures on passes that had less than 2 and a half seconds until the throw if you look at his real pressure rate on those plays it was 19th so he was getting to the quarterback I think part of it too was what we talked about a little bit earlier the entire defense took a step back he was naturally going to take a step back with some of that stuff too so I really hope he can get the Run game stuff together because I think he can really bounce back next year yeah one of the things I'm fascinated by is which side The Edge rushers will play now you would think uh Huff played predominantly the side Ric is playing and sweat played predominantly the other side his whole career so it's like why would they ever switch it but you mentioned there were a few snaps last year where SN sweat would line up on the other side and I thought he looked really good uh so I hope they give that more a chance um especially because like I mentioned before Huff's stature and wingspan is a little bit stunted especially compared to sweat who's one of the like longest Edge rushers in the league um who had a few plays I remember over the past two seasons where he would like tip passes or even had to one interception um if I'm a quarterback and I'm looking to my right and that's where it's easier to make throws and that's and then Huff is if he's on the other side that would be my Blind Side to me uh sweat is a little bit more of a deterrent if I'm trying to throw to my right than Huff so i' I'd hope they experiment with that um and consider switching them at times there's a lot of stuff that goes into why someone might be a better rusher from one side than the other like what is their strong hand um their dominant leg uh do they more bends going One Direction the other because of like their hips are unequal there's a million variables there um and obviously I'm not privy to that information but yeah I'm just something I'm curious about and I do think sweat will have a better year than last year because given his ability it would be really hard to go down from there yeah uh so if you had to say throw a sack total what what's our range that you're looking at there yeah yeah I feel like nine I feel good about nine sacks um yeah somewhere like the high in I would say around 12 that like if he got 12 I would just be thrilled obviously it's like how timely are those is it because he caused it so it's like just the number in a vacuum is pretty arbitrary um but yeah if if we're just saying it's equivalent to the equal sack then yeah like nine is what I would expect and I and up to 12 seems like it's a possibility