Is Jadeveon Clowney the NFL’s Best Bet for a Breakout Season in 2016?

Before the Houston Texans selected him with the first overall pick in 2014, one image stood out when you heard the name Jadeveon Clowney: a flying helmet.

It belonged to Michigan running back Vincent Smith. As it floated through the air during the 2013 Outback Bowl, a transformation took place. Overnight, Clowney turned into a fierce monster who can devour running backs and quarterbacks at will, all before palming the ball as though it was a tiny figurine.

You saw the replay of his hit on Smith for almost every waking moment of your life during the lead-up to the 2014 draft. It was beamed to the various screens you stare at, appearing on a seemingly endless loop.

Clowney’s draft stock skyrocketed. Suddenly he was a generational talent set to storm the league. Suddenly he was preparing to take up residency in every backfield. And suddenly he was among the best can’t-miss first overall picks in recent memory.

Then just as suddenly, he was gone.

Clowney suffered a knee injury in his regular-season NFL debut, which later led to microfracture surgery. Already the always fun “will he ever be the same again?” conversation had started.

But Clowney recovered fast because he’s not remotely normal. Maybe too fast? That was the fear heading into training camp in 2015. This gem of a draft prospect already had his knee poked, prodded and reassembled. Now he was already going to have it rattled and smacked during game action too?

There he was, though, sometimes looking like a shell of himself during his second season, and other times looking like his normal self.

Now with OTAs underway and the NFL offseason calendar chugging along swiftly, the two-time first-team All-SEC player had an announcement to make, per ESPN.com’s Tania Ganguli:

Jadeveon Clowney had a Lisfranc injury that prematurely ended his 2015 season. Says he did not need surgery and is 100%. #Texans

— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) May 23, 2016

Everyone feels great during the offseason. Everyone has either lost or gained the right amount of weight, or become faster. The ailments that derailed a season are always silenced in the jolly, sunny times of late May and June.

But this feels different. Why? Mostly because we all want it to feel different, or it has to feel different.

Watching a uniquely talented player being stripped of his opportunity to shine because of injuries is an example of football’s cold, brutal nature at its absolute worst. And if Clowney doesn’t rise now, it may not happen ever.

He had 4.5 sacks in 2015, with six passes defensed, a forced fumble and 40 tackles. Clowney also recorded 22 quarterback hurries and 30 total pressures, all despite logging just 43 pass-rush snaps, according to Pro Football Focus. He recorded a pressure on only 7.9 percent of his total snaps, though that may only tell a half-truth about the Clowney we saw in 2015.

You see, overall, Clowney’s most recent season comes with a stench of production that was average at best compared to his outside linebacker peers. His pressure percentage ranked 30th among the 33 outside linebackers in 3-4 schemes who played at least 50 percent of their team’s defensive snaps, per PFF.

The dark cloud over Clowney hovers a little lower when we consider that his sole purpose on a football field is to rush the passer. Predictably, he was assigned to chase after the quarterback on 94.9 percent of his passing snaps, per PFF, the second-highest percentage at his position. To translate football language into English then: Those two percentages (his pass-rush volume and pressures) show that Clowney was asked to do a specific job in a specialized role on passing downs, and he largely failed.

It’s at this point, though, when the darkness over Clowney lifts as you ask yourself a question, one that determines where exactly the bar should have been during his first full season. What were the realistic expectations for a player returning quickly from microfracture surgery, which is notoriously debilitating?

Realistically, those 4.5 sacks represent a fine season, especially when nearly all of them (3.5) came over a four-game stretch late in the year when Clowney was feeling more like the freakish mass of lumbering muscle he became at South Carolina. In terms of games played, he’s still not far removed from the 2012 college football season. That’s when Clowney recorded 13 sacks and 23.5 tackles for a loss.

And realistically, this chart shows he’s a multidimensional defender capable of being a firm edge-setting presence against the run:

When we think realistically about Clowney’s 2015 performance, what we’re doing is reducing his season to an even smaller sample size, searching for moments of brilliance. There needs to be some forgiveness, particularly early in the year when he was still finding his form.

The hope is once we change from a broad view …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com