The Full Mack Attack Is All the Way Back

Khalil Mack is living rent-free inside Kirk Cousins’ head.

Check out this anecdote from The Athletic’s Chad Graff, who shared some interesting comments from the Vikings QB on Chicago’s top pass-rusher:

You know what’s utterly hilarious? The fact that Mack’s lurking presence can mess with everything a quarterback does in the passing game so much, he remembers it a year later. Plenty of guys can be the sort of game-changer who racks up big stats, but Mack has shown that he can do it without laying a finger on the quarterback. Pretty neat, eh?

Oh, and the numbers Mack puts up are darn good, too.

Take for example his grade from Pro Football Focus last week:

https://twitter.com/nfl/status/1176934628667510785?s=21

There were just 18 players who earned a grade of 90 or better from PFF in Week 3. And if you consider there are 1,472 players who suited up in Week 3, being one of 18 is a pretty big freaking deal.

Mack was on the attack in Week 3, en route to becoming PFF’s fourth-highest-graded player. His 92.4 grade was well-earned and turned out to be the second best grade among edge defenders last week. The analytics site gave Mack a 93.1 pass-rushing grade and collected a 47.1 percent pass-rush win rate while blitzing. You don’t need to understand the inner-workings of number-crunching to realize those numbers are ridiculously awesome.

So how does one reach these heights?

Well, Mack came away with two sacks, two tackles-for-loss, two forced fumbles, and three quarterback hits. But Mack’s dominance goes beyond that. PFF’s post-game notes show that Mack recorded *NINE* total pressures (and would have had 13 had it not been for penalties that negated those plays). Mack put together a 24.3 percent pressure rate and 31.1 percent overall pass-rush win rate. Holy smokes! That is a ton of pressure.

Mack got off to a slow start (at least, by his standards) to the 2019 season, picking up just one sack, one quarterback hit, and two tackles-for-loss for loss while playing 88 percent of the team’s snaps in the first two games of the year. But it was only a matter of time before Mack broke out and found himself terrorizing offenses again.

(Photo by Will Newton/Getty Images)

written by

Luis C. Medina, who you can find on Twitter at lcm1986, has been covering the Chicago Bears at Bleacher Nation since 2017. Since then, he has written about 3 head coaches, 5 play-callers, and 11 starting quarterbacks. Previously, Luis wrote about the Cubs and MLB at BN (2015-16) and worked in the Chicago Tribune sports department (2011-16). He also co-hosted a Cubs postgame show, Outside the Ivy, in 2019.

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