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Your eyes do not deceive you.
Micah Parsons is not playing anywhere near the same level as he did in 2023. The campaign is still relatively young, but the NFL regular season is a small sample size in and of itself so trends through three games are a lot more indicative than a bad week in the NBA or NHL. Parsons, who has just one sack on the season and only one QB hit over his last two contests, is struggling to round into form in Mike Zimmer’s new defense.
For all the accolades he is continuously heaping on Zimmer for entrusting the defense to him, the play on the field is not showing that to be a good decision. Of course part of that is the newness of the defense, but the advanced stats show that despite getting Parsons more free of the ridiculous double and triple-teams he normally faces, it isn’t resulting in him doing what he’s asked to do any better. In fact, his pass-rush win rate in 2024 doesn’t stand out at all.
ESPN’s Seth Walder tracks this metric, a measurement of how often a player defeats his block within 2.5 seconds. He recently revealed his first iteration for the 2024 season, clocking this ability though three games.
In 2023, Parsons was double teamed at a ridiculous rate that dwarfed every other edge rusher, but still managed to also dwarf every other edge in PRWR. In 2024, Parsons is around seventh in double-team rate, but he’s just in the middle of the pack in PRWR.
Wild to see Micah Parsons’s PRWR say he’s “just a guy” so far in 2024.
Here’s where he ended 2023. https://t.co/wyVndSLRCE pic.twitter.com/cgyTJnpQvk
— KD Drummond (@KDDrummondNFL) September 26, 2024
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These are rate stats, so it’s not about whether or not Parsons is being asked to rush less than years before. This is a display of how well he’s performing when he does rush the passer.
For what it’s worth, PFF did grade his effort against Baltimore in Week 3 as, by far, his strongest pass rush effort of the young season; grading him at 90.7. That season-high is still a healthy amount below his season grades for each of his first three years: 93.7 in 2023, 92.0 in 2022 and 93.0 in his rookie campaign.
His Week 1 pass-rush grade was 69.9 and Week 2 was 75.8. Parsons spoke post-Ravens loss about the defenders behind him not trusting him to execute in front of them. Perhaps everyone will step up on Thursday night against the New York Giants.