From dreadful to ‘special?’ Shaq Lawson plots big turnaround for Dolphins’ pass rush.
Shaq Lawson is a known extrovert, a high-energy, high-volume player who isn’t shy about sharing his thoughts on most anything, football included.
An example: Not long after joining the Dolphins on an eight-figure contract, he sounded ready to conquer the league with his new teammates — even if he didn’t know their names.
“We’ve got guys,” Lawson said. “They came from programs that had successful numbers last year. Kyle had a great year. Ogbah — I don’t know how to pronounce his name, but I know that’s my teammate — had a great year. So putting us all three on the field, we can be something special; but that’ll take time. We’ve all got to be on the same page because we’ve got to think about it. We’ve never rushed with each other and things like that, so it’s going to take time; but we’ve got three great guys to go rush the passer. It could be special.”
Kyle is Kyle Van Noy, the ex-Patriots linebacker. Ogbah is Emmanuel Ogbah, a defensive end formerly of the Chiefs.
All three agreed to deals with the Dolphins on the first two days of free agency. Together, they will be tasked with fixing the league’s worst pass rush.
And Lawson, given his great — but still not fully realized — gifts, probably has the highest expectations. The former consensus All-American at Clemson and first-round pick has just 16 1/2 sacks in his first four NFL seasons. But if his deeds match his words, Lawson will be a Pro Bowler in 2020.
“I’m at a point of my career where I’m just only getting better — making strides each year,” Lawson said. “Each year I’ve gotten better, improved. Getting more comfortable in the game. I feel like these next coming years, I’ve got a lot of juice. I’ve got a lot to bring to the table, and I showed glimpses of it last year with only just playing on the amount of snaps I was playing. I’m just ready to go get it and just [try] to be a double-digit sack guy.”
Anything close to that level of production would be a huge improvement for the Dolphins, who in 2019 had just 23 sacks as a team, fewest in the league.
Their advanced stats were just as bad.
The Dolphins ranked 31st (ahead of only Detroit) in team pass rush win rate (28 percent), an ESPN metric that measures how often a pass rusher can beat his block in 2.5 seconds. By comparison, the Cowboys led the league with a 53 percent win rate.
What’s more, the Dolphins ranked last in Football Outsider’s adjusted sack rate (4.4 percent) — which measures sacks and intentional grounding penalties per pass attempt adjusted for down, distance, and opponent.
The Bills, meanwhile, ranked eighth in defensive pass rush win rate (47 percent), and Lawson was a major reason.
In case you were curious, Robert Quinn — whom the Dolphins traded for a sixth-round pick last spring — had the league’s No. 1 pass rush win rate (33 percent) among all NFL defensive ends. No Dolphins player ranked in the top 10 in 2019.
Quinn parlayed his 11 1/2-sack season into a five-year, $70 million contract with the Bears, the biggest awarded to any free agent edge defender this cycle.
The Dolphins, meanwhile, spread out nearly $60 million in guarantees to Lawson, Ogbah and Van Noy, hoping to build a complete front seven instead of focusing on the very top of the market.
Some quick facts on Lawson, who at 25 is just entering the prime of his career:
Named after Shaquille O’Neal, he grew up in South Carolina, a stone’s throw from Clemson, but had planned on attending Tennessee until his father died in a car accident.
Lawson ultimately chose Clemson to remain close to his family, but didn’t qualify academically. So he attended Hargrave Military Academy for a year (where was roommates with current Dolphin Cordrea Tankersley). After a heralded collegiate career, he entered the NFL Draft in 2016.
But things haven’t gone to plan since. He missed the first six games of his rookie season after undergoing surgery on a chronic shoulder injury. That put him too far behind, and as a result Lawson finished with just two sacks — a harbinger of what was to come. In all, he appeared in just 50 of a possible 64 games as a Bill due to injuries, starting a mere 17.
Still, Lawson wasn’t eager to leave Buffalo. In a farewell letter he posted to Twitter shortly after signing with the Dolphins, Lawson wrote it was “one of the most difficult and emotionally challenging decisions I have ever had to make.”
Ultimately, the money was too good for Lawson to pass up.
“I didn’t know how the free agency thing worked because this is my first rodeo, but I found out Miami had interest in me from the time everything opened up,” Lawson said. “I just had a great relationship with [Dolphins defensive line coach] Marion Hobby down there. He coached me for three years of college football, and he developed me into the football player I am, so that made my decision easy to go down there.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 1:11 PM.
