Iowa football: AJ Epenesa ranks surprisingly low in this important category

Iowa football player AJ Epenesa has rightfully been receiving a lot of hype this preseason, but there’s one important metric he doesn’t stand out in.

There are a lot of different ways to measure the success of an edge defender, but mostly these measurement methods are broken down into some form of statistical measurement, the eye test, or both (more to come on that). For the most part, Iowa football star defensive end AJ Epenesa passes all types of measurement with flying colors. I mean, there’s a reason why he is projected top-5 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.

From a statistical perspective, Epenesa crushes it. He led the Big Ten in sacks and forced fumbles while finishing 8th and 9th, respectively, in the nation in both categories. And as an important side note that most people are familiar with by now, he was a part-time player.

The eye test backs up what the statistics show too. He’s a dominant pass rusher that can win with power and speed. He displays an arsenal of pass-rush moves advanced beyond his years. To put it simply, he makes Big Ten offensive tackles look silly.

The final measurement method is a combination of eye test and statistical test, and it’s a big part of what Pro Football Focus attempts to do. They grade each individual player in a game and provide a statistical measurement that allows you to compare against others. One such stat is quarterback pressure, which they went into detail in this post about.

As with all PFF stats regarding returning Big Ten Defensive Ends, I anticipated it would be AJ Epenesa and Ohio State’s Chase Young battling for the top two spots in quarterback pressures, but I got a bit of a shock when the Iowa football player barely made the list, checking in at 5th.

Now, don’t be alarmed just yet. I’m not saying Epenesa isn’t as good as we think (I would never in my right mind say that), but I did want to talk about this topic for the sake of explaining some of the data.

First off, Chase Young’s quarterback pressures are ridiculously high for a part-time player, and he is in the running for first edge player taken in next year’s draft, but Willekes is a guy who has started for two seasons for Michigan State. Same with Coughlin and Gaziano. Not to take away from those players, but opportunities also matter and Epenesa was splitting time with senior Parker Hesse and 2018 fourth-round draft pick Anthony Nelson.

When looking at a pure quantity stat like quarterback pressures, you’re not going to get the full picture. It would be interesting to see what the quarterback pressure-volume per snap was. My guess is we would see Epenesa higher on that list as we have come to expect.