ESPN- “I’m trying to get this triple-double,” the New Orleans Saints' Cam Jordan said of his 10 sacks, 13 tackles for loss and somewhere between 6-8 pass defenses, depending on whether he gets proper credit for his latest batted pass in Sunday’s 31-21 victory over the Carolina Panthers.
Nobody else in the NFL has numbers that high in each category. “I’m trying to Euro step my way to a NBA number,” Jordan said. If Jordan isn’t in the conversation for NFL Defensive Player of the Year, then folks aren’t having the right conversation. The 6-foot-4, 287-pounder has been a driving force behind the Saints’ defensive revival this year by doing his usual little bit of everything -- sacks, pressures, run stuffs, tackles for loss and batted passes. He even had his first career interception for a touchdown in Week 6 against the Detroit Lions. But Jordan knows as well as anyone that defensive ends are judged by sacks, first and foremost. And his 10 sacks are only tied for seventh in the NFL right now. “Before I start tooting my own horn -- I’m not gonna do it -- I don’t know a defensive end who’s doing what I’m doing,” Jordan said with a mix of his usual playful humor and some pent-up frustration." --------- You know, it's kind of crazy that - even in the age of advanced analysts - we still depend on a statistic as overly simplistic as sacks to determine a defensive lineman's greatness. I watch Cam Jordan play every week, will likely die before he gets the credit he deserves as a viable candidate for Defensive Player Of The Year, and all it took to shine a brighter light on his dominance was crossing sports and borrowing a multi-layered measurement of performance that the NBA has grown somewhat tired of thanks to the shamelessness of Russell Westbrook. Now granted, double digits is a pretty arbitrary threshold, but reaching it in sacks, tackles for a loss, and potentially passes defensed (not to mention penalties forced) as someone who is usually solely judged on how many times he can mindlessly bully the quarterback to the ground? Any one of those metrics are exponentially more impressive than pining for an extra, uncontested rebound. So, if professional basketball wants to do away with a circumstantial evaluation of play that became a comically heated point of contention during the MVP race then the New Orleans Saints' will gladly take it off their hands. If only to show the rest of the league that their criminally underrated defensive MVP's relentless effort and consistent ability to play with pad level is successful at stacking up stats in far more than one overhyped category. Cam Jordan was obviously just messing around with the NBA analogy, but don't be surprised if/when he does end the season putting up Jason Kidd-esque numbers. He's been that good in each and every area of his game, but you don't have to take my word for it...
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