• Jared Verse delivers a very encouraging rookie season: Verse posted high-end metrics across the board, pointing to a production breakout in 2025.

• Chris Jones is still elite: After he only managed five sacks – the second-lowest mark of his career – there is still a lot to love about what Jones put on the field in 2024.

• Unlock your edge with a PFF+ subscription: Get full access to all of our in-season fantasy tools, including weekly rankings, WR/CB matchup charts, weekly projections, the Start-Sit Optimizer and more. Sign up now!

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

It’s easy at the end of each NFL season to look at where players ranked in fantasy football, but understanding why they finished where they did is often more important when projecting for the future.

For the defensive line, sacks are a huge part of their IDP success. Knowing which pass-rushers delivered in that regard — and, more importantly, which ones didn’t — can help identify potential positive regression candidates for the following season. By the same rationale, players who over-delivered in 2024 sacks could be potential regression candidates for 2025.

All expected sack numbers are derived from a player’s playing time (pass-rush snaps) and a combination of all pass-rush metrics. Average pass-rush metrics come from three-year averages in pass-rush grade, win rate and pressure rate.

Understanding the importance of tracking this data is also important, as expected sacks have proven to be the most stable metric from year to year, more so than any other key pass-rush metric. Expected sacks is also the best indicator of future sacks as it’s translated in-season to actual sacks better than any other metric, including playing time as highlighted in the charts below (updated with 2024 numbers included).

EDGE DEFENDERS

With this in mind, here are the 2024 leaders at the edge position in expected sacks. These players are the best bets to lead the position in actual sacks in 2025: