Jared Verse or Quinyon Mitchell? Why it’s a much closer race for DROY than you think

Jared Verse and Quinyon Mitchell are leading rookie defenders. Who will claim Defensive Rookie of the Year?

For much of the first 10 weeks of the NFL season, Los Angeles Rams rookie Jared Verse has been the clear leader for Defensive Rookie of the Year. That became even more evident as Verse essentially took over games against the Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks. In those games, Verse had 2.5 sacks and 10 pressures. As it stands, Verse is a -160 favorite to win the Defensive Rookie of the Year award. Behind him is Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Quinyon Mitchell at +210.

While Verse and Mitchell won’t be directly going head-to-head on Sunday Night Football, their two teams will be playing each other. Whoever wins this game or makes a significant impact could end up being a major factor at the end of the year.

What Verse and Braden Fiske have been for the Rams along the defensive line, Mitchell and Cooper DeJean have been that in the Eagles secondary. The Rams came into the season having lost Aaron Donald and PFF ranked their defensive line 23rd, citing youth and inexperience. Six months later and an argument can be made that the Rams have one of the best young defensive fronts in football. They lead the NFL in pressure rate this season.

A lot of the same can be said about the Eagles. Coming into the year, it was an aging unit and PFF ranked it 24th in the NFL. Mitchell and Dejean have completely turned around that unit and made them one of the best. The Eagles lead the NFL in yards per pass allowed and rank seventh in EPA per pass. They’ve allowed the fourth-lowest passer rating to opposing quarterbacks and are fifth in pass defense DVOA.

When it comes to the cornerback position, it can be hard to quantify the effect they have on the field. Mitchell doesn’t have an interception this season and only has eight passes defended. Those stats don’t look impressive at first glance, but for the most part, he has completely shut down opposing wide receivers. Last week, he held Terry McLaurin to zero catches and against the Bengals he held Ja’Marr Chase to just two catches for 19 yards.

Mitchell has essentially locked down No.1-caliber wide receivers. According to Next Gen Stats, since Week 6, Mitchell has allowed 0.5 yards per coverage snap. That’s the third-fewest among cornerbacks. The rookie cornerback has been targeted on 13.9% of snaps since the Eagles Week 5 bye, allowing 0.6 yards per coverage snap over that span.

Unless a cornerback is getting targeted a lot, it’s hard for them to get the stats needed for a Defensive Rookie of the Year type of award. However, to say that Verse is only leading because of volume stats discredits what he’s accomplished this season. Verse isn’t just some rookie edge rusher who leads rookies in pressures. He has almost 20 more than the next closest rookie, his teammate Braden Fiske. It’s been complete dominance. The next closest non-Rams rookie in pressures is Chop Robinson and Laiatu Latu who each have 26.

Verse has 10 more pressures than Will Anderson had last year in 10 games. The only rookie to have more than 48 pressures at this point in the season was Nick Bosa back in 2019 who had 49. Again, Verse hasn’t just been good; he’s been one of the best rookie edge rushers of the last decade. Since PFF started charting data back in 2006, here are the top three rookies in pressures:

• Nick Bosa (2019): 49
• Jared Verse (2024): 48
• Von Miller (2011): 47

Verse is the only rookie to rank inside the top-10 in pass-rush win rate among edge rushers, and he’s getting double-teamed at a similar rate as the elite edge rushers in the NFL. Verse’s double-team rate is 24 percent which is the same as Maxx Crosby and trails only Bosa and Myles Garrett.

The point here is that these are two players that have absolutely dominated in their respective positions. Both have their own case for Defensive Rookie of the Year through 10 weeks. In a sense, this year has been like having a Sauce Gardner and Nick Bosa in the same draft class. It’s cool to see two elite rookies having elite level success in their craft early. However, that likely means one of them is going to be left out when it comes to awards at the end of the year.

This is going to be a close race over the final seven weeks of the season. While things like overall team success and head-to-head matchups shouldn’t be taken into consideration with these awards, the positive impact these players make on Sunday Night will be hard to ignore..