We’ve got our first lead in the latest leg of the Detroit Lions’ ongoing search for a No. 2 edge rusher.
Free agency acquisition DJ Wonnum recorded a pair of sacks in the Lions’ 31-24 win over the New York Jets, as part of five the team had in total.
Head coach Dan Campbell complemented the effort and gave Wonnum a game ball for his efforts against one of the league’s best offensive tackle duos in Olu Fashanu and Armand Membou.
No one’s asking for a 15-sack season from Wonnum or anything, but this was a very encouraging thing to see after Wonnum was a non-factor in his first two games. If he can have more games like the one Sunday, it would be a godsend for this struggling defense.
Wonnum shining vs. Jets offers encouraging sign about Lions' pass rush
Wonnum signed a one-year, $3 million deal with Detroit this offseason. It wasn’t exactly seen as a league-shattering pickup, and the Lions’ drafting Derrick Moore in the second round of that year’s draft drew much more fanfare.
But Wonnum did what the Lions brought him to do Sunday— take advantage of the opportunities that would come his way when opponents inevitably sold out to stop Aidan Hutchinson.
The Jets spent all day long making sure Hutchinson wouldn’t beat them. Wonnum capitalized.
“Hutch was a factor,” Campbell said. “They were doubling him, chipping him, turning the slide to him a ton. And I mean, that guy, just play after play, gives everything he's got. And it requires a lot of resources offensively to try to keep him in check if you can.”
Defensive tackle Alim McNeill had a great game Sunday as well, recording a sack of his own and looking the most disruptive he has in any game since 2024.
If McNeill continues to get back to his Pro Bowl-caliber self, that only makes it harder for teams to focus all of their resources on Hutchinson. (Skyler Gill-Howard might be a dude on the interior, too.) The Lions’ complementary edge rushers will get more chances to eat, but they still have to win those one-on-ones.
Al-Quadin Muhammad turned in an 11-sack season last year cleaning up many of those same opportunities. But 7.5 of those sacks came across just three games, and he wasn’t a factor against the run.
READ MORE: Jack Campbell just had another abnormally quiet outing against the Jets
Even if Wonnum doesn’t reach that 11-sack total, if he can provide a seven or eight sack season while providing good run defense, it could make him arguably a more valuable player than Muhammad. Especially at that contract.
Muhammad is the best complement the Lions have had to Hutchinson off the edge in his career. Other dart throws like Marcus Davenport and Josh Paschal haven’t worked out. Detroit needs him to provide some havoc every week so it’s harder for teams to just key in on Hutchinson.
“It's good to learn from Aidan,” Wonnum said in a video uploaded by the team two weeks ago. “He obviously is a complete end, he can do it all. And I feel like his game really compliments what I do. It allows us to do everything because we both are very versatile on the edge.”
Moore is, of course, still coming along. But he’s been blanked on the stat sheet so far this year and doesn’t look ready to be an impact player yet.
It’s still early in the season, and we’ve seen up-and-down results from this defensive line so far. After all, this group is just one game removed from a terrible performance against the Buffalo Bills.
But against a premier tandem of tackles, the Lions’ edge rushers got home. If this secondary is going to continue to be as porous as it’s been, Detroit has no choice but to rely on more games like that in the future.
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