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The Lions feed off their rushing attack, and Detroit right tackle Penei Sewell serves as the team’s alpha and omega in the run game.Photograph: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Saquon Barkley is leaping over defenders. Fred Warner is hitting everything in sight. Wherever you look, Lamar Jackson is slinging fire. And yet the best show going in the NFL through 10 weeks is one of the big guys up front: Lions right tackle Penei Sewell.
It can be easy to miss tackles. They do a lot of their best work in the shadows. Like a good official, if you can get through a game without noticing them, without a commentator saying their name, you know they’ve done their primary job of keeping a quarterback upright. But Sewell has ascended to box-office status as the Lions rip their way through the league.
Even as the league becomes more sophisticated, there is still a simple beauty in watching a lineman skip, pull and race out into the open field – and no lineman is as destructive on the move as Sewell. He is a screener extraordinaire, and the best pulling tackle in the NFL. He is the rare lineman who can turn the sport into a spectacle.
Jared Goff may be the Lions’ most important player, but Sewell is the team’s best. The Lions feed off their rushing attack, and Sewell serves as Detroit’s alpha and omega in the run game. Two years on from being the youngest starting tackle in league history, Sewell has rounded into the most imposing blocker in the league. Whether digging people up in the trenches or galloping out into space, Sewell is laying waste to all before him. At times, you don’t know whether to wince at the collisions or weld your eyes open, Clockwork Orange-style, so that you don’t miss a single step. He has reached a point where smaller defenders are leaping off his way in the open field, as if he brings actual death and terror, sometimes crashing into their teammates to avoid the big man delivering a clean strike.
The Lions know they’re dealing with something…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-most-box-office-player-154959481.html
Author : The Guardian
Publish date : 2024-11-14 15:49:59
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