Where’s Commanders DE Chase Young Rank Among NFL Under 25? - PFF
Time is the most precious commodity we all possess, and for teams like the Washington Commanders, it's even more precious because of how little they get of it.
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This makes finding the right young pieces of a team and capitalizing on the time those players have in the league absolutely critical to the short and long-term success of any franchise.
Pro Football Focus' Trevor Sikkema recently took on the task of identifying the best NFL players under the age of 25 with Washington's Chase Young landing at No. 13 on the list.
"In his first game as a pro, Young recorded 1.5 sacks, four tackles and a forced fumble," Sikkema wrote. "He earned Defensive Rookie of the Year with...a very impressive 87.1 overall PFF grade...Young said the plan is to be ready for Week 1 coming off his injury. A Bosa-like bounce-back third year for him is within the realm of possibility. In that case, he would rapidly climb this list."
This isn't the first time Nick Bosa and Chase Young have been compared, and for more reasons than the fact both are products of the Ohio State Buckeyes' football program.
But I've also compared Young's inconsistencies with that of another pass rusher who was drafted early in the first year of his own class: Clelin Ferrell.
Bosa and Ferrell were both Top 5 picks in the 2019 NFL Draft, and both had some early adversity to overcome.
For Bosa, he responded in his third season with a 15.5 sack performance that led to the San Francisco 49ers picking up his $17.8 million fifth-year option.
Ferrell had just 1.5 sacks in his third season - a career-low - and had his option denied by the Las Vegas Raiders.
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Young is entering that same critical third year of play and needs to have that "Bosa-like" season to reinvigorate the excitement he brought with him to Washington in 2020.
He doesn't have to have 15.5 sacks and four forced fumbles like Bosa did in 2021, exactly.
But anything less than a career-high eight sacks and at least a couple of forced fumbles is going to leave a lot of questions hanging in the air for the Washington Commanders and the 13th best player in the NFL, under the age of 25.
