Rich Storry - USA Today Sports
Making the Case for More Van Ginkel
Talk about making the most of your opportunities.
Look at linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel's stat line and snap count in the Miami Dolphins' 16-10 victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and it paints a picture of massive efficiency.
Van Ginkel played only 24 of the Dolphins' 75 defensive snaps on Sunday night, yet was involved in eight tackles, tying for the team lead with Jaelan Phillips, who did it in 60 snaps.
It easily was the best outing of the season for Van Ginkel, whose start to the season was disrupted when he had to an appendectomy in August but has been getting progressively better.
Low Snap Count for Van Ginkel
The 24 snaps actually represented his highest count of the season, but it absolutely needs to be asked why Van Ginkel isn't getting more playing time on defense.
This is a player who has been effective since arriving as a fifth-round pick in the 2019 draft, with a combined 9.5 sacks and seven passes defensed the past two seasons.
Defensive coordinator Josh Boyer discussed Van Ginkel's progress during his weekly media session Thursday, and while he expressed his admiration for AVG's toughness and complimented his work, he explained that his role on defense isn't bigger because he's needed on special teams.
"The mental toughness, the tenacity that he had to come back, call it 2 1/2 weeks after he was opened up was pretty impressive," Boyer said. "And he's pretty much got all of his weight back. We like using him on defense, we think he's getting better ... there's other components that go into the game, as opposed to just defense. He's a big part of our special teams. Van Ginkel falls into a category from a team standpoint that he's very important to the kicking game. He's very important to us defensively; we have more of a luxury on defense to be able to sub him out than we do in the kicking game right now, if that makes sense."
Yes, that makes perfect sense, considering Van Ginkel played 19 of the Dolphins' 26 special teams snaps against Pittsburgh.
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Van Ginkel's Contract Status
But there's the counterargument, which says that Van Ginkel's contributions on special teams so far this season haven't stopped that group from being among the worst in the NFL, so how much worse would things be if another player took some of his snaps there to free up for more snaps on defense.
Van Ginkel is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent after the 2022 season, and he's the type of players we easily could see the Dolphins signing to an extension before he ever hits the market.
In his three-plus seasons, he's proven to be a very good complementary piece for a defense that generally has performed pretty well.
He's also got that added value as a good special teams player, but it says here the Dolphins would do well to try to maximize his value on defense more in the coming weeks and the rest of the 2022 season.
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