Jonathan Allen’s value lies in a statistic you never see

Jonathan Allen will make whichever team lands him very happy as long as he’s still so effective against double teams.

On Friday, the Washington Commanders announced that they would be releasing veteran defensive lineman Jonathan Allen after eight seasons. The team will save $16.3 million in salary cap space with the release. Allen had asked permission to seek a trade this offseason, but with no suitors for the $15.5 million in base salary remaining on the four-year, $72 million contract extension he signed in 2021, Allen is now a free agent.

Selected with the 17th overall pick in the first round of the 2017 draft out of Alabama, Allen made the Pro Bowl in 2021 and 2022, which was especially interesting as Jack Del Rio was his… um… “defensive coordinator.” Ha!

Despite that clear handicap, Allen totaled 18 sacks and 114 total pressures, with 77 solo tackles and 75 stops in those two seasons alone. 2023 was similarly disruptive, as Allen had six sacks, 49 total pressures, 39 solo tackles, and 37 stops.

Sadly, when Dan Quinn became the Commanders’ head coach before the 2024 season, Allen was relatively unable to benefit from Quinn’s defensive creativity, especially along the fronts. Allen was limited to 440 snaps in 2024 because he was dealing with a torn left pectoral muscle he suffered in Week 6 against the Baltimore Ravens. Originally, the injury was thought to be season-ending, but Allen returned for the field in Week 17 against the Atlanta Falcons, and he was able to play through the Commanders’ NFC Championship Game loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

“Seeing the surgeon, seeing that process go… he looked not like a person that had this surgery,” Quinn said in mid-December. “Usually, you see a lot less on one side. He’s built different for sure.”

Overall in 2024, Allen totaled three sacks, 26 total pressures, 21 solo tackles, and 18 stops. If you extrapolate that over a full season, Allen could be seen to play at his former heights, and in multiple gaps. Last season, per Pro Football Focus, Allen lined up as a nose tackle on 6% of his snaps, as a defensive tackle on 79% of his snaps, and on the edge 14% of the time.

But when it comes to Allen’s value to his next NFL team, there’s one metric we rarely talk about. How many times is a defensive lineman double-teamed in a season? If said lineman is the primary focus of extra offensive linemen when he’s in there, that value is obvious. Especially if that lineman can knife through those double-teams, of course, but also because those doubles give other rushers and disruptors the ability to win one-on-one matchups when the alpha of the group is taking on the main responsibilities.

And here is where Allen really was the Commanders’ lead dawg when healthy. On those 440 snaps, per independent charting, Allen was double-teamed in some form or fashion 121 times. That’s a 27.5% double-team rate, and when you have one guy doubled a bit more than one in every four plays, that’s a really big deal for everyone else.

And it wasn’t just that Allen unselfishly soaked up all those doubles so that others could eat; he was also slicing and dicing when given extra attention. 17 of his pressures came against double-teams, and whether he was bulling through them or running around them, Allen’s explosiveness against all that mass was clear and impressive.

It’s even more impressive that six of those pressures came after Allen returned from the injury that was supposed to have scuttled his entire season. The Eagles’ tremendous offensive line doubled Allen on 12 of his 60 plays in the aforementioned NFC Championship game, and it was abundantly clear who Philly considered the main problem to be – especially with the Eagles’ own interior line affected by injury issues.

Whether teams were truly doubling Allen through the entire rep, or trying to handle him with one constant lineman and another chipping briefly before heading to the second level, or attempting to deal with Allen by way of a lineman and a blocking back, it was very clear that every Commanders opponent saw Allen as a Very Big Problem regardless of alignment.

The Commanders will have to find another force multiplier in that regard. Daron Payne is the obvious guy with 190 double-teams last season on 821 plays, and perhaps second-year man Johnny Newton can take Allen’s place over time. In his rookie season, Newton faced double teams on 108 of his 608 plays.

But there’s no replacing a guy who forces protections to his personal gravity at the level Jonathan Allen does. That’s why, despite his recent injury history and his age (he turned 30 on Jan. 16), Allen will be highly prized not only for the ways in which he’s able to wreck backfields on his own, but also the extent to which he can help everyone around him increase their own numbers and effects.

Football, after all, is the ultimate team sport. And when it comes to forcing and subsequently obliterating double teams, there are few better teammates than Jonathan Allen.