The NFL's most efficient pass rusher is a player you've probably never heard of

New York Times

6 days ago

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — When Kaden Elliss gets his game plan each week, he immediately skims it to look for the arrows.
For each defensive call, the player's responsibility is listed right by his position on the field. The arrow means 'go get the quarterback.' There are no other responsibilities. Just go get that guy.
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'It's just got an arrow. 'Go that way,'' Elliss said. 'I love seeing that.'
As Elliss enters his seventh NFL season, his coaches are putting more and more arrows on his sheet, and maybe there should be even more. The Atlanta Falcons inside linebacker leads the league in pressure percentage (25.7 percent) in the last four seasons, according to TruMedia.
'That guy, you watch him on tape, and he's a game-changer,' first-year Falcons defensive line coach Nate Ollie said. 'A very unique linebacker. Not many linebackers in the league can do what he can do. Man, he's slippery.'
Elliss is 88th in sacks over the last four years (17). But he has so many responsibilities and gets only so many chances to rush the passer. His 370 pass-rush snaps since 2021 rank 285th in the league. Last season, he had 43 quarterback pressures on a career-high 147 pass-rush snaps, and that 29.3 percent rate led the league. In fact, the only players with more than 100 pass-rush snaps to finish within 10 percentage points of Elliss last season were Detroit's Aidan Hutchinson (25 percent), Tampa Bay's Lavonte David (21.5) and Arizona's Kyzir White (20.8).
'I can't imagine throughout the league that there is a more polished pass rusher on the inside than he is,' inside linebackers coach Barrett Ruud said.
Elliss also led the Falcons with 150 tackles, which ranked sixth in the NFL.
'He's unique,' coach Raheem Morris said. 'He can win from a bunch of different spots.'
Elliss joined the Falcons as a free agent in 2023 after four years in New Orleans in which he started a combined 12 games, only breaking out in 2023. That slow start to his career might be the reason why at 30, when many professional athletes are just trying to hold on to what they have, Elliss continues to add elements to his game.
'He's still on the rise,' said Ruud, who had a nine-year NFL career in Tampa Bay, Houston, Tennessee and New Orleans. 'I was falling off the cliff going the other way when I was 30. Usually guys when they are his age, they have kind of found their niche. If anything, they are trying to hang on. He's a guy who is going the opposite way.'
One of three players all-time in a single season with at least:
5 sacks1 strip sack150 tackles1 interception
Kaden Elliss 🔥 pic.twitter.com/jssnCpd2mq
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) June 27, 2025
Elliss' unusual development path could also be because of his football IQ, said Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, who is getting his first exposure to Elliss after being hired in the offseason.
'He has this amazing ability to apply information in real time,' Ulbrich said. 'At times, you are very careful about the level of detail that you give someone because it slows some guys down. It slows more players down than it doesn't. He is the exact opposite. The more information you give him, the better he does.'
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Elliss is such a high-capacity player that he has convinced Ulbrich to violate one of the coach's key tenets, which is to 'put players on repeat' by giving them a limited number of roles and responsibilities to master.
'Most of the time I would say don't dilute guys, but he's a guy that we're going to push to be versatile,' Ulbrich said.
Elliss' versatility means his role can be game plan-specific. In 2024, under former defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake, Elliss rushed the passer 46 times (with a 32.6 percent pressure rate) in the first eight games. In the last nine games, he rushed 101 times with five sacks and a 27.7 percent pressure rate.
'It's a lot of fun getting to do a lot of different things,' Elliss said. 'It gives you so many opportunities to impact the game. You can run around, go get as many tackles as you want, take away some pass concepts and then you get an arrow on your sheet and go get the quarterback.'
Elliss' role this season is likely to depend as much on what his teammates can do as anything specific to him. The Falcons signed Divine Deablo to play on the inside next to Elliss and drafted two edge rushers — Jalon Walker and James Pearce Jr. — in the first round.
'Kaden makes my job easy,' Deablo said. 'He's a vet by the definition of it.'
Even so, Elliss is still 'a developmental player behind the ball compared to his pass-rush ability,' Ruud said.
Ulbrich has seen plenty of development there this offseason.
'I'm excited for the world to see what he has become as a stack linebacker,' Ulbrich said, 'plus all the other stuff he's going to do.'