Hoss of the Year: The NFL’s best pass rushers from 2017

Retired NFL defensive lineman Stephen White has been celebrating the best pass rushers every week of the season. Find out who won and who was the best Hoss from 2017.

by SB Nation NFL

Updated Jan 26, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

One of the best things we do during the NFL season here at SB Nation is the Hoss of the Week awards. Every week, right up through the playoffs, retired NFL defensive end Stephen White hands out the hardware to the most dominant pass rusher. In the process, we get a full breakdown that goes way beyond the stat sheet, focusing on what that player did on the field, how they did it and why it mattered.

The season culminates with the Hoss of the Year Award. For 2017, Jaguars do-it-all defensive lineman Calais Campbell took home the prize. Not bad for a veteran free agent a lot of people thought an already loaded Jags defense didn’t really need.

It was a breakout performance from Campbell, who’s already been pretty well-established as one of the league’s better defensive linemen throughout his 10-year career.

So without further ado, here are this year’s HOSSES!

Hoss of the Year: Calais Campbell, Jaguars

From the Hoss of the Year write-up:

Before the Wild Card games, I had already pretty much decided on Calais Campbell as my Hoss of the Year. He ended the 2017 regular season with 14.5 sacks, which tied him with DeMarcus Lawrence for the second-highest sack output in the league behind Chandler Jones (17). Those 14.5 sacks in his 10th season were also five-and-a-half more sacks than Campbell’s previous career single-season high of nine and set a new franchise record for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Campbell had a fantastic season, but Campbell has been so much more than just a pass rusher this year.
As the starting defensive end who normally lines up to the opposing offense’s run strength, Campbell had a huge impact on the Jaguars run defense as well because tight ends generally just couldn’t handle him one-on-one. Even when those tight ends got help from the offensive tackle on double teams, that wouldn’t always suffice either to keep Campbell from having an impact on running plays.
It didn’t always show up in the stat sheet, but Campbell routinely destroyed blocking schemes all by his damn self. So many times he either created a pile or forced a double team to stay on him instead of going up on the second level. That usually allowed one of his teammates to actually make the tackle.
That’s just one of the many ways he helped to make the guys around him better this year.

Learn how Campbell turned the Jaguars defense into the NFL’s best, and read Stephen’s full breakdown here.

And spend some time getting to know a great stable of Hosses from the 2017 season.