Washington football team: Most underrated player in 2020
Who is the most underrated player on the Washington football team in 2020?
The Washington football team is taking on a lot of change all at once with the old nickname being retired at long last in addition to a report from The Washington Post with some very disturbing testimonies from former Washington football employees.
Football hasn’t exactly been the topic of conversation revolving around the Washington NFL franchise of late, but there are certainly some intriguing aspects to this team especially with Ron Rivera coming in to be the head coach and perhaps the leader of the culture change.
Rivera isn’t exactly walking into an empty pantry. The Washington football team has some really nice pieces on both sides of the ball, but in particular, defensively.
Washington’s defensive front is perhaps the most underrated in the NFL and getting better with the arrival of top draft choice Chase Young, one of the most impressive athletes off the edge we have seen in recent memory.
Washington’s underrated stud
When you think of star defensive linemen in the NFL today, you think first and foremost of guys like Aaron Donald of the LA Rams, Chris Jones of the Kansas City Chiefs, or maybe JJ Watt of the Houston Texans.
Ask anyone outside of the Washington football fan base and you probably won’t get the answer Matt Ioannidis.
Ioannidis, whose name is pronounced “I-an-EYE-dis”, is one of the best interior defensive linemen in the entire NFL, and not many people really know about him.
The former fifth-round draft pick out of Temple is coming off of the best season of his NFL career in which he played a career-high 837 defensive snaps. He put those snaps to good use, too.
- 64 total tackles
- 11 tackles for loss
- 16 QB hits
- 8.5 sacks
- 35 total pressures
Those 35 pressures ranked tied for 14th-most in the entire NFL, regardless of position. Ioannidis gets pressure on the quarterback at the rate of an edge rusher, and with Washington having so much other talent around him now — first-rounders Montez Sweat, Chase Young, Ryan Kerrigan, Jonathan Allen, Da’Ron Payne — the opportunities to get after the QB in one-on-one situations will be plenty.
Ioannidis has flown under the radar enough to the point that while other guys with a similar level of play are getting paid eight figures and some into the $20 million average annual value range, this guy signed a deal worth about $7 million per season.
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Matt Ioannidis is one of the NFL’s top-secret superstars and certainly, someone opposing offensive coordinators have to gameplan against on a weekly basis.