Lions DE Aidan Hutchinson on the challenge of facing mobile quarterbacks
Hutchinson talked about the evolution of the NFL teams starting mobile quarterbacks.
Aidan Hutchinson took two small steps to his right to move inside Noah Gray’s left shoulder, then immediately rushed outside when he saw Patrick Mahomes fake a handoff.
Hutchinson was the left defensive end in the Detroit Lions’ four-man front in their Week 6 game on Sunday, Oct. 12, and couldn’t let Mahomes break contain.
He stabbed his long right arm into the middle of Gray’s chest and drove him back one step, then two, then three until the Kansas City Chiefs tight end was in the backfield nearly stepping on Mahomes’ toes.
Mahomes kept his eyes glued downfield as he shuffled to his left, waiting for a receiver to get open. Hutchinson let go of Gray’s jersey, glanced down and saw the ball by Mahomes’ right hip.
In an instant, he swatted it loose with his open right hand.
The ball bounced off Hutchinson’s leg then back the other direction, where Mahomes fell on it for a 10-yard loss. The Chiefs punted two plays later and Hutchinson retreated to the bench with his sixth sack in the past five games and his league-high-tying fourth forced fumble.
Hutchinson has shown a knack for knocking the ball loose this season in a way he never has before.
His four forced fumbles are a career high. Three of them have come on sacks. And he has a fifth forced fumble on another sack that was negated by penalty.
“I feel like it’s just, it’s a lot easier to hit a ball out of someone’s hand than to take someone down,” Hutchinson told the Free Press this week. “So I think my focus is kind of there and you get a forced fumble, a TFL, a sack. You get an extra one when you just hit the ball out and you have to do a lot less work so it’s definitely my focus, for sure.”
The Lions have excelled this season as a team forcing fumbles – Jack Campbell also has two, and Brian Branch one – and their nine takeaways are tied for fifth most in the NFL and a big reason why they are 4-2 heading into Monday’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5-1).
Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard has stressed violently attacking the football. And while that’s a point of emphasis for every defensive coach everywhere, Lions special assistant Chris Spielman saw a noticeable enough uptick in performance this summer that he stopped Sheppard at the coffee machine on day during training camp to tell him the Lions defense was attacking the football with as much aggression as he’d ever seen.
“It’s becoming an emphasis, but the players are making it happen,” Sheppard said. “They’re going out and now it’s turning into a competitive thing where everybody wants to be that guy showing up on the takeaway tape every week.”
Hutchinson has been a regular on the Lions’ takeaway tape since he came into the NFL as the No. 2 overall pick in 2022.
He had three interceptions and two fumble recoveries to go along with 9½ sacks as a rookie and had one interception, three forced fumbles and 11½ sacks in Year 2.
Last year, Hutchinson might have topped those numbers had he stayed healthy. He was off to a Defensive Player of the Year-type start when he broke the tibia and fibula in his left leg in a Week 6 win over the Dallas Cowboys.
Fully healthy now, he’s one of the leading candidates to bring home the award this fall.
Hutchinson entered the weekend fourth in the NFL in sacks, second in quarterback pressures (32) and featuring the third-best odds to win Defensive Player of the Year (from BetOnline.ag), behind the Denver Broncos’ Nik Bonitto and the Green Bay Packers’ Micah Parsons.
Bonitto leads the NFL with eight sacks and 34 pressures, while Parsons has 2½ sacks and 30 pressures in one fewer game and has transformed the Packers’ defense into one of the league’s best.
“It’s a long season, so I’m in this thing for the marathon run of it and just got to keep being consistent, really,” Hutchinson said. “Keep doing it week after week after week ’cause that’s what, in order to win those awards that you want to win, you can’t just be first five, six games. You got to do it the entire 17-game season, so we’ll see. We’ll see at the end of the year when the cards fall.”
Hutchinson’s hot streak of sacks and fumbles – he set a Lions franchise record with a sack in his fifth straight game last week against the Chiefs and is one of four players in NFL history to record a sack and forced fumble in four straight games, dating back to when the league began tracking the stat in 1999 – is more than just a run of good luck with the cards.
He routinely takes advantage of mismatches up front, like he did when the Chiefs left him one-on-one with Gray last week. And he has remained impactful while creating one-on-ones for his teammates, drawing regular chip help and double-teams.
Lions coach Dan Campbell said he can’t quantify how important Hutchinson is to the Lions defense
“I don’t know if there’s a big enough number,” he said last week.
Hutchinson called his performance so far this season “consistent,” but as much as he has piled up numbers in the Lions’ quick start, he said there’s more to be done.
“It’s not perfect,” he said. “There’s always stuff to work on from each and every game, which I love. But a lot of those games you come home with a win and you come home with production and you’re healthy, so you get all those three things, it’s like, life’s good. So I keep trying to grow as a player and take every rep and learn from it, but to come home with one in the last few games has been great and I’m just going to keep trying to do it.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
