Saints: The unexpected dominance of this edge rusher

When the Saints coaches started game-planning for the season, they could have never expected this type of dominance from this edge rusher.

The New Orleans Saints offense might have been having their struggles over the course of the first five games of the season, but the defense has been downright awful for a few performances, especially against the Raiders and Packers.

Inside of that under-achieving defense has been one special player that has gone under the radar instead of in the spotlight. When you mention the Saints and edge rusher in the same sentence, everyone automatically thinks of Cameron Jordan.

Even in recent years, New Orleans has developed a tandem of Cameron Jordan and Marcus Davenport. They are two that have become one of the most dangerous pairs of defensive ends in the entire league.

While everyone is talking about the two of them, defensive end Trey Hendrickson has been having the best season so far of any defensive lineman on the black and gold. He is leading the team in all the line categories of recognition.

The two major categories that you would look at for a lineman is sacks and tackles for a loss. In comparison to Hendrickson and those categories, he is on top of both. Going into Monday night, Hendrickson had three sacks and four tackles for a loss.

Monday, Hendrickson added 1.5 sacks and 1.5 tackles for a loss to the stats that he already had. Hendrickson has been an absolute monster for the Saints as of recently putting Davenport’s starting job in jeopardy.

Davenport made his first appearance of the season against the Chargers in a Saints’ overtime win.

Overall, Hendrickson is not a household name when you think about the black and gold defense. However, he has silently and humbly been the defensive most valuable player through five weeks of the NFL season for New Orleans.