The only negative that came out of the Lions’ Week 6 throttling of the Cowboys was losing one of their best players, edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson. A gruesome leg injury, that occurred on a play where he’s getting a sack no less, will put an end to his season.

At this point in the 2024 season he led the NFL in sacks (7.5) and pressures (39), with the latter by a wide margin over 2nd place (28). Among defensive ends with at least 5 pressures he ranks first in Pass Rush Total Points and second in Points Saved per rush. Before his leg injury Hutchinson was the betting favorite for Defensive Player of the Year. 

That’s a tough blow for the Lions team that has Super Bowl aspirations. The team brought in DE Marcus Davenport in the offseason to try and complement Hutchinson on the opposite side, but he already suffered a season-ending triceps injury. The depth of the Lions’ edge rushers is going to be tested and the team might address the issue via trade if they don’t like their in-house solutions.

After suffering a severe injury like that, it’s easy to wonder not only how long Hutchinson will be out, but how he will look once he gets back onto the field. Reports of a successful surgery point him on the positive road to recovery.

There have been a few edge rushers who have suffered lower leg/ankle fractures that required surgery that we can look at to gauge production when they return to the field. To get a big enough sample size of games we looked at the production of 8 games prior to injury and then the first 8 games after they returned. Since 2018, four players fit all of these parameters, and the stats we looked at were; snaps per game, tackles per game, pressure rate, Total Points per pass rush, and Total Points per run defense snap.  

Kemoko Turay

Kemoko Turay never really came back to form once he came back from the injury with the Colts. Almost every stat category is down, and a few by a significant margin. The second player we look at has much more success.

Brian Burns

Brian Burns was eased back into action for the Panthers, with fewer snaps upon his return, which helps him stay consistent in his effectiveness as a player. 

Taco Charlton

Taco Charlton of the Chiefs received an uptick in workload but a big drop off in his effectiveness as a pass rusher. So far every player up to this point has had their pressure rate decrease.

Jihad Ward

Our last example, Jihad Ward, who had the surgery while with the Raiders, was the weakest player of the group before the injury. He stays consistent with the drop in pressure rate like the previous players, but is similarly productive overall.

Now we can look at the cumulative percent changes for all four players from their stats before and after their lower leg/ankle fracture.

Overall the production of each player is less when they immediately come back, which is to be expected, but only pressure rate was a consistent negative for all four players. Now looking at Aidan Hutchinson’s 8 games prior to his injury on Sunday, we can forecast what he might look like out of the gates next season.

Aidan Hutchinson

* Projection

Hutchinson’s stats align most closely with Brian Burns, playing a lot of snaps, being extremely effective as a pass rusher, and a solid run defender.  I think it would be reasonable to expect the Lions to limit his workload out of the gate as well as he gets back up to speed. It might not look like it right away, but taking into account Hutchinson’s age and talent level, I think he has a great chance of getting back to Defensive Player of the Year-type production.