His body control and vision are incredible.
I may be wrong and it's just wishful thinking but watching games and Lamar's play I notice lot of defenders look like they don't want to hit him in 50-50 situations. Lots of mutual helmet tapping after the plays. I get the feeling there's mad respect on the field shown to our boy.
I think that’s partly true in terms of the respect and clearly no ones going after him to headhunt him or cheapshot him etc. But I think part of him avoiding those big collisions is that he’s too quick to be lined up for a big shot - either the tackler only gets part of him or they miss or Lamar’s initiating the contact all of which lessen the impact laid on him
But it’s definitely also true to say that maybe slightly in their subconscious the opposition don’t want to go after him (and what’s odd about this is we don’t even have Ryan Jensen on the team ready to lay some retribution)
I actually had this inkling too. I think there are a couple of things at work here:
-These are world-class, hyper competitive athletes. Not used to being out-athleted, so when they are there is even more awe than what we see/feel as fans
-Lamar is a magnetic figure and there isn’t bad blood between teams in the league like there used to be. There might be beef between specific players due to personality clashes (i.e. Bosa/Mayfield, Finnegan/Jones, Smith Sr./Talib), but that “kill the guys on the other side” mentality is gone.
For those two reasons, I honestly think these guys like watching Lamar as much as we do (maybe more) and want to see him keep doing what he’s doing. Clowney’s quote says it all:
“I always wanted to play against Vick...I guess I just saw the new version.”