Did you notice that our pass rush was awful and completely ineffective last year? Both on film and statistically, they were nonexistent, And that we’ve had a good pass rush once in the last decade?
Perhaps pass rushers caring about stats correlates to having pass rush stats as a team, which leads to a better defense.
The argument that these are just young selfish players saying this for selfish reasons is the absolute weakest possible argument. You can’t handcuff your pass rushers and then wonder why you can’t generate pass rush and then call the pass rushers selfish for wanting more freedom to rush the passer, that is downright crazy.
The problem isn’t having other assignments like setting the edge, the problem is that in obvious pass rush situations, pass rushers still aren’t allowed to capitalize on what they read on the field, if the OT oversets wide you aren’t allowed to counter inside because for some reason gap integrity is paramount on 3rd and long