Agreed on Yanda, and Tucker's potential should he continue the trend, which we have no reason to believe otherwise. That being said, I personally feel that Suggs has a chance to be enshrined eventually. Peppers and Ware are both arguably locks. You'd expect Allen and Abraham to be well in contention, same goes for the Colts former duo (Abraham, in my eyes, is one of the most unheralded edge rushers of his era). That being said, I doubt that the discussion between them all is boiled down solely to just the sacks totals. If that's the discussion, Freeney wouldn't be placed over Suggs as he has a season on the latter and both average basically an identical number per year. Granted that Freeny had more in his prime, but the discussion itself is beside the point as the sack figure is a shallow basis on its own. The Colts patterned their personnel specifically to complement the Peyton Manning-led quick-strike offense. That meant Gary Brackett in the middle of Tampa 2-Cover 2 shells, Kelvin Hayden and Marlon Jackson sitting on short routes, and the Freeny-Mathis duo consistently having chances to tee off on opposing QBs while being liabilities in the running game partly as a byproduct of their roles. That's not meant as a knock on their talents. I thought Mathis was remarkable in his 2013 season, and that was under an odd-front scheme and a different team composition altogether. Freeny will forever be remembered for his almost unstoppable spin move aside from being a dominant rusher. But the opportunities were more plentiful.
Suggs spent most of his career as a counterpart of an average-scoring, run-based offense attempting to control the ToP. On the flip side, aside from obviously Peppers, he's arguably the best multi-faceted defender on that list. He was an outright dominant run defender for the better part of his career, and capable in coverage as well with how well he read his cues. Granted, the same argument used above should apply for the sake of objectivity. It needs to be mentioned that he played alongside of outstanding run defenders such as Ray Lewis, Jarret Johnson, Haloti Ngata, etc. The defense was built to defend the run. But as above, it's not an indictment on talent given that he was one of our best run defenders after the departure of the players listed. That being said, the sacks totals themselves aren't a ways away. He's currently 21st all-time and could very well jump into the Top 20 this season, as 8.5 sacks would tie him with the inactive Mathis at 17. And if we're looking solely at those figures, then his playoff performances shouldn't be discounted. He's currently 3rd all-time in playoff sacks, behind Bruce Smith and in front of Reggie White. Again, the number is helped by the opportunities given he's played 17 games, but he's ahead of Freeney who's played 22 (Smith and White played 20 and 19 for reference sake). It helps that he's the only player on the list above to have earned the AP DPoY award aside from the chip. I'm not making case for Suggs' HoF induction, nor am I presenting him as the best player of the ones mentioned above. I would presume that most have Peppers on top of their boards, and Suggs could potentially end up on the outside looking in like Leslie O'Neal, though the latter example is a potential indictment of utilizing sack numbers as the barometer given that O'Neal is 13th all-time. I'm just making the case that if we're throwing out the names of Freeney, Mathis, Allen, Abraham, etc. as players meriting consideration, then it's only fair to include Suggs in their conversation.
