NFL Analysis
8/14/24
6 min read
Matthew Judon Trade Gives Falcons a Premier Pass Rusher At Last
There is one fewer hold-in. Matthew Judon was looking for a new contract with the New England Patriots. He will now be an Atlanta Falcon after a Wednesday evening trade that swapped the 32-year-old pass rusher for a third-round pick.
Judon was in the final year of a four-year deal with the Patriots, though the final two years were revised before last season. That revision bumped up the cash in 2023, added a void year in 2025, but left no guaranteed money in 2024. Judon missed most of the 2023 season with a torn biceps. He was only set to make a $6.5 million salary for this coming season.
This trade looks like a win for both sides. Given his age, the Patriots did not appear inclined to give Judon a new contract. New England was likely not going to receive a compensatory pick if Judon left in free agency, given the state of the Patriots’ roster and a projected $77 million in cap space to use next offseason, per Over The Cap.
For the Atlanta Falcons, this gives the team a desperately needed pass rusher to lead a unit that has been one of the league’s worst across the past few seasons.
How Judon Impacts The Falcons
Last season, the Falcons were 25th in pressure rate and 19th in sack rate. That was a massive upgrade over what Atlanta had been during the previous two seasons.
The year before, they were 31st in pressure rate and last in sack rate by a significant margin. The 2022 Falcons had a sack rate of 3.6 percent, which was the 17th lowest figure since 2000, per TruMedia. The 2021 Falcons had a sack rate of 3.0 percent, which was the fifth-lowest in that span. Atlanta is the only team with a sack rate under 4.0 percent four times since 2000. The Cincinnati Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars have done so three times.
Finding a pass rusher off the edge has been a tough task for the Falcons, who have not had a double-digit sack season since Vic Beasley in 2016.
Judon gives the Falcons a credible threat as an edge rusher, which is something that just wasn’t on the Atlanta roster. The only big addition in the offseason was third-round pick Bralen Trice, who tore his ACL during Atlanta’s preseason opener.
The addition of Judon won’t completely transform the Falcons into a top pass-rushing unit, but it will have an immediate impact.
Preseason tendencies don’t often tell us much about how teams are going to play in the regular season. There are usually many vanilla game plans out there, especially in the opener. But it’s worth noting that when a team does something out of the ordinary, which happened with the Falcons.
Atlanta rushed three defenders (known as Drop 8 because of the eight players in coverage) on 18.9 percent of their defensive snaps in the preseason opener. No other team was over six percent.
That could have been something to counter the Miami offense, dropping more players into coverage against the quick Dolphins passing game, but teams usually do not plan that specifically for opponents in the preseason, and it’s not as if Miami’s starters were playing.
Raheem Morris often dropped an edge rusher into coverage last season with the Los Angeles Rams, but that was often with a five-man front, which still left four defenders rushing the passer.
This could have been Morris preparing to send more players into coverage to compensate for the lack of a pass rush.
Judon has experience dropping into coverage and presenting different looks along the line, but he’s in Atlanta to rush the passer. During his two healthy seasons in New England, Judon had 28 sacks while rushing the passer on 84 percent of his pass snaps.
At last season’s trade deadline, the Falcons were involved in talks to acquire Montez Sweat before he was traded to the Bears. The addition of Judon could have a similar impact to Sweat’s in Chicago.
The Bears only went from 31st in pressure rate before Sweat’s arrival to 24th with him, but Sweat was singularly disruptive, which allowed other pass rushers to not see as much attention and allowed the secondary to be more aggressive in coverage.
Outside of Judon, Atlanta’s two best defensive players are in the secondary — cornerback A.J. Terrell and safety Jessie Bates. With a little more pass rush in front of them, the secondary could have more opportunities for rushed throws.
Last season, the Falcons were 15th in EPA per play when there was pressure created, second in defensive success rate, and sixth in yards per play.
With a potentially exciting offense, Atlanta still had arguably the worst defensive roster in the league. Judon isn’t going to be a magical fix that makes this an above-average defense but adding a high-quality player at the team’s worst and most shallow position is going to help.
Where does this leave the Patriots?
Part of the optimistic case about New England remaining a top defense in 2024 was that this was already a team that finished fourth in EPA per play last year without Judon and Christian Gonzalez for most of the season.
Gonzalez is back, but the Patriots will now be without Judon and Christian Barmore indefinitely after the defensive tackle was found to have blood clots.
However, we also could have gotten a peak into how the Patriots will attack the pass rush during their preseason opener. New England blitzed 44.4 percent of the time, the highest rate in the league.
Again, we shouldn’t apply full-season tendencies to one preseason game, but the Patriots were only 23rd in blitz rate for 2023 in both the regular season and preseason. Without the top two pass rushers, the Patriots could rely more on an extra rusher.
For now, keeping Josh Uche this past offseason looks like a big win for a player who could now see a bigger role. Uche has been a great pass rusher in small samples but hasn’t been a full-time player. He had 11.5 sacks with just 266 pass-rush snaps in 2022. Despite getting bigger offers, Uche re-signed for a one-year/$3 million deal to prove himself in New England.
Under new head coach Jerod Mayo, the Patriots are still following Bill Belichick's philosophy of parting with players a year early rather than a year later.
Even at 32, Judon should be a productive player. His loss will be a negative for the 2024 Patriots, but moving on and getting a Day 2 draft pick for a player who was not likely in the plans for 2025 and beyond is a good move for a young team entering its next era.
