Nik Bonitto has the kind of ceiling that gets people talking about Defensive Player of the Year, but Monday night was a reminder that the path to that award is brutal.
Facing a Chiefs left tackle who had never started a game there before, Bonitto finished with two tackles, including one solo, across 36 defensive snaps. Kansas City’s plan mattered here too - Patrick Mahomes got the ball out fast, with one of the shorter average times to throw on Monday. Still, if Bonitto wants to be in the DPOY conversation, he has to do more than blend into a nationally televised game.
That’s especially true because recent winners at the top of the defensive food chain usually don’t disappear. Since 2008, an on-the-ball defender has taken home Defensive Player of the Year 13 times. Eight different outside linebackers or defensive ends have won it in those 17 seasons, while defensive backs have claimed it the other four times.
The list is loaded: Myles Garrett twice, Nick Bosa, T.J. Watt, Aaron Donald three times, Khalil Mack, J.J.
Watt three times, Terrell Suggs and James Harrison. Across 1,277 combined NFL games, those eight players have had zero tackles in only 59 of them - just 4.6 percent.
That’s why last Thursday stood out so much for Garrett. The reigning DPOY played 40 snaps and finished with nothing on the stat sheet.
It was the fourth time in his 135 career games that he had no tackles, the 40th game in which he had no tackles for loss, and the 23rd time he had no QB hits. He also had no QB pressures.
The 49ers made that happen by doubling or chipping him on nearly every snap, and they also leaned on an offense that gets the ball out in 1.5 seconds or less on almost every pass. At that point, a pass rusher’s margin is basically gone.
For Bonitto, the message is clear: if he’s going to chase DPOY in 2026, he needs a steadier weekly impact than he showed in that Chiefs game. He did finish last season with at least one tackle in every game, but he also had eight games without a tackle for loss and three without a QB hit.
The sack numbers are the obvious place to start. Garrett had 23 sacks last season, an NFL official record in a 17-game season. Al Baker had 23 sacks in 16 games back when sacks weren’t officially tracked, and by sacks per game Garrett’s 2025 season ranks 16th in NFL history using unofficial data from the 1970s.
The all-time rate stuff is wild too. Reggie White’s 21 sacks in 12 games in 1987 comes out to 1.75 sacks per game, which would project to 30 sacks over 17 games.
Deacon Jones’ 1964 or 1968 seasons would project to 27 sacks over a 17-game schedule. The game has changed, though, and quarterbacks were taking more sacks back then.
The broader trend still helps pass rushers. Sack rate has been climbing since roughly 2008, which is why Bonitto could at least make a run at Von Miller’s Broncos franchise record of 18.5 sacks from 2012. Nineteen sacks in 17 games works out to 1.12 per game, and Bonitto’s career pace - 37 sacks in 36 starts, or 1.03 per game - says that isn’t out of reach.
The catch is that he probably won’t do it alone. Denver has plenty of other on-the-ball defenders who will take their share of the production.
Jonathon Cooper, John Franklin-Myers, Zach Allen, Malcolm Roach, Dondrea Tillman, Eyioma Uwazurike, D.J. Jones and Jonah Elliss combined for 39.5 sacks last season, though Cooper is a question mark because of legal issues and Franklin-Myers is now elsewhere.
Those two accounted for 15.5 of the sacks.
If Bonitto is going to make a real DPOY push, tackles for loss may be the bigger tell. He has 44 career TFLs on 2,273 defensive snaps, with 16 in 2024 as his best season so far.
That works out to one TFL every 52 snaps. Garrett, by comparison, has 149 TFLs in 7,061 career snaps, or one every 47.
During his 2023 and 2025 DPOY seasons, Garrett produced one every 48 snaps and one every 26 snaps.
Denver was solid in that area last season with 82 tackles for loss, good for 10th in the league. Cleveland led the NFL with 114, and 33 of those came from Garrett alone.
The team numbers around the league show just how far apart these things can get. According to PFR, the NFL had 2,589 tackles for loss in 2025.
Only three teams topped 100: the Browns with 117, the Vikings with 107 and the Raiders with 105. At the bottom were the Bengals with 56, the 49ers with 65 and the Bears with 66.
Joseph Ossai led Cincinnati with nine, while Garrett led Cleveland and the entire league with 33.
The all-time single-season TFL record belongs to J.J. Watt, who had 39 in 2012, the same year he won DPOY.
Von Miller’s best as a Bronco was 28 in that season. And per PFR, only two players in NFL history have finished with more than 20 tackles for loss per 17 games: J.J.
Watt at 22.0 and Maxx Crosby at 20.6.
That’s the level Bonitto is chasing if he wants to turn the conversation into a trophy case.
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