K'Lavon Chaisson

Career arc: four wasted years in Jacksonville (5.0 sacks), then a two-team revival that finally looks like a first-round pick.

As the 20th overall pick in 2020, his four-year Jacksonville total was 5.0 sacks across 44 games — the textbook 'first-round bust' line. The Jaguars declined his fifth-year option. Then he signed with Las Vegas on a 1-year prove-it deal in 2024, posted 5.0 sacks, and the Patriots picked him up for 2025 — where he's posted 7.5 sacks in 15 regular-season games, already surpassing his entire Jacksonville career in a single year.

His 2024-2025 sacks-per-game is 4x higher than his Jacksonville rate — the biggest late-career surge of any 2015-2020 first-round EDGE/LB.

0.114 sacks/game vs 0.463 sacks/game — a 4.1x jump. Across 40 first-round EDGE/LB picks from the 2015-2020 draft classes with sufficient games, Chaisson's improvement ratio is the highest in the group. Charles Harris (4th in 2017) is the closest comp at 2.56x — Chaisson's revival is 60% steeper.

For reference, 0.463 sacks/game annualizes to about 7.9 sacks per 17 games — a legitimate starter-caliber pass rusher.

2025 alone (7.5 sacks in 15 games) is more than his entire four-year Jacksonville career produced.

His 2024 Week 13 vs Kansas City (1.5 sacks, 3 QB hits) was the breakout moment — a road game against the eventual AFC champ where he was the most disruptive pass rusher on the field.

The 2025 distribution is the more compelling story: eight different sack games across the season, including the 2.0-sack effort vs Tennessee. He's not a one-game wonder anymore — the production is week-in, week-out.

His career QB-hit total spiked in 2024-2025 (26) to nearly the same number as his entire Jacksonville run (23).

0.52 → 0.96 QB hits per game is an 85% jump. Context: across 259 EDGE/LB players with 16+ regular-season games in 2020-2023, the median was 0.22 hits/game. Chaisson's Jacksonville rate of 0.52 already placed him in the top 26% — he was generating pressure; he just wasn't converting it into sacks.

His post-JAX rate of 0.96 hits/game would sit in the top 8% of that same population. He won't turn 27 until July — the 2025 line may be a baseline, not a peak.

Among 2020 first-round EDGE/LB picks, Chaisson is the only one still improving in year six — the group's lone late-bloomer.

Of the six 2020 first-round EDGE/LB picks, Chaisson entered 2024 as the consensus bust — 5.0 sacks in four years while peers from the same class had stalled or peaked. Year five he matched his entire Jacksonville sack total in 12 games. Year six he exceeded it.

No other pick in the group has a positive trajectory at year six — most have plateaued or declined. This is the Haason Reddick model: a first-round pass rusher who needed a change of scheme to unlock what was always there.