Hogs Haven
Throughout the 2025 NFL season, SB Nation’s Doug Farrar will write about the game’s Secret Superstars — those players whose performances might slip under the radar for whatever reasons. In this installment, it’s time to focus on Commanders pass-rusher Dorance Armstrong, who’s been one of Dan Quinn’s favorite players going back to their days with the Dallas Cowboys. Now, Armstrong is repaying Quinn’s belief with performances that mark him as the NFL’s best pass-rusher nobody is talking about.
Once in a while as an analyst, you get these things right, and that’s a pretty good feeling.
Back in May, when intrepid editor Jeanna Kelley asked me to put together a series of “Hidden Gems” for every NFL team — one underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent acquisition, and one underrated draft pick — the underrated veteran for the Washington Commanders was an easy call. That was Dorance Armstrong, who followed Dan Quinn from Dallas with a three-year, $33 million contract including $16.125 million guaranteed in 2024.
Before Quinn became the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator in 2021, Armstrong was an afterthought — the 2018 fourth-round pick out of Kansas had never totaled more than 273 defensive snaps in a season. But Quinn saw something in Armstrong, and the snaps kept going up from 535 in 2021 to 618 in 2022 and 468 in an injury-abbreviated 2023 season.
Quinn knew that his new team was light on the edges, so he was happy to bring Armstrong along, and not just for the edge work. Quinn’s career as a defensive coordinator has often been accentuated by pass-rushers who can win from multiple gaps — Michael Bennett with the Seattle Seahawks is the most prominent example — and that’s how Quinn has deployed his veteran friend in the nation’s capital.
In 2024, Armstrong had a career-high 10 sacks and 51 total pressures in a career-high 450 pass-rushing snaps (747 overall) and he really ramped things up in the postseason. Four of his 10 sacks came in three playoff games, and overall, Armstrong was a major pain for opposing blockers from every gap — he lined up 13% of the time in the B-gaps, and the rest of the time outside. In Washington’s 45-31 Divisional playoff win over the Detroit Lions, Armstrong really went off with two sacks and a host of pressure.
Now, in his eighth NFL season, Armstrong appears to be better than ever. He has three sacks and 18 total pressures in just 72 pass-rushing snaps, and he’s doing it all over the place once again. Per Next Gen Stats, Armstrong’s 25.0% pressure rate ties him for the league lead with Al-Quadin Muhammad of the Detroit Lions (another Secret Superstar this week), and nobody has more total disruptions in the league through three full weeks of the 2025 season.
“I’m proud to see the camp that he had and how he started off onto the season,” Quinn said of Armstrong last week. “He’s worked hard, and with the versatility we have now, we can...
