Once they smell blood in the water, the quick and the merciless usually find a way to close the stinking deal. As a rookie pass rusher, Aldon Smith notched 7.5 sacks over his last seven appearances in 2011. Dwight Freeney managed eight over the last seven games of 2002, his first season in the NFL.
Leslie O’Neal’s season-ending kick in 1986: 9.5 sacks in his final seven tilts. Simeon Rice, a decade later: 6.5.
Rookie wall? What rookie wall?
“I mean, nobody has told me (the best way to finish), because everybody handles it differently,” Bradley Chubb, the Broncos’ bull shark of a first-year linebacker, said with a shrug. “My main thing is just to try not to think about week by week, and just try to go in and take it day by day, take it another day at a time.
“I don’t think, ‘Oh, this is Week 9, this is Week 10,’ because I feel like that’s when you start messing yourself up.”
Chubb admitted, though, that he does keep at least one number pinned to the back of his mind for future reference: 14.5.
As in sacks. As in the NFL single-season rookie record, set by Tennessee’s Jevon Kearse in 1999.
“For sure, I’ve definitely looked at it. I definitely know the number,” Chubb admitted with a grin. “I’ve definitely got it written up somewhere. But my main focus is just doing what the team needs. And if it happens, it happens.”
And if you want to get there, you close. You close in the autumn wind. You close in the sleet. You close in the snow. You close in November and December. The dog days.
“Over the last couple of games, I’ve been piling up the sacks and stuff,” Chubb said, “so my main objective is just to keep that going and hopefully it equates to wins for the team.”
After recording sack No. 8 in the fourth quarter last weekend against Houston, Chubb goes into the Broncos’ bye on a pace for 14.2 takedowns through 16 games. Rounded down, that would shoot past the Broncos’ single-season rookie record of 11.5 that veteran running mate Von Miller set in 2011 — and put him within shouting distance of the bar that Kearse, The Freak, set almost two decades earlier.
“You know, you look at Chubb and you look at him as a rookie and you think: ‘Yeah, he’s just like all the other rookies. He’s young and he’s got a lot to learn,’ ” Broncos safety Justin Simmons observed. “But he’s wise beyond his years. He seems like a vet in the locker room. He takes coaching really well. And all he wants to do is just help the team. And when you get a combination of stuff like that, for any guy, it always is a recipe for success.”
A recipe for a turnaround, too, once the light bulb goes on. Over his first five contests, Chubb recorded only 1.5 sacks and five quarterback pressures, including goose eggs against the Raiders and Jets. Over his last four games, Chubb has piled up 6.5 sacks and 9.5 pressures, according to Denver Post game charting.
“It’s about playing our scheme, learning how to play different blocks, learning how to execute our pass-rush stunts and things of that nature,” defensive coordinator Joe Woods noted last week. “Also, how teams are blocking him. I’m sure some of the blocks that he’s getting here, he’s probably not accustomed to getting when he was in college. Each game, he’s getting a little bit better.”
Chubb’s eight sacks after nine games are tied for the fourth-most in NFL history by a rookie after nine contests, and the most by a rookie since Miller himself managed eight through 2011. Georgia native Chubb is only the sixth rookie in NFL history to pick up at least eight sacks through is first nine games.
“Whereas earlier in the season, the sacks may not have been there, he’s just letting the game come to him,” Simmons said. “We’re not doing anything out of the ordinary in terms of calling his number on a certain blitz or anything like that. He’s just finding his knack for the game, getting to the football and great things are happening.”
The only question, now that a corner’s turned, is whether he can close at October’s pace. According to FootballOutsiders.com, the Broncos’ final seven contests are against four opponents who rank among the site’s top 10 offensive lines in adjusted sack rate (the Chargers, twice, at No. 7; the Steelers at No. 1 and the Bengals at No. 9) and three who sit among the NFL’s bottom 10 (The 49ers at No. 25; the Browns at No. 25 and the Raiders at No. 23).
If you want to get your Freak on, you close. In 1999, Kearse managed at least one sack in each of his last seven regular-season appearances, totaling eight over the season’s final seven weeks. If Broncos rookie Chubb can match that pace, or even average just a sack per contest down the stretch, he’ll be alone at the top.
“It’s just being comfortable, just understanding the reason they drafted me was to play football and to rush the passer and stuff,” Chubb said. “At first, I was not really seeing the big-picture things. I was doing this, I’m doing that. Now I feel like I’m finally focused in, locked in, and know my role for this team. And I’m just trying to execute it 100 percent.”
Post staff writer Ryan O’Halloran contributed to this report.
