One Raiders stat proves that Tyree Wilson's breakout season has officially begun

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I think it's happening.

After one of the more underwhelming rookie seasons in the last decade, people were pretty down on Tyree Wilson. He was always considered a longterm, developmental project when the Raiders drafted him 7th overall in 2023. He proceeded to put together a 3.5 sack rookie season – without a start – that year, and had to fight for reps during this past training camp.

Wilson's been the topic of basically every Raiders trade rumor that doesn't involve Davante Adams ever since – LV's defensive line is deep, Wilson wasn't drafted by Antonio Pierce/Tom Telesco, he could use a change of scenery, etc. It always felt like a second-straight bad year would mark the end of Wilson's time in Vegas, fair or not.

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And while it's only been a month, the early returns on Wilson's season are ... surprisingly optimistic? Almost, dare I say, good? Wilson was arguably the Raiders' best player during their Week 4 win over the Browns, and some of his underlying data shows a player who's been pleasantly productive through the first quarter of the season.

Tyree Wilson is starting to show signs of being an NFL-caliber pass rusher

Wilson's still looking for his first sack of the year, so it's not like the breakout season is officially official. But still – sacks are an imperfect stat, and there's obviously plenty of reasons to be excited about some of the underlying data. If someone told you a month ago that Wilson was going to be more productive over the first few weeks than *Will Anderson,* they'd get laughed out of the room. If sacks are the reward for a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes, it's not unreasonable to expect those to start showing up sometime soon.

For the PFF fanatics out there, good news: his grades are good. Like, really good – his overall defensive grade (75.0) is the 25th best grade of any EDGE in the NFL. His actual pass-rush grade (69.5) isn't quite as good (35th overall), but his stellar run defense (10th overall)(!) makes up for it. He also, it should be noted, just turned 24 a few weeks ago. It's almost like young pass rushers sometimes need more than one (1) season to develop!

It's probably still a bit too early to make any grand declarations, but it sure looks like the Tyree Wilson breakout season is under way.