DENVER — After eight Pro Bowls, seven years in which he was a first- or second-team All-Pro selection, a Super Bowl MVP award and more sacks in his first nine seasons than all but four players since the sack became an official statistic in 1982, Von Miller’s resume was already worthy of enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
After being named a unanimous selection to the All-Decade team of the 2010s as selected by the Hall of Fame, the Hall can feel free to start measuring Miller for his bust and gold jacket.
But what is next? What other mountains can he climb?
“It’s incredible to achieve this honor, but going forward, I’ve got to lead the league in sacks, get a defensive-player-of-the-year,” he said. “I’ve got to figure out a way to do that. I feel like sacks and the defensive-player-of-the-year award go together.”
Miller finished the 2019 season with 8 sacks, a solid campaign for most players. Miller isn’t “most players.” All of those sacks came in the final 12 games in which he played last year, so that put him on an 11-sack pace. But he couldn’t overcome opening the season with no sacks in the first three games.
His sack production picked up as the team started to get Vic Fangio’s defensive scheme. The Broncos didn’t have a sack in those first three games last year, but then were seventh in the league in sacks (40) and sack rate (one every 12.4 pass plays).
It will help to have Jurrell Casey working on the inside, giving the Broncos arguably their best interior pass-rushing presence since Malik Jackson in 2015. Miller got to know Casey during the Pro Bowls in which they took part together in recent years.
“It’ll be incredible. I’m looking forward to it,” Miller said.
“I’m just super excited to have a guy like that on my team, where I can rush with him and we can do all sorts of things together. He can rush with me, rush with [Bradley] Chubb. We get Shelby [Harris] back. We get DeMarcus Walker, Dre’Mont Jones back as well. I’m feeling pretty excited about what we have. It’s going to be exciting.”
But Miller expected the work of this offseason to also help him get back to his usual place among the NFL’s sack leaders.
To that end, Miller spent chunks of the first two and a half months of 2020 in the San Francisco Bay Area with renowned trainer Frank Matrisciano — also known as “Hell’s Trainer.”
Miller did not work with Matrisciano in last year’s offseason, and he finished with his first single-digit sack season in six years — and first such campaign in which he played more than nine games in a season.
During the two and a half months, Miller posted photos and video on his social-media accounts of the work he put in with Matrisciano. He ran stairs on impossibly steep hills to the point of exhaustion. He worked out on the beaches near San Francisco.
COVID-19 put a stop to that.
“I was in San Francisco before working on the sand and the stairs. When the coronavirus started going crazy, we came back,” Miller said.
Miller was able to return home to a fully-equipped workout room, so he has less hardship than younger players on the roster fringes who relied on gyms that are open to the public in order to stay in shape.
“I’ve got a gym here at the house. It’s still not the same as San Francisco, but we’re going to be able to hold it off until we can get back to San Francisco,” Miller said.
“Everybody’s going through the same thing. It’s a tough time. It’s a crazy time that my mom and my grandmother didn’t experience and we’re experiencing it—just trying to stay the best, stay positive. Everything I need to do, I can do here at the house with my guys.”
It isn’t ideal. But no one doubts that Miller will have himself ready for whenever NFL teams reconvene given his career-long diligence to keeping himself in shape and ensuring that he eats the right food to do it.
Miller’s place among the game’s greats is already secure.
But imagine if he returns to his double-digit sack pace — and then stays on it for the years to come.
He already ranks in the league’s top 25 in sacks, with 106 regular-season sacks in his career — an average of 12.56 per 16 games. Three full seasons at that rate would take his total to 143.5 sacks, which would be sixth all-time. Another double-digit sack season beyond that would put him in the NFL’s top five.
“It was about sacks before, and it’s still about sacks now,” he said.
And the more sacks he accumulates, the better his chances of beating down the door and ascending from Hall-worthy to being in the company of the game’s all-time pass rushers like Lawrence Taylor, Reggie White and Bruce Smith.
The opportunity is there.
Don’t bet against Miller seizing it.
