What Von Miller brings to the Washington Commanders

Evaluating what Von Miller still has left in the tank to offer the Commanders in 2025

The Commanders made a surprising move just days before the start of training camp. News broke late on Wednesday night that star pass rusher and future hall of famer Von Miller is signing with the Washington Commanders for the 2025 season. As of writing, details of the move haven’t been announced and the team hasn’t yet confirmed it officially, but Miller posted a picture of himself in the Commanders new alternate uniforms on his social media platforms to confirm the news.

One of the major topics of the offseason for the Commanders has been the pass rush and how the Commanders can improve there. The team lost one of their top pass rushers in Dante Fowler in free agency and didn’t replace him with any high profile free agent or top draft pick. Instead they’ve decided to bring in a legendary but also 36-year-old pass rusher to bolster their ranks. So of course the question now for the Commanders and their fans is what exactly does Miller have left in the tank?

Miller has 129.5 career sacks, which puts him 16th all time in the NFL sack records. He needs 8.5 sacks to get himself into the top 10, and he had six last year playing a part time role for the Bills. What’s important for Commanders fans to understand about Miller from the start is that he’s not going to be an every down player. His snap count percentages have dropped pretty drastically. Since joining the Bills in 2022, his snap counts have steadily declined. He played around 60% of the snaps in 2022, down from his 71% in 2021. In 2023 and 2024, he played about 32% of the snaps in Buffalo.

Those numbers should tell you the change in role for Miller as he has aged. He’s now a situational pass rusher rather than an every down player. His role now is much like the role Dante Fowler played under Dan Quinn in Dallas, where he was a situational pass rusher that played 30%-ish of the snaps. That was what Fowler was meant to do here as well, but with injuries he was forced into a bigger role, which he then took advantage of. But Miller likely isn’t capable of sustaining his high standards for extended periods of play any more, so his role will be limited to situational rusher.

However, that doesn’t mean he can’t still be an important piece of the defense. While Miller’s snaps have decreased, it’s clear to see when watching him that he has a lot to offer as a pass rusher. He’s an incredible athlete with fantastic measurables which help him in his pass rush, but over the years he’s developed a strong and well-rounded toolkit to enable him to attack blockers in a variety of ways. In his later years, Miller created a now annual pass rush camp where all the top pass rushers in the NFL meet once a year to discuss different techniques and moves to help improve as rushers. When you watch Miller’s game, you see why his insight is so sought after, because he has such a variety of ways to beat a blocker, even in his mid-30’s.

Let’s start first with the obvious. Miller came out of college as this supremely athletic speed rusher that had a great burst off the line of scrimmage and fantastic dip and bend around the edge. Despite now being 36, Miller still carries a huge threat of speed off the edge, as can be seen on this play. You can see how much quicker he is off the snap compared to everyone else here. Pause the clip as Miller hits his third step, where his hands look to engage with the right tackle. You can see Miller is already a couple yards into the backfield, with the tackle panicking on how to keep up, while no other rusher is even a yard past the line of scrimmage.

That speed is hard for any tackle to handle and is a constant threat that Miller can use to weave into other parts of his game. But here, he just uses the speed to attack the edge. He reads the tackle struggling to stay with him, so he extends his arms out and uses a two-handed swipe to bat away the tackle’s hands. With the hands knocked down, Miller has a clear path to the edge, which he takes and bends around the corner to close quickly on the quarterback for a sack.

Miller’s speed and burst might not be quite as electric as it once was, but it’s still very good and will cause most tackles problems if they aren’t careful. He gives them very little margin for error, so they have to be aware of that speed all the time. Miller knows this and uses it against tackles that are oversetting to the threat of the speed rush.

On this play, we can see the right tackle is worried about Miller’s speed on the edge, despite having a running back chipping to help him. At the snap of the ball, the tackle takes on kick step and then immediately abandons his technique and looks to open his hips and almost run with Miller the way a cornerback would run with a go route down the sideline. Miller spots this technique and immediately makes an adjustment.

Instead of just rushing up the field, Miller converts his speed into power, changing his path and closing the gap between them. He quickly gets up into the tackle and uses his momentum to knock the tackle backwards. Because the tackle had such bad technique as he scrambled to match Miller’s speed, Miller is able to easily drive him backwards despite being much smaller. He uses his leverage to drive the tackle backwards and into the quarterback, who trips over the tackle’s leg and ends up on the ground for Miller to sack him.

That play showed how much Miller’s speed can still be a threat to tackles and how he can play off of that threat with other types of rushes. But his pass rush isn’t just about speed and hoping tackles overreact to that speed. He can use his speed to set up blockers too.

Here we see Miller working against Lions star right tackle Penei Sewell, Sewell is one of the best young tackles in the NFL and also one of the most athletic. Trying to just beat Sewell for speed on the edge won’t cut it. So Miller changes his tactic. At the snap of the ball, Miller comes off the edge looking like he’s using his speed rush from a wide alignment.

However, on his third and fourth step, just before Sewell is about to engage with him. Miller throws in a little stutter move, stuttering his feet and his hands to mess with Sewell’s timing. You can see how this impacts Sewell. He was kicksliding smoothly and ready to cut off Miller’s speed rush, but the stutter suddenly throws off that timing. Sewell then reacts by taking an extra step, but that step is more vertical than his previous steps.

That vertical step is an important detail because it put Sewell in an awkward spot. Having changed his footwork and positioning, that vertical step opens up Sewell to a vulnerability against a bullrush. Miller spots that vulnerability and transitions into a bullrush, landing his punches at the exact right moment to take advantage of Sewell’s misstep. The result of that is Miller is able to drive Sewell backwards towards the quarterback, forcing the right guard to slide across and save him from getting beat. With the right guard and right tackle now blocking Miller, the center and left guard are left one-on-one inside and both give up pressure against a stunt.

Miller still has a wide variety of pass rush moves available to him, as we’ve already seen. But one of the moves he uses more often is a spin move.