Notes: Aidan Hutchinson is drawing more double teams than almost anyone else in the NFL

Detroit Lions rookie defensive end Aidan Hutchinson put the league on notice Sunday with his three-sack effort against the Washington Commanders. He also contributed two tackles for loss, displaying his ability to impact both phases of the game. The performance earned him a Rookie of the Week nomination, but his position coach said his performance could’ve been even bigger on Sunday.

“He was in position to make the plays he did, for the most part,” defensive line coach Todd Wash said on Wednesday. “I still think he left about two or three sacks out there. That’s kind of the big thing we talked about is you’ve got to make the plays that you are capable of making. It would have really been an impressive game had he done that.”

Despite not capitalizing on all of his opportunities, Hutchinson has had a solid start to his NFL career. And when you put his performance into its proper context... well, you could say he’s had a phenomenal start.

ESPN’s Seth Walder put together a chart tracking edge defender pass rush rates, but put that into context with the amount of times each player is getting double teamed. While Hutchinson’s pass rush win rate is still quite low by ESPN’s measurement (which counts a “win” as a pressure within 2.5 seconds of the snap), Walder provides an essential piece to the puzzle: Aidan Hutchinson is seeing more double teams than any NFL edge defender not named Nick Bosa.

That’s a lot of respect given by opposing offensive coordinators. It’s also an opportunity for other Lions defenders to step up. Unfortunately, Charles Harris—who had one of the highest double team rates last year—hasn’t been able to take advantage of the lightened attention his way. That said, it’s worth noting that Detroit has faced a couple of really good offensive lines with the Eagles and Commanders.

So it will be interesting to see if the Lions’ pass rush rates increase as the season goes on and if opponents change up their strategy when it comes to Hutchinson and Harris.

• As always, Tuesday is filled with a bunch of film breakdown goodies from the Lions beat. Justin Rogers of the Detroit News looked into the differences between the Lions’ defensive performance against the Commanders in the first vs. the second half, Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press highlighted the wide receivers’ role in the run game, while The Athletic’s Colton Pouncey focused on Aidan Hutchison and Malcolm Rodriguez.

• Jared Goff has been pretty darn good in the clutch thus far this season:

• In MMQB’s Albert Breer’s mailbag, he answered the question “Are the Lions for real?” He also had this interesting blurb from a conversation he had with Goff:

• We had former Lions Glover Quin on our podcast a few weeks ago, and this week he joined MLive’s “Dungeon of Doom” podcast to dish on everything that went wrong with the Matt Patricia era and how Dan Campbell is undoing some of that damage. It’s worth a listen.

• Amon-Ra St. Brown isn’t the only Lions weapon setting franchise records these days:

• On Tuesday, Goff was at the Detroit Lions Academy to unveil a new STEAM Lab. Eric Woodyard of ESPN has an inside look.