Aldon Smith and Nick Bosa—Tale of the Tape

 By John Turney 

Aldon Smith (L) and Nick Bosa (R)

There has been a very good Twitter debate this week comparing Aldon Smith and Nick Bosa with, as you can guess, some dissension.

Here is a small sample—

Here are the numbers—

We include pressures from Pro Football Focus (PFF) and Football Outsiders (FO) as well as the 49ers coaches for Smith,

For Bosa, it's PFF, FO, Sports Radar, and the 49ers.

Of course, as per usual, the numbers for those categories don't agree, but player-to-player you can make some surmise about the number of times they are affecting a quarterback's game.

Here are the NFL Combine numbers for Smith—

40 Yard Dash: 4.74 seconds

40 Yard (MPH): 17.26 (MPH)

20 Yard Split: 2.70 seconds

10 Yard Split: 1.66 seconds

Bench Press: 20 reps (225 lb)

Vertical Leap: 34.0 inches

Broad Jump: 118 inches

20 Yd Shuttle: 4.50 seconds

Three Cone: 7.19 seconds

and for Bosa—

40 Yard Dash: 4.79 seconds

40 Yard (MPH): 17.08 (MPH)

20 Yard Split: 2.76 seconds

10 Yard Split: 1.62 seconds

Bench Press: 29 reps (225 lb)

Vertical Leap: 33.5 inches

Broad Jump: 116 inches

20 Yd Shuttle: 4.14 seconds

Three Cone: 7.10 seconds

Also keep in mind back when Smith was with the 49ers they used a lot of base 3-4, less nickel, meaning Smith was a 30 OLBer in base and a 40 nickel right end. Bosa is a 40 end—playing DE in both base and nickel. While both are edge players, there are differences in base, and in 2011-12 the 49erswere in base enough for that to matter.

Answer?

Bosa is better versus the run. Smith more of a physical freak in terms of wiry strength is likely a hair better than Bosa in the pass rush physically but Bosa is the far better technician. 

However, the Twitter debaters do point out that Aldon Smith had Justin "Cowboy" Smith next to him and yes, that DOES make a difference, favoring Aldon Smith. He'd grab people to free Smith. 

As a rookie, though Bosa had DeForest Buckner and he was a big help to Bosa but he left in 2020 for the Colts. 

We'd take Bosa based on the tape we've seen. Final answer.