By John Turney
Calais Campbell just turned 40 this past week. Most men that age are thinking about tee times. Campbell is thinking about five-technique alignments, twists, stacking and shedding and how many more snaps he can give the Baltimore Ravens in what he says is likely his final NFL season.
It will be his 19th.
When Baltimore opens their season this upcoming week, Campbell will sit five regular-season games from passing Jim Marshall for the most games ever played by an NFL defensive lineman. Marshall finished with 282. Campbell has 278 and has not missed a regular-season game since 2022. He has started 259 of those.
If he plays at least a dozen games, he will have a total of 290 games played. That alone is impressive.
Last season, back in Arizona where the Cardinals drafted him 50th overall in 2008, the 6-foot-8, 307-pounder started all 17 games and posted 6.5 sacks and 43 tackles. Those 6.5 sacks would have led last year's Ravens. He then signed a one-year, $5.5 million deal to return to Baltimore, where he played from 2020-22.
"This year, I feel as strongly as ever that this is probably going to be my last year," he said this summer. He has probably said versions of that before. The difference now is the it may actually happen. Or not. If he plays like last year, why not go for an even 20 seasons?
Either way, if healthy, Campbell will extend his career totals in two diverse stats: quarterback sacks and run/pass stuffs.
We have long preferred stuffs (developed by Nick Webster) as the cleanest single number for interior and hybrid defensive linemen over the NFL's TFL stat. Campbell’s unofficial stuff total stands at 108.0. Add the 117.0 official sacks and you get 225 plays behind the line of scrimmage. But if you prefer TFLs he has 196 of those, six behind Terrell Suggs for most all-time, and in this case "all-time" starts in 1999.
That is Hall of Fame territory (if you value stopping the run and don't overvalue sacks, that is), even before you count 65 passes defensed, 18 forced fumbles, 13 recoveries, three interceptions, three defensive touchdowns, 11 blocked kicks and three safeties. Throw in Football Outsiders and Pro Football Focus pressure totals in our tracking (677 and 810).
Proscout, Inc, once wrote that he "Defines a HOFer ... Tall-fast-strong-moves on all downs ... Blue when playing tight end, tackle, guard and center ..."
Yes, he can be seen as a starting 3-4 end, a 4-3 end, a defensive tackle in 4-3, and even as a nose or shade tackle. And he has started games at nose, even if not always shown that way in season-ending position listings. Make no mistake, he was good no matter where he lined up. However, as edge rusher he was not as good as when he played further inside.
Hall of Fame conversations will follow the retirement announcement, whenever it actually comes. The case is already made strong on the combination of longevity, that 2017 peak, all-decade recognition, and the stuff/sack double almost no modern lineman matches. Voters can argue the exact slot. They cannot argue the career.
Like Cam Jordan, the Hall's new rules would seem to make it more likely for induction but probably not a first-ballot guy based on possible position bias. Pure pass rushers seem to get in quicker to 30 ends/40 tackles and only J.J. Watt has a shot to break out of that voter bias, he'll get in right away but he had the sacks and awards that Campbell and Jordan didn't.
The apex for Campbell remains 2017 in Jacksonville. In his first Jaguars season, Campbell posted 14.5 sacks, 72 tackles, three forced fumbles and a defensive touchdown. The Associated Press named him first-team All-Pro. The Pro Football Writers of America named him Defensive Player of the Year. He was six votes shy of the AP Defensive Player of the Year. That front, with Campbell as the hub, carried Jacksonville to the AFC Championship Game.
He was second-team All-Pro in 2014 and 2016 with Arizona, a six-time Pro Bowler (2014–15, 2017–20), All-NFC in 2014 and All-AFC in 2017 and 2019. The league put him on the 2010s All-Decade Team with J.J. Watt, Julius Peppers and Cameron Jordan with Watt and Peppers a mythical "first-team" based on out survey of the voters.
Calais Campbell made the NFL Top 100 Players list 6 times and received postseason notice (if you count PFF) five times in his time in NFL and that might give voters pause. heck, Kevin Williams was a five-time first-team All-Pro and seems not to have a lot of buzz from voters, though he didn't play as long.
Off the field, he collected the 2019 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award, the Bart Starr Award and later the Art Rooney Sportsmanship Award, all great awards but are not going to move the needle much when his case is presented by a Hall official in the early 2030s.
A career in five cities
Nine seasons in Arizona built the foundation: a 2008 NFC Championship as a rookie reserve, then a long run as a 3-4 end who could slide inside on passing downs. Three seasons in Jacksonville produced the statistical high-water mark and the only first-team All-Pro. Three seasons in Baltimore (2020–22) added another Pro Bowl. One year in Atlanta (6.5 sacks in 17 starts) and one in Miami (5.0) proved he could still hold up as a 17-game starter in his late 30s. Then the 2025 return to the Cardinals: 17 more starts, 6.5 more sacks. Pretty consistent.
That is 18 seasons with 5-plus sacks in all but four years, and two of those four were shortened by injury or snap-count management in Baltimore.
From age 36 through 39, he still delivered 6.5, 5.0 and 6.5 sacks and totaled over 15 run/pass stuffs in that same span. Not spectacular, but solid. The Ravens would love that kind of production, you'd think.
The Ravens do not need Campbell to be a 60-snap, every-down player. They need the veteran who can two-gap, collapse a pocket on third-and-long, and set a standard in a room that has injury questions on the interior. Thirty to 40 defensive snaps a week, used well, is a winning role for a 40-year-old who still generates pressures.
Five more games and he passes Marshall. Another 6.5-sack season would push him near the top 20 in official career sacks (he sits 25th at 117.0). Neither mark is why he came back, he's never been a stats guy. He came back because he still loves the game, he is still fairly good at it, and a team still wants him and will pay him well. In the meantime, we get to watch, for at least one more season, one of the most durable players in league history.
And he can still play. Nothing has really changed since the time Jonnu Smith said a couple of years ago on the Pat McAfee Show, "(Calais) is like the LeBron James of the NFL right now as far as his age and the production that he brings to the game, still playing at a high level. I mean, the guy is 1,000 years old and playing like he’s 21."
Nineteen seasons and still good. NINETEEN.
Career stats—
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| Pressures: FO = Football Outsides, PFF = Pro Football Focus |
Honors by season—
How would you rate Campbell compared to Elvin Bethea and Lee Roy Selmon in terms of skills?
ReplyDeleteskills? I can quote what I've been told, no one had better 'base' than Selmon, very few, anyway, bent knees, can run low, get under people. Bethea quicker when he was younger, but Campbell not as quick as either, to me. Even now you watch, he doesn't look super quick, and that was true when he was younger.
DeleteI think Selmon would have been great in q 4-3. When you look at old Bucs stuff you can see he'd get doubled with a tackle on him and a back going at h is knee. Bethea ... IMO, not as much. As for Campbell, they don't do that anymore, it's illegl chop block.
SO, skills, Selmon, Bethea, then Campbell, but power rushes by Campbell impressive. Somehow Campbell perfomsws without eye popping film. That's my take, FWIW