Washington DT Matt Ioannidis is out for the season with torn biceps
The Washington Football Team boasted one of the best and deepest defensive lines in the league heading into the season but lost one of their key pieces on Sunday during their Week Three loss to the Cleveland Browns. Both defensive end Chase Young and defensive tackle Matt Ioannidis left the game early with injuries and didn’t return.
While they are expected to get their star rookie back after some time out with a groin injury, on Monday an informed source confirmed with ESPN’s John Keim that the team will be without the fifth-year veteran for the remainder of the season after suffering a torn biceps.
Ioannidis was a key piece to their interior defensive line rotation and was off to a strong start to the season with five total tackles and 1.5 sacks in two and a half games. Prior to this year he had been Washington’s most disruptive defensive player for the last two season and logged 16 sacks and 95 combined tackles over that span including career highs in both in 2019 with 8.5 and 64.
Despite his impressive production in each of the last two years, Ioannidis didn’t enter the season as a starter. Even though he was playing behind former first-round picks Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne, he was still an impactful member of Washington’s ferocious front seven that has been a catalyst for their 1-2 start which isn’t elite by any means but in the woeful NFC East decision is good enough for first place at the moment.
His pass-rush presence will be missed on the interior of their defensive front and would’ve helped their chances of a possibly pulling off an upset over a Baltimore Ravens team coming to the nation’s capital in Week Four whose offensive line has struggled to protect the reigning league MVP from pressure up the middle in the early going of this season.
