I sort of agree with both of you.
What Mack did is damn impressive. He didn't just win the DPOY in 2016, he was first team All Pro at TWO positions, uniquely. That had never happened before. And part of the reason why Mack hasn't had more impact is that the rest of that line isn't very good. So, yes, he's an extraordinarily disruptive player even if he didn't vie for the sack title. That said, he's not a transformational, generational talent like Lawrence Taylor was.
It's inarguable that pressure from the inside is significantly harder to account for than from the edge. There are more players on the interior to prevent pressure and as such, it's likely that very good players will be double or triple teamed. Iirc, AD was double or triple-teamed on just shy of 80% of the snaps he took. That's an obscenely high number. And even with that, he produced at the level he did and that was in 14 games. It's clear that AD is very much a transformational, generational talent that is better than HoF player from the Vikings, John Randle...which is truly saying something.
I stated before either signed that there was no way AD would end up getting more money for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that even as AD is a generational player, his position doesn't garner nearly as much money as DE does. And we see that even more starkly with Earl Thomas who won't earn half of what AD earns and he's also a first ballot HoFer without question in my mind. I would say transformational in that he made a group of very good players into an all time great group.
And honestly, straight up, I'd take Earl Thomas over Khalil Mack every day.
But DE's are paid more (again, thanks to Lawrence Taylor, Reggie White and all of the disruptive DEs who followed) while there haven't been nearly as many DTs of the same caliber. They're almost the exception to the rule which means teams just don't budget for a DT to make that kind of money.
