Remember the days when SEC linebackers or defensive ends could compile double digits in sacks, sometimes in multiple seasons?

That era definitely appears to be over. Just five SEC players had 10 or more sacks last season: Missouri’s Shane Ray (13), Texas A&M’s Myles Garrett (11.5), Tennessee’s Curt Maggitt (11), Missouri’s Markus Golden (10) and Tennessee’s Derek Barnett (10).

Ray and Golden are now in the NFL. The SEC’s returning leader in career sacks is Georgia’s Jordan Jenkins with 15, but he is entering his senior season and has had exactly five sacks in each of his first three years in Athens. So based on those numbers, it’s hard to project a double-digit sack campaign for the Bulldog linebacker.

Auburn sophomore defensive end Carl Lawson has the talent and ability to collect at least 10 sacks, but it remains to be seen how effective he will be after having knee surgery and missing all of 2014. Even during his freshman season, when Lawson was named a Sporting News freshman All-American, he managed just four sacks in 14 games.

Garrett, who eclipsed Jadeveon Clowney’s SEC freshman record for sacks in a season last year, could very well match his total from 2014. But he will no longer surprise anybody, and you have to figure that opponents will double-team him at least some of the time, which would presumably result in a lower sack output for him this year.

Barnett and Maggitt return for the Volunteers; a senior in 2015, Maggitt has 13.5 career sacks, two of them coming in his sophomore year. Perhaps he and Barnett can approach the career totals of Volunteers greats Reggie White and Leonard Little, but Maggitt would have to get at least 14.5 sacks this season to match Little.

Coincidentally, three of the SEC players with at least 28 career sacks have competed in the 21st century, with Georgia’s David Pollack topping the group with 36. Collectively, there are four Bulldogs among the SEC’s top 11, including Jarvis Jones, Jimmy Payne and Richard Tardits.

Derrick Thomas, the SEC’s all-time sack leader with 52, died on Feb. 8, 2000, at the age of 33, 16 days after a car crash had left him paralyzed from the chest down. Thomas, the fourth pick of the NFL draft in 1989, continued to sack quarterbacks in the pros, finishing with 126.5 – including a league-leading 20 in 1990 — over his outstanding 11-year career with the Kansas City Chiefs.

Here are the top 11 all-time SEC defensive players ranked by career sacks.

Player School Sacks Years
Derrick Thomas Alabama 52 1985-88
Billy Jackson Mississippi State 49 1980-83
Ben Williams Ole Miss 37 1972-75
David Pollack Georgia 36 2001-04
Alex Brown Florida 33 1998-01
Reggie White Tennessee 32 1980-83
Richard Tardits Georgia 29 1985-88
Eric Norwood South Carolina 29 2006-09
Jimmy Payne Georgia 28 1978-82
Leonard Little Tennessee 28 1995-97
Jarvis Jones Georgia 28 2011-12

All stats courtesy of the SEC record book.