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He is the classic overnight sensation several years in the making. Buffalo Bills defensive end Aaron Schobel has averaged 9.3 sacks over the first five seasons of his NFL career, but has mostly eluded the media spotlight until ravaging first-round left offensive tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson for three sacks in last Sunday's upset victory over the New York Jets.

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Those three takedowns of New York quarterback Chad Pennington boosted Schobel's total for 2006 to 12½ sacks, tying him with San Diego linebacker and sack machine Shawne Merriman for the league lead. It raised his career sack total to 59, and so Schobel needs just one more sack in the three remaining games to push his career average to 10 sacks per season.

This is the second straight season in which the former TCU star, a second-round selection in the 2001 draft, notched 12 or more sacks. And it's his third season of 10-plus sacks in the last four years. But not until he strafed Ferguson last week in front of the New York media, catapulting himself into a tie with Merriman and marking himself as a viable threat to win the 2006 sack title, did anyone pay much attention.

How come?

"There are a lot of good pass-rush guys in the league," Schobel said. "And the number of good ones seems to keep increasing every year."

That's still not an acceptable reason for Schobel to be so overlooked. A more likely explanation for his anonymity is that he plays in Buffalo. The Bills haven't been to the playoffs even a single time during his career, and the windswept plains of Western New York have become a football hinterland of sorts in recent years -- but he is on-target in his assessment of sack-threat defenders.

After an opening month of the season in which it appeared that quarterback depth charts leaguewide would soon resemble MASH units, given that sacks were up nearly 9 percent, things have settled down. Pass protection schemes, fueled by the increased deployment of two tight ends and "max" protecting blocking, has stemmed the tide to the point that sacks actually are down now in 2006.

At the current pace, extrapolated over the final three weeks of the season, the league sack total for 2006 would be 1,081. That's a nearly 10 percent reduction from 2005 and a 7 percent drop from the average number of sacks since 2002, when the league went to a 256-game schedule. It would mark the fewest sacks since 2002, when the Houston Texans entered the league, expanding the number of franchises to 32.

But, although sacks are down since September, muting the alarmists who wondered whether there would be any quarterbacks left perpendicular by season's end, Schobel is right, it seems, in opining that there are a lot of good, emerging pass rushers in the league. It's impossible to quantify such a theory, but the empirical evidence does support that sacks are coming now from more players and, even subjectively, it's pretty clear that the sudden rise of young pass rushers has wreaked havoc on quarterbacks.

Said one AFC personnel director: "You take a guy like [Oakland defensive end Derrick] Burgess. He had, what, less than 10 sacks in his first four years in the league? Granted, he was hurt a lot of that time, but he must have had some pass-rush potential. He had [a league-best] 16 sacks last year. This year, he's got 10, so it's not like 2005 was some fluke, one-time deal. The guy, now that he's stayed healthy, can flat-out rush the passer. And there are guys like him who are developing into big-time sackers."

With three weeks left in the regular season, there are 13 defenders with 10 or more sacks each, and the roll call includes proven pass rushers such as Jason Taylor of Miami, St. Louis' Leonard Little, and Julius Peppers of Carolina. But there are also six players in that group who never had 10 sacks in any previous season and two who came into the year with fewer than 10 career sacks.

Last season's defensive rookie of the year, Merriman has demonstrated that he figures to be an annual double-digit sacker, with his 12½ sacks in 2006 coming despite the fact he missed four games to a league suspension for violating the steroid and related substances policy. But his Chargers teammate, linebacker Shaun Phillips, has 10½ sacks, and the two have become the NFL's most feared outside tandem. The explosive Phillips could well be a double-digit sacker every year, as could youngsters such as Robert Geathers of Cincinnati, New Orleans' Will Smith, Baltimore's Adalius Thomas or even Chicago Bears rookie Mark Anderson, a fifth-rounder who has 10 sacks despite playing only on passing downs.

"Like everything else, it's about opportunity," said Jacksonville defensive end Bobby McCray, who has eight sacks, after netting only nine total in his first two seasons. "People are throwing the ball more. And if you're on the field for the passing downs, and you've got pass-rush skills, you're going to get your share."

A seventh-round choice in the 2004 draft, McCray has done a terrific job in helping the Jags compensate for the devastating loss of Reggie Hayward, the team's primary pass-rush threat, to a season-ending injury. For McCray, who entered the NFL with a reputation for being able to collapse the pocket on occasion, it's been playing time that has fueled his ascent. For some others, becoming a pass-rusher has been a learned art form, for sure.

Green Bay left defensive end Aaron Kampman, who has 10½ sacks and whose sack total has risen every year he has been in the league, put up big sack numbers at the University of Iowa, but struggled to get to the quarterback early in his NFL career. Kampman had one-half sack as a rookie in 2002, only two sacks in his second season, and 4½ in his third. But then he collected 6½ sacks in 2005 and 10 so far in 2006, and has not sacrificed any of his abilities against the run.

"I guess some good pass rushers are born," acknowledged Kampman, "and some are made."

Whatever the category, there are certainly more of them this season.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer at ESPN.com.