Damon Harrison happened.
Somehow, the undrafted free agent Harrison became a star. And more importantly the starter. Which put Ellis in a limited role. ProFootballFocus.com says that Kenrick Ellis shined in his limited role and they named him the Jets secret superstar.
This led to Ellis only playing in 210 snaps all season. Despite never playing more than 16 snaps against the run in a game all season, he definitely made the most of his opportunity. In his first game despite playing just 18 snaps, he had three highly-graded plays thanks to beating his block to make run stops. There was not a single game where he had a negative rating in run defense all season.
He ended up making 17 run stops on 114 run snaps on the season, which gave him a Run Stop Percentage of 14.9%. Over the last six years, John Henderson in 2010 was the only defensive or nose tackle with at least 100 snaps against the run and a better Run Stop Percentage. He was also 1.7% better than the second-best defensive tackle in Run Stop Percentage; teammate Damon Harrison. While his strength was in stopping the run, he also had seven hurries on 85 pass rushes.
Though stopping the run is his strength, he did record seven pressures on 90 pass rushes which is decent for a nose tackle. They even tested him out at fullback late in their Week 17 game on a play that consisted of three defensive linemen in the backfield.
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