ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- There wasn’t a set number that Ezekiel Ansah was aiming for in the preseason. He saw what top defensive ends in the league were producing, what some of the top pass-rushers in the NFL were capable of, and felt that he should also be able to do that.

So before the season, Ansah made it clear that double-digit sacks were going to be a priority. Midway through the season, he’s on pace for that, with seven sacks in his first eight games. Now, though, his goals are higher. His plan is bigger.

His next step is a dominating one.

“I just got to make sure that I’m unstoppable,” Ansah said. “I just got to find a way where tackles are unable to stop me from getting to the quarterback. That is where the next thing is.”

Ezekiel Ansah has seven sacks in his first eight games this season. Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

He’s come close to that level for Detroit this season. Besides the sacks, he forced three fumbles, recovered one and had one of the highlight plays of the season for the Lions, running down Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson on the sideline on a play where Ansah outran linebackers and defensive backs.

In this lost season for the Lions, one of the bigger bright spots has been Ansah’s continued growth from a raw first-round pick in 2013 to one of the league’s top pass-rushing defensive ends.

The 26-year-old is also doing this in a season when -- for the first time -- he is the main focal point for most offensive lines. In his first two years, teams had to deal with Ndamukong Suh, Nick Fairley or both in the middle as well as Ansah on the outside. That left too many options for opposing offensive coordinators, often leaving Ansah with single blocks.

Ansah said he was curious to see how teams would play him with Suh and the interior guys gone. He’s now seen a lot of the double and triple teams that teams aimed at Suh before the defensive tackle went to the Dolphins. And Ansah is putting together a career year anyway.

“Interesting thing is, coming into the season, I had a feeling that they were going to try and do that,” Ansah said. “So I was ready for it. I was prepared for it.”

And he’s done well with it, having a disrupted dropback in six of eight games this season, and he's been one of the more productive 4-3 defensive ends in the league. He said no one had a specific discussion with him about the added attention he was bound to receive, but he understood what was likely to come. And he trained and prepared for it in the offseason in Utah so he would be ready if it did.

“They have respect for me, which is good,” he said of the way opponents are focusing on him. He also knows this opens up other avenues for his teammates, much the way the doubles used on Suh did for Ansah.

Things have also come faster for Ansah this season after he spent his first two seasons really working to understand the NFL game and still learning football in general. He said he thinks less than he ever has on the field. He trusts himself, and that’s been part of the jump in his game as well. He’s able to “try to play freely” more than he did in his first couple of seasons. That’s something he believes has helped him continue to grow.

That’s due to his own work habits and the coaching he's gotten from Kris Kocurek and Jim Washburn throughout his career. And just as he readied himself for being the focus of opposing blocking schemes, he now feels he’s ready for that next, dominant step as well.

That includes hitting the double-digit sack mark and getting closer being to the player he believes he can be.

“I think I’m slowly getting there,” Ansah said. “It’s been a pretty good half, but what I plan on is to make the next half even better than what I did this half.”