Pressure on Pats' O-line to protect rebuilt Brady - AFC East - ESPN
QB's who were the most hit in 2006 and in 2007, totals:
Tom Brady Patriots 86
Carson Palmer Bengals 86
Brett Favre Packers 78
Kurt Warner Cardinals 72
Steve McNair Ravens 70
This was clear to anyone who regularly watched the Pats. Hopefully our new coordinator won't be as negligent with the minimal protection and obsession with repeated spread passing formations.
And what is the ratio of hit/pass, since that's a far more important statistic? Well, let's take a look, shall we?
Brady: 86 hits in 1095 attempts
Palmer: 86 hits in 1094 attempts
Warner: 72 hits in 619 attempts
McNair: 70 hits in 673 attempts
Favre: 78 hits in 1148 attempts
So, in other words, the only quarterback who was really getting popped less than Brady from this group was Favre (Brady and Palmer were getting hit at essentially the same rate), who's also the most mobile of the group. A misleading stat, which is dependent upon all sorts of factors that were ignored in a pathetic attempt to make a point, doesn't even do a good job of making that point. Also, notice this article about the Blitz....
Brady is currently setting the pace for the group with a 152.74 passer rating and an 80 percent completion rate against the blitz while Manning, at 132.71, has completed 70 percent of his passes. Romo's 60 percent isn't much higher than the NFL average of 56.8 percent against the blitz, but he's nipping at Manning's heels with a 129.06 rating and has an impressive 20.8 yards per completion average when he's connecting with his receivers. Schaub's lagging a bit behind the top three at 116.93, but his 65.6 percent completion rate and the fact that he's 11 passer rating points ahead of the next highest-rated quarterback -- San Diego's Philip Rivers -- merited a mention with the top trio.
Also worthy of note is that while Brady has faced 51 blitzes so far this year, teams appear to have all but given up on trying to blitz Manning. Against a league average of 46 blitzes per team, Manning has only faced 20 blitzes even though the Colts have played five games and are just now entering their bye week.
Scout.com: Who's Most Effective Against the Blitz?
Just into October, Brady was facing more blitzes than the average QB, and was thriving against it, hits or no hits.
Thanks for throwing out this red herring! It was delicious.
Edit: Palmer was the one with 1095 attempts, while Brady had 1094. I mistakenly flipped them. It changes nothing, really, as it's statistically insignificant, but it still needed to be pointed out for accuracy.