Looking at QB Sacks vs. Winning A Title

[patsfaninpittsburgh]

Agreed. The Saints only recorded one total sack against the Cardinals and Vikings, but they knocked the QBs around quite a bit. I'd love to see more sacks, but I'd settle for having more consistent pressure applied. You're right, it really did feel we couldn't get anywhere near the QB at times.

I'd like to see Burgess back. He seemed to really be picking things up and improving towards the end of the season. And I think a healthy Vince would go a long way towards improving the interior pass rush.

The Saints really knocked Favre around. Too bad it only limited them to 28 points and a blow out if AP didn't fumble.

There was a very interesting article (I believe Kirwin's article on NFL.com) by where one of the Saint's LB's was interviewed. He noted that in the SB, the Saints employed a 3-3-5 (anybody know who started that against Manning) for flexibility.

Also, if the Jets were so pressure packed, why did they give up 6 game losing drives in 2009 while the Pats gave up only 5 because they don't apply pressure and sacks like the Jets?

How long are these clownish "sack" threads going to continue?

 

[Synovia]

The OP led me to do a little analysis which brought up an interesting view. I checked through the stats of 7 current QBs to determine what effect if any sacks might have on a QBs INT rate.

The first table is the number of career sacks plus the annual average starting with the most sacked.

Roethlisburger 242 sacks 40 avg
Favre 503 sacks 26 avg
Romo 99 sacks 24.75 avg
Brady 219 sacks 24.3 avg
Warner 260 sacks 21.7 avg
Manning 215 sacks 17.9 avg
Brees 159 sacks 17.6 avg

While I admit there are other stats that might bring pressure to a QB (hits, hurried) sacks is a reasonable single measure of that pressure, and you might expect that the more pressure the higher the interception rate and vice versa.

Interestingly the ratio of sacks to interceptions produced the following table of the most efficient (ie least interceptions per sack)

Roethlisburger 242 sacks 81 ints - 33% ratio
Brady 219 sacks 99 ints - 45% ratio
Warner 260 sacks 128 ints - 49% ratio
Romo 99 sacks 55 ints - 55% ratio
Favre 503 sacks 317 ints - 63% ratio
Brees 159 sacks 110 ints - 69% ratio
Manning 215 sacks 181 ints - 84% ratio

I can't make up my mind which surprises me more Big Ben's efficiency despite his hammering, or Manning's inefficiency despite his clean uniform.

I think it is also interesting to note that the top 2 positions are both taken by cold weather QBs, while the 2 at the bottom are dome/warm weather ones.

Just an observation

Its kind of a terrible observation though. Manning has 185 INts over 13 years in the NFL, and you're trying to tell us hes more int prone than Favre? Doesn't pass the smell test.


What your numbers show me is that sacks and Ints don't correlate at all. Which makes sense, because you can't throw a pick when you get sacked.

 

[patsfaninpittsburgh]

The problem with gauging a team's pass rush by raw sack totals is that it doesn't just measure a team's pass rush, or even just its pass defense -- it's actually primarily a measure of how many times over the season a team found itself in a high-sack-probability situation.

The most obvious factor is that if a team is good enough in other areas to be frequently ahead by more than a score in the 4th quarter, they're going to see more pass attempts than other teams, and feel more free to "pin their ears back," as they say.

A teams "pace" also comes into it -- depending on both offensive and defensive styles of play, some teams just pack more plays into a game than others. The San Diego defense face a league low 162 opposing drivers. The Eagles and Cardinals were both tied for 3rd most, with 193. All three were playoff teams, but the SD defense had over 30 fewer drives in which to get sacks.

And then there are ton of even harder-to-pinpoint situational factors that play a major role in sack totals. For a variety of reasons, including shear chance, some defenses end the year having faced a greater proportion of 3rd and longs than others, thus having better sack opportunities.

Another huge factor that rarely gets considered is the team's opponents. In the NFL, outside of one's division, teams have very different schedules. Teams like the Pats and Ravens have only two common opponents all regular season. Sometimes you get a schedule packed with Roethlisburgers, Warners, and whoever's playing behind Buffalo's o-line, and sometimes you get Mannings, Bradys, and lots of short-passing offenses. In the NFL, any statistic that doesn't try to adjust for opponent's faced is going to be relatively useless.

Sanity and a great post

Great QB's shred blitzes. What you have to have is the ability to throw some pressures into the game plan. That's why Pittsburgh gets shredded by Brady and why Warner had a field day.

The zone blitz is a one trick pony that beefs up the stats against lesser opponents.

 

[patsfan-1982]

ill give you that the pats defense is not as bad as some of us make it out to be. but the jets D was ranked #1 on 3rd down and #1 overalll for a reason. they had a rookie QB that throw a lot of INT's at the worng time and that cost them a few games.