Re: I know sacks aren't everything but . . .
Its not that simple. Guys like Manning for example wont be sacked. They will throw it away rather than take the sack.
If we face Manning he has a game with less than 50% complete and 3 picks, but 0 or 1 sacks, BECAUSE he throws it away when pressure comes, that is total success.
Like everything else, you can't chose a stat that is a definitive conclusion on almost anything.
Peyton Manning doesn't get sacked? That's news to me- last time I checked, he got sacked 14 times last year.
Every QB gets sacked. You seem to think that I'm saying something that I never said. Go back and read the post directly before the one that you quoted. What I said: If you're using one variable to sum up the effectiveness of a pass rush, pressures are the way to go. I then pointed out that the Pats aren't even close to Baltimore in pressures, so any claim that our 2008 pass rush was in the same league as Baltimore's is just wrong.
That said, sacks still matter. They're an overrated stat only because, for years, they've been *the* pass rush statistic. Obviously, they shouldn't be, so therefore they've been overrated. Overrated does not mean useless, not meaningful, or unimportant. It just means that too much importance has been placed on it. Analogy: if Jerod Mayo was suddenly declared the best LB in the NFL, he would be overrated. He'd still be a damn good LB, but he would be rated above his actual value (even though that value is clearly there).
I don't get the point in refuting my claim that sacks are an important part of a pass rush by stating that it's an incomplete measurement. Nobody on this entire thread has even suggested otherwise, and I even said the exact same thing in the same post that you quoted. So I'm really not sure what that accomplishes.
So, back to what the poster that I was actually responding to asked, he wondered if it could be considered a successful day for the pass rush if the Pats got 0 sacks. My answer: no. Even Peyton Manning is sacked, on average, almost once per game. And Sanchez, obviously, isn't Peyton Manning. He may be a talented rookie, but he's still a rookie. Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan pretty much re-set the bar for rookie QBs last year, and even they took 49 sacks between them. So, if we can't sack Sanchez even once, then it'll be awfully hard to spin that as a positive. Not that that would stop a lot of you guys from trying...
