"Quarterbacks Responsible for Taking Sacks
I had a mini-glut of correspondence last week on quarterbacks who brought the most sacks on themselves or, to put it another way, those players who took too long to throw and got taken down or simply ran straight into a defender when other options were available.
Four seconds is the time over which we say the QB takes responsibility, but this excludes instances where they were pressured within that limit, had to take evasive action with no opportunity to throw the ball away, but got taken down after it.
As requested, here is the full list of “QB Responsible Sacks” which includes the playoffs (minimum 300+ drop-backs), and to add additional value I’ve also included the number of hits and pressures which we have logged as being down to that player too.
Worst = Jake Locker....387 drop backs, 8 sacks, 2.1% sack rate, 1 Hit, 0 Pressures
NFL Average........................................... ......0.7% sack rate
Andrew Luck = ...........813 drop backs, 4 sacks, 0.5% sack rate, 0 Hit, 3 Pressures
(Luck was 19th from the bottom better than the NFL average)
What I thought would be interesting was to see if that holds any weight by looking at only plays in which the QB took over four seconds. Would some of the guys at the top of the list also be those who did the best? As QB rating is a blunt instrument at the best of times (never mind on smaller sample sets), though I included it, on this occasion I ranked players using our un-normalized ratings per drop-back.
# 1 Andrew Luck...116 drop backs, 67 attempts, 26 completions, 441 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT, 71.8 QB Rating, + 20.5 PFF Rating, 0.177 PFF Rating per Drop Back over 4.0 seconds
# 2 Jake Locker......65 drop backs, 26 attempts, 13 completions, 250 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, 80.6 QB Rating, + 10.5 PFF Rating, 0.162 PFF Rating per Drop Back over 4.0 seconds
# 3 Kevin Kolb........32 drop backs, 17 attempts, 09 completions, 159 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 85.2 QB Rating, + 5.0 PFF Rating, 0.156 PFF Rating per Drop Back over 4.0 seconds
# 6 Peyton Manning.28 drop backs, 22 attempts, 13 completions, 138 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 58.5 QB Rating, + 4.0 PFF Rating, 0.143 PFF Rating per Drop Back over 4.0 seconds
NFL Average........................................... .................................................. .................................................. .....0.075 PFF Rating per Drop Back over 4.0 seconds
# 31 Tom Brady......61 drop backs, 47 attempts, 11 completions, 136 yards, 3 TD, 0 INT, 60.9 QB Rating, + 0.5 PFF Rating, 0.008 PFF Rating per Drop Back over 4.0 seconds
