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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

How Do Sacks Affect a QBs Performance?

Here's some data I did from a recent post of how Matt Cassel, Jay Cutler, and Kyle Orton have performed on new team with a new offensive line. I talked about the reason for the poor/better performance of these players is because of the new offensive line these players had. Now I would love to to a full on regression analysis/ correlation chart to prove truly how QB performance is based upon the O-line. Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the knowhow. However, I thought I'd do some more analysis of players that have switched teams to see if my data still holds a little bit of water. I decided to do analysis on Brett Favre (both this year and last year), Chad Pennington (two years ago he was on the Jets and last year he was on the Dolphins), and Aaron Rodgers (Yes, he's been a Packer both years but is O-line is drastically different this year/ my outlier to again to show how awesome Rodgers is this year).
NOTE: S/100 = how many times the QB has been sacked per every 100 passing attempts and the (+/-) equals how often or how little the QB was sacked per every 100 attempts compared to the previous year. i.e. +2.00 S/100 means that that QB was sacked 2 more times this year than he was in the previous year per 100 passing attempts.

So here's what I did earlier:

Cassel (2009/2008)(+2.66 S/100)
YPA: -1.2
Completion Percentage: -8.4
Passer Rating: -11.5
TD/INT ratio: +.09

Cutler (2009/ 2008)(+1.79 S/100)
YPA: -0.7
Completion Percentage: -0.6
Passer Rating: -11.5
TD/INT ratio: -0.56

Orton (2009/2008)(-1.41 S/100)
YPA: +0.6
Completion Percentage: +3.5
Passer Rating: +8.2
TD/INT ratio: +0.7

And some my new data:

Brett Favre (2008/2007) (+2.94 S/100)
YPA: -1.1
Completion Percentage: -0.8
Passer Rating: -14.7
TD/INT ratio: -0.87

Brett Favre (2009/2008) (-1.03 S/100)
YPA: +1.3
Completion Percentage: +4.0
Passer Rating: +31.1
TD/INT ratio: +6.0

Chad Pennington (2008/2006) (-1.14 S/100)
Pennington only had 260 passing attempts in 2007. He had 450+ in '06
YPA: +0.8
Completion Percentage: +2.9
Passer Rating: +14.8
TD/INT ratio: +1.65

Aaron Rodgers (2009/2008) (+6.27 S/100)
YPA: +0.7
Completion Percentage: +1.2
Passer Rating: +8.8
TD/INT ratio: +1.65

Analysis:
Take out Aaron Rodgers for a moment and what do you consistently notice? When a QB moves to a new team a thus gets sacked more, his major stats go down. When he moves to a new team and he gets sacked less, his major stats go up (the exception being Matt Cassel and his TD/INT ratio). I think this should come as no big surprise. When a QB is getting sacked more, that means the O-line is allowing more defenders to break penetration and getting to the QB more. And when the defense is getting to the QB more often, it makes the QBs job tougher and makes it harder for the QB to complete throws. This is a simple aspect of the game. Defenses tend to be better when they can get to the QB and offenses tend to be better when the O-line has great pass protection. This again just reinforces the extreme importance of an offensive line and how overrated people make out the QB position to be.

Now we move to Aaron Rodgers. He's not only one of the best QBs in the league right now, he's doing it with an AWFUL O-line. I mean they've been dreadful. Yes, they're injured, but awful nonetheless. Yes, despite this and in the face if statistical data, Rodgers puts up great numbers. Look at his S/100 spike. Out of the seven players, no spike has gone above or below 3.00. Yes, Rodgers S/100 has taken a huge hit this year; he's getting sacked over 12 times per every 100 passing attempt and is getting sacked over six times more per every 100 passing attempt than he was last year. But he's STILL improved. I don't think people realize what an amazing feat this is! (as shown by my crude poll ranking NFC QBs, I was the only one to vote for Rodgers).

So when you go talking trash about your QB, please take a look at his O-line before you judge.

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