Sacking the Quarterback Leads to Victory
It is no secret that the NFL has become a passing league. Increased passing has directly correlated to more points scored and the quarterback has become the most important player in sports. Because of that, getting to the quarterback has become one of the most important defensive tactics in the game. A sack is a consistently impactful metric in stopping an offense from scoring.
Analyzing over a decade of play by play statistics and more than 60,000 drives it is plain to see that sacking a quarterback halts drives and keeps points off the board. In those 60,000+ drives, an offense has scored points 36% of the time. However, when a single sack occurs on that drive, only 4% of those drives end in points. That is a massive decline.
By isolating drives when a sack occurs the numbers are still staggering. Over that same time period, nearly 12,000 drives had at least a single sack. On 78% of those drives no points were scored. In other words, only 22% scored which is a large decline from the 36% of all drives. Drives with no sack scored 39% of the time, an increase over all drives.
An offense loses over six yards on average when a sack occurs. In other words, second and five then becomes a third and eleven. Getting the quarterback down creates a large down and distance hole that offenses struggle to get out of and gives the advantage to the defense.
Furthermore, there have been over 900 instances where a sack directly led to a fumble lost. That is an immediate stop of the drive and results in turning the ball over to the opposing offense. Compare that to getting pressure on the quarterback and causing an interception. Just under 700 instances have occurred where a quarterback hit and an interception occurs on the same play.
There are quarterbacks who get rattled by pressure but the elite signal callers carve up a defense even when facing pressure. Playing defense to get pressure on a quarterback in hopes of causing a turnover only works occasionally, and the quarterbacks you have to beat to win the ultimate prize thrive under pressure.
Forcing an incomplete pass has little effect as well. 63% of scoring drives had at least one incomplete pass. An incompletion changes the down but does nothing to the yards to go. A second and five becoming a third and five is still manageable, especially for a high powered offense with an elite quarterback.
The one statistic that stops every quarterback on a single passing play is a sack. The impact of that single stat typically leads to a drive stalling. A team in the NFL who can build a defense that gets sacks consistently can put themselves at a significant advantage over those teams that struggle to get a good pass rush. Building a team in the NFL starts with finding an elite quarterback but the next best team building step is building an elite pass rush that can get the quarterback in the turf.
