Sack In Time

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    As a group, edge rushers right now are better than they've ever been. Despite the continued evolution of NFL offenses, players like Myles Garrett, Maxx Crosby, Brian Burns or Nick Bosa continue to haunt quarterbacks around the league. And each season, more and more players like them are coming into the league. Using a high draft pick on a productive edge rusher has been one of the safest things a pro team could do in recent years, and the offensive linemen responsible for stopping them just can't keep up. Blue chip OL prospects are few and fare between in the modern game, and many NFL coaches have criticized their college-level counterparts for not working on the development of offensive lineman as well-rounded blockers, instead choosing for focus on drilling highly specialized areas of the game that don't always translate to the next level. Edge rushers are some of the best athletes in the game these days and offensive coordinators everywhere are still trying to figure out what to do to stop them.

    With all of that said, this isn't actually a post about defensive pass rushers or the offensive linemen tasked with blocking them. It's about quarterbacks, specifically ones that excel at avoiding sacks. Here is a really interesting list that shows the 5 QBs in the NFL this season who got sacked the least:

(minimum 12 starts)

    1. Josh Allen: sacked 14 times in 16 games*
    2. Jordan Love: sacked 14 times in 15 games
    3. Lamar Jackson: sacked 23 times in 17 games
    4. Bo Nix: sacked 24 times in 17 games
    5. Matthew Stafford: sacked 28 times in 16 games
*No, that one handoff last week doesn't count as a game played

   Despite an average of 2 sacks per game being good enough to land just outside of the top 5, Jordan Love and Josh Allen managed to somehow average less than one sack taken per game. There are obviously a bunch of factors that go into how many times a QB gets sacked in a given season, but here are a few facts to put those numbers in perspective:

    In 2023, the least-sacked QB who made at least 12 starts was Kenny Pickett, who was sacked 23 times in 12 games. In 2022, the leader in this category was Dak Prescott, sacked 20 times in 12 games. To even find players who got sacked less than 20 times in a season while still starting at least 75% of the games in that season, you have to go back to 2020 when Drew Lock and Phillip Rivers each took 19 sacks in 13 games and 16 games, respectively. 

    Ben Roethlisberger managed to only get sacked 13 times in his 15 starts of 2020, and he is the only other recent example of a player who managed to average less than one sack taken per game in the last 15 years. Just a remarkable sat to consider when you think about how much more often teams throw the ball now compared to what they were doing in the early 2000s.

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