Granted we are tied for the league lead with 9 sacks, what makes this interesting is that it takes a deeper look at what's really going on- measuring quantity with added aspects of quality, ie was the sack a gimmee coverage sack, etc. Would have been nice to see Dion Jordan wrap up Luck on that missed tackle, but otherwise the defense is getting it done.
I like how SI does this, and as they said they're tweaking the formula as they go- the analysis more involved than just sack/assist- details show who really are the best outside/inside pass rushers. Kudos to Greg Bedard:
"One of biggest indicators of success for NFL defensive coaches is the ability to affect the quarterback.
Sure, that means sacks, which are an official NFL statistic. And quarterback hits, which are also tallied in press boxes. But affecting the quarterback, making him feel pressure, has several other factors, most of which aren’t officially tallied (though NFL teams do them internally).
We at The MMQB thought long and hard about finding a better way to evaluate quarterback pressure, both from individual and team standpoints. We’ve developed our own formula, which we think will highlight players who aren’t getting the glory stats (sacks) but are still affecting the quarterback just as much."
http://mmqb.si.com/2013/09/13/greg-bedard-weekend-notes-week2/
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It's nice to see that Atlanta is a bottom 10 pass pressure team on this list. I have to assume Bierman's injury depletes their pass rush even more.
cuchulainn, Bpk, Rhody Phins Fan and 1 other person like this. -
By the way it should be noted that the tally went only through Week 1. It was based entirely on our work against Brandon Weeden.
And personally, you're going to be very hard-pressed to find me a better sack stat than simply adding up PFF's sacks, hits and pressures and dividing by the number of pass rush reps.
In looking at this formula they've developed, I think they're trying to make it all-inclusive and overly-complex. What I want is a statistic that gives me an indication of what could happen in the future. By making that statistic so encompassing and complex, their sacrificing prediction value for backward accuity. -
That really isn't the issue, the point is that this might be an interesting stat to look at on si.com as the season goes on and the sample size grows. I'm not a stat guy, but I'd rather see this as opposed to just sack totals. As mentioned above maybe the PFF sacks stats are as good or better- I don't know, haven't seen them.Bpk likes this.