03-03-2021, 01:14 AM
(03-03-2021, 12:47 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Um, it means a ton if you care about your defense stopping offenses and giving your offense the ball. Can't find the reddit thing I was reading about it, but they looked at a whole season's worth of sacks (something like over 1,100).
Well over 80% of drives with a sack don't get a first down after the sack.
If the sack is for a bigger loss than 5 yards, that number goes up to almost 90%
Sacks are absolute drive killers, yet Lawson only has 11.5 sacks in the 3 years since his rookie year, and just 2 in the 12 games since he became the starter. There's a reason why people pay for that "fan friendly stat" and it's not because ti doesn't actually mean much.
Win rate is just the NFL version of FIP. Trying to assign what-could-have-beens and what-should-have-beens to players instead of accepting the reality of what did. Should-have-beens and could-have-beens don't win games. You "win" your pass rush but the QB still throws a TD down the field because you didn't take him down, you didn't actually "win" your pass rush.
Not sure about your Reddit thing, but no one who follows analytics believes sacks are nearly as valuable as fans think. All your anecdotal numbers are nice, now show me the same numbers but replace sacks with TFL. Relying on sacks again fails to account for value generated by pressure, a throw away because of pressure is a win. An errant throw because of pressure resulting in an interception is actually a more valuable play than a sack except on 4th down or a sack fumble. As I already mentioned, the biggest issue is it doesn’t mean you actually did anything only that you were the same place the QB was at the end of a play.
This is pretty much universally accepted in the new age of football statistics. Sacks aren't an important individual statistic but one that is easily quantifiable to fans so it remains front and center. That doesn’t even begin to go into double team rate as it relates to pass rush wins. Valuing defensive linemen is tough, but falling back to sacks is lazy.
