Was George Blanda incredible at avoiding sacks?

[Reaser]

Only one stat matters: W - L

That's the one. Scoreboard. Either won or lost (or tied).

Saw Mike Tomlin say yesterday about the potential for his explosive offense that he didn't care and that he's only worried about scoring at least one more point than the opponent. He doesn't care about style points or stats. It's almost like he played football before (yup, he did) and that he's a Super Bowl winning head coach (yup, he is.)

[Reaser]

I'm not one for arguing so just to make sure we'll all on the same page here, accounting for the high correlation sacks have, how meaningful they are and how sacks determine who wins or loses games and championships. We're all in agreement then that the 49ers made a colossal mistake playing Montana and Young instead of Bono and even bigger mistake getting rid of Bono when they should have shown Young the door, right?

Bono:
Sack % with SF was 4.5, sack % over his career was 4.3, sack % with KC where he got his chance as the starter was an amazing 3.8! ("when quarterbacks switch teams, a QB's sack rate is pretty consistent." His sack % went down with KC but clearly that's rare.)

Montana:
Sack % with SF was 5.8, sack % over his career was 5.5, sack % with KC was 3.8 ("when quarterbacks switch teams, a QB's sack rate is pretty consistent", we'll just ignore the inconsistency here, too. With his sack % going down when he got to KC.)

Note: in '88 and '89 Montana had a sack % of 7.9! No wonder SF was so bad during those two seasons.

Young:
Sack % with SF was 7.4, sack % for his career (in the NFL) was 7.9, sack % with TB it was 12.0 ("when quarterbacks switch teams, a QB's sack rate is pretty consistent." Since it's so consistent - as shown with the previous two QB's - we'll ignore his sack % going down when he switched from TB to SF. Since of course those two teams are comparable in coaching and talent and sacks just falls on a QB's shoulders, his fault and his fault alone. He just was better at avoiding sacks with SF.)

There you have it: Bono > Montana > Young.

In the most meaningful of statistics. 49ers could have won have the SB in '89 if they had started Bono instead of Montana, who was obviously taking too many sacks. They definitely would have won again in '90 if they went with Bono, and would have dominated through the 90's with Bono especially if he would have been there instead of Young because Young couldn't avoid sacks and that's why the 49ers were so bad in the 90's . . .

Nice meaningful stat. I'm convinced.

[JohnR]

Was he known for having a quick release like Dan Marino (who was good at avoiding sacks) was? I've never read about this in stories about Blanda. One of the problems is that there is little game footage of Blanda over this era other than highlights. You would need to go back and look at video of his interceptions and see if he was throwing many of them to avoid sacks. This is an interesting stat about Blanda, but if the video footage existed, we could probably answer the question definitively.

Blanda stood in the pocket as if the field were made of hot coals.
I can address that 11/29/64 Pats@Oilers game directly since I've recently seen it. Blanda gets good protection in the 1st qtr but overthrows his receivers 3 times resulting in INTs. Trull comes in for the 2nd qtr and proceeds to throw one himself (very light pressure). He's sacked once before the half. George starts the 2nd half and gets into a good rhythm so the Pats start blitzing Buoniconti which results in two sacks, the second a forced fumble. George gets sacked once again by Hunt in the 4th before Trull returns. Trull loses 20 on an ill advised scramble before Buoniconti slams him out of bounds.

[John Maxymuk]

Matt,

All your points are duly noted, and I am in total agreement about the TEAM aspect of the game outweighing all else. However, it is interesting to look at stats like this to get clues about players. It's no surprise that scramblers like Wilson, Tarkenton and Young take a lot of sacks because they try to extend plays with their legs. Likewise, it's clear that quick release guys like Manning and Marino avoid sacks by making quick decisions with the ball. And the Rob Johnson/Doug Flutie comparison is striking...especially considering that Flutie was a scrambler.

Anyway, so going from these numbers we can have a discussion about Rob Johnson as a QB. Was he indecisive, oblivious or what? The Starr numbers are interesting, too, in that any old Packer fan will tell you that Bart would take a sack to avoid throwing a pick...the team also sent its backs out into pass patterns a lot so he didn't always have blocking help in the backfield. So how could he be among the leaders in this obscure stat? Makes me want to look into it to see if I'm missing something.

[Reaser]

All your points are duly noted, and I am in total agreement about the TEAM aspect of the game outweighing all else. However, it is interesting to look at stats like this ...

Everything football related is interesting at some level, ha.

I was pointing out the stock being put in the stat (and statistically, in sacks overall), the phrasing (QB good/bad at avoiding sacks) and asked what this stat is showing because it's not a "(QB) is good at avoiding sacks" stat because sacks aren't solely on the QB.

I read a Packers article last week about how Rodgers was responsible for 11 of the 31 times the Packers were sacked last season when he was at QB. So 20 times the blame wasn't on him. 65% of the time, but it all goes in the stat that's being phrased as a QB's ability to avoid being sacked? That means 65% of Rodgers 2014 sack % (5.1 sack %) is flawed, statistically - at least if the 'stat' is trying to spin into defining how good a QB is at avoiding sacks, which judging by the phrasing used, it is.

The stat isn't showing who's the best at avoiding sacks, it's showing how many times a team gives up a sack in relation to how many pass plays they run, nothing more, nothing less. Valuable stat in relation to winning, impact on the season/game, or an individuals performance, etc ... No.

Mike Tomczak is 8th all-time in sack %, Joey Harrington is 9th all-time, Derek Anderson is 11th ... So what are we even talking about here?

[mwald]

In critical situations, other than a turnover nothing kills like a sack. So, though it may not be particularly relevant, the Blanda sack observation is interesting.

[JohnR]

No
Even then it wouldn't show much of anything, since statistically speaking sacks are fairly meaningless and have little to no correlation to anything of substance -

Somebody send an EMT to Turney's, I believe he's choking on a sandwich.

[3533]

No
Even then it wouldn't show much of anything, since statistically speaking sacks are fairly meaningless and have little to no correlation to anything of substance -

Somebody send an EMT to Turney's, I believe he's choking on a sandwich.

I smiled when reading this one.

[Reaser]

Somebody send an EMT to Turney's, I believe he's choking on a sandwich.

John and I have discussed sacks a couple times in the past. He agreed with me when I was saying/sharing how coaches/people in football think: pressure > sacks. Which he didn't need me to tell him that since he's certainly aware.

(Belichick: "sacks are overrated", Marvin Lewis: "sacks are overrated", Jerry Reese/GM of team that won a SB while leading the league in sacks: "sacks are overrated as a statistic", Julius Peppers of a 125.5 career sacks: "sacks are overrated" ... and so on. I can list many coaches/gm's/scouts/players at all levels of football, because they know that statistically speaking, sacks are overrated.)

Regardless, he and Webster's research is fantastic and it's cool to have the numbers. The meaning of the numbers and more importantly, how people use them (and use stats in general) is a completely separate topic.

[John Maxymuk]

Matt,

Are you saying you don't consider mike tomczak and joey harrington among the ten greatest QBs in history?