Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

It looks like David Logan, Andy Hawkins and Hugh Green split a sack 3 ways. (unless there's a typo on PFR's site)
Is this even possible?

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/t ... m/1982.htm

1982 was the first year individual sacks were individually tallied, so they were working through issues. If you go to a Cleveland Browns play-by-play, for example, from the 1970 they often listed 3 tacklers. So what did you do when that was a sack, well, in this case they issued 1/3 of a sack to the three players involved.

Straight from the PBP:
"TB36 2-5 Woodley on a play action rolls right under heavy pressure, still under heavy pressure sacked by -9 (Logan, Green, Hawkins)

This is another in the list of things that makes the historical sack stats difficult to chronicle. Prior to 1982, it wasn't infrequent to list three tacklers on a PBP on a sack, after the first season, 1982, the scorers started listing only two, nowadays a sack with 3+ players all getting there at the same time is listed as a team sack.

Very interesting. Thanks. I wonder if there were any other odd 3-way sacks from that season.

No, that was the only time that was listed that way. After that, if there were more than two tacklers, it was listed as a team sack. But there were times in the play by play that three sackers were listed, but they were not credited as 1/3 each . . .as I said, it was a team sack.

NWebster wrote:
This is another in the list of things that makes the historical sack stats difficult to chronicle. Prior to 1982, it wasn't infrequent to list three tacklers on a PBP on a sack, after the first season, 1982, the scorers started listing only two, nowadays a sack with 3+ players all getting there at the same time is listed as a team sack.

As far as I know that is not the rule. If more than two players are in on a sack, I think they just credit the two players who in the judgement of the statisticians/Elias/NFL are most responsible for the sack. Team sacks usually are credited on plays such as unforced fumbles by the passer.

2012 Guide for Statistician says this:
When one defensive player is primarily responsible for a sack, as defined by the foregoing principles, he
shall receive credit for a sack. When two or more defensive players are adjudged by the official scorer to
be equally responsible for a sack, credit for the sack shall be divided equally between or among the
responsible defensive players.


Again, no mention anywhere of this 3+ player rule.

TodMaher wrote:

NWebster wrote:
This is another in the list of things that makes the historical sack stats difficult to chronicle. Prior to 1982, it wasn't infrequent to list three tacklers on a PBP on a sack, after the first season, 1982, the scorers started listing only two, nowadays a sack with 3+ players all getting there at the same time is listed as a team sack.

As far as I know that is not the rule. If more than two players are in on a sack, I think they just credit the two players who in the judgement of the statisticians/Elias/NFL are most responsible for the sack. Team sacks usually are credited on plays such as unforced fumbles by the passer.

2012 Guide for Statistician says this:
When one defensive player is primarily responsible for a sack, as defined by the foregoing principles, he
shall receive credit for a sack. When two or more defensive players are adjudged by the official scorer to
be equally responsible for a sack, credit for the sack shall be divided equally between or among the
responsible defensive players.


Again, no mention anywhere of this 3+ player rule.

Hmmm .... it says "two ore MORE" and "divided equally between or AMONG," which means to me that if the scorer feels that three players were equally responsible, each of them should 1/3 of the sack. Or, for that matter, If four are adjudged to be equally responsible, each of them should get 1/4.

rhickok1109 wrote:

TodMaher wrote:

NWebster wrote:
This is another in the list of things that makes the historical sack stats difficult to chronicle. Prior to 1982, it wasn't infrequent to list three tacklers on a PBP on a sack, after the first season, 1982, the scorers started listing only two, nowadays a sack with 3+ players all getting there at the same time is listed as a team sack.

As far as I know that is not the rule. If more than two players are in on a sack, I think they just credit the two players who in the judgement of the statisticians/Elias/NFL are most responsible for the sack. Team sacks usually are credited on plays such as unforced fumbles by the passer.

2012 Guide for Statistician says this:
When one defensive player is primarily responsible for a sack, as defined by the foregoing principles, he
shall receive credit for a sack. When two or more defensive players are adjudged by the official scorer to
be equally responsible for a sack, credit for the sack shall be divided equally between or among the
responsible defensive players.


Again, no mention anywhere of this 3+ player rule.

Hmmm .... it says "two ore MORE" and "divided equally between or AMONG," which means to me that if the scorer feels that three players were equally responsible, each of them should 1/3 of the sack. Or, for that matter, If four are adjudged to be equally responsible, each of them should get 1/4.

Which hasn't happened in over 30 years. Statisticians guide aside, the practice is to call those team sacks, you'll note John and I independently arrived at the same place.

Which hasn't happened in over 30 years. Statisticians guide aside, the practice is to call those team sacks, you'll note John and I independently arrived at the same place.

Yes, but as far as I am aware that is not the "practice." Ir that were the case tehn there would at least a dozen or so "team tackles" in each game. But that is not the case. The "practice" to limit the number of tacklers on any play to a maximum of two.

TodMaher wrote:
As far as I know that is not the rule. If more than two players are in on a sack, I think they just credit the two players who in the judgement of the statisticians/Elias/NFL are most responsible for the sack. Team sacks usually are credited on plays such as unforced fumbles by the passer.

If you change usually to only this is entirely correct.

Don't know how that one TB play got split into thirds. We wouldn't allow that anymore.

chris wrote:

TodMaher wrote:
As far as I know that is not the rule. If more than two players are in on a sack, I think they just credit the two players who in the judgement of the statisticians/Elias/NFL are most responsible for the sack. Team sacks usually are credited on plays such as unforced fumbles by the passer.

If you change usually to only this is entirely correct.

Don't know how that one TB play got split into thirds. We wouldn't allow that anymore.

I'd tend to assume - don't know, just a guess - that the clarification came after 1982, otherwise id expect they would have gone back and fixed it as there are numerous corrections that happen to the original gamebooks each year. You can often see "Revised" stamped in red at the top of the first page when that was the case. Toda, any idea when that clarification was added?