Was George Blanda incredible at avoiding sacks?

[ChaseStuart]

I recently looked at deriving sack data for the years 1960 to 1968 -- I will be posting about it later this week on my site. But when crunching the numbers, wow, Blanda really stands out.

Did he have a reputation for this? Among all players in both leagues with at least 100 pass attempts, he ranked 1st in sack rate in 1960 (2.9%, Bart Starr was 2nd at 3.4%).

In 1961, he had a 1.9% sack rate(!) while Bart Starr was 2nd at 4.3%.

In 1962, he had a 1.8% sack rate (!) while Tittle was 2nd at 3.7%.

In 1963, Blanda had a 4.5% sack rate, which was... still good enough to lead the league.

In 1964, Blanda was back down at 3.3%, good enough to lead the league.

His rate declined a little bit after that, but wow is that a 5-year stretch. Oh, and the '53 Bears had the best sack rate in the NFL, which happened to be the only other year where he took the vast majority of his team's pass attempts.

There's always the possibility of bugs in data this old, so I thought I'd at least ask: did anyone recall Blanda having a reputation for being historically great at avoiding sacks??

[JuggernautJ]

Considering Blanda's Interception rate perhaps he should've taken a few more sacks...

1960 22
1961 22
1962 42
1963 25
1964 27
1965 30
1966 21

[SixtiesFan]

Considering Blanda's Interception rate perhaps he should've taken a few more sacks...

1960 22
1961 22
1962 42
1963 25
1964 27
1965 30
1966 21

I once saw George Blanda quoted saying something like, "I would throw the ball up on third and long and it would be intercepted. It was as good as a punt."

[BD Sullivan]

I found one game where Blanda (and Don Truitt) didn't do a great job avoiding sacks. Against the Pats on 11/29/64, they had "63 yards in losses on attempted pass plays."

Interestingly, I found an 11/7/65 game between the Packers and Lions that was won by the Lions (12-7) where Bart Starr was sacked 11 times for 109 yards in losses. Those numbers are eerily similar to the classic Thanksgiving 1962 game, but since the latter was on national TV and turned out to be the only blemish for the Pack that season, it's still talked about, while the other was long forgotten.

[SixtiesFan]

I found one game where Blanda (and Don Truitt) didn't do a great job avoiding sacks. Against the Pats on 11/29/64, they had "63 yards in losses on attempted pass plays."

Interestingly, I found an 11/7/65 game between the Packers and Lions that was won by the Lions (12-7) where Bart Starr was sacked 11 times for 109 yards in losses. Those numbers are eerily similar to the classic Thanksgiving 1962 game, but since the latter was on national TV and turned out to be the only blemish for the Pack that season, it's still talked about, while the other was long forgotten.

Funny thing, I remember that 1965 Packer loss to the a mediocre Lions team. The Packers had lost to the Bears 31-10 the week before. Believe it or not, the sports sections around the country were saying, "The Packers are over the hill." I recall a radio sports announcer editorializing about Lombardi's Packers being finished as a championship team, specifically the offense wasn't there. Remember, they hadn't won the previous two years either.

[Reaser]

Nothing against Chase, he's just laying out the numbers here ... but what an odd 'stat', and odd way to phrase it.

I wonder if whoever came up with this stat has ever played QB at any level?

A team giving up sacks is a team stat. It can be any number of players 'fault' on the offense, the OL as a unit, receivers not getting open, or just your everyday cheap sack, a trip or a slip in the mud. There's play-call, coaching, plus there's 11 guys on the otherside of the ball that impact the result of the play, as well.

I don't get what this stat is showing because it certainty isn't showing an Individual (capitalization intentional) avoiding sacks ... and again, who came up with this 'stat', have they ever 'avoided' sacks in their life?

Lets be generous to the 'stat' and say that it's the QB's fault on a sack a third of the time (team gets sacked 30 times, QB solely to blame on 10 of them), that would mean 67% of this 'stat' is not only irrelevant but is skewing the result of finding out who is the "best at avoiding sacks" - unless of course sacks that are judged not to be the QB's fault are taken out of the equation? 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 - and certainly don't show who is the best defensively or worst offense or most immobile QB or best OLB, or better team, or the reason for who won the game, etc... sacks are not a "winning stat".

[Rupert Patrick]

Nothing against Chase, he's just laying out the numbers here ... but what an odd 'stat', and odd way to phrase it.

I wonder if whoever came up with this stat has ever played QB at any level?

A team giving up sacks is a team stat. It can be any number of players 'fault' on the offense, the OL as a unit, receivers not getting open, or just your everyday cheap sack, a trip or a slip in the mud. There's play-call, coaching, plus there's 11 guys on the otherside of the ball that impact the result of the play, as well.

I don't get what this stat is showing because it certainty isn't showing an Individual (capitalization intentional) avoiding sacks ... and again, who came up with this 'stat', have they ever 'avoided' sacks in their life?

Lets be generous to the 'stat' and say that it's the QB's fault on a sack a third of the time (team gets sacked 30 times, QB solely to blame on 10 of them), that would mean 67% of this 'stat' is not only irrelevant but is skewing the result of finding out who is the "best at avoiding sacks" - unless of course sacks that are judged not to be the QB's fault are taken out of the equation? 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 - and certainly don't show who is the best defensively or worst offense or most immobile QB or best OLB, or better team, or the reason for who won the game, etc... sacks are not a "winning stat".

Did Blanda have an exceptionally good offensive line? This would show up in postseason superlative selections such as All AFL and All Star teams. 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.

[bachslunch]

Did Blanda have an exceptionally good offensive line? This would show up in postseason superlative selections such as All AFL and All Star teams.

It appears so:

G Bob Talamini: 6/6/allAFL
T Al Jamison: 3/2/none
C Bob Schmidt: 0/3/none
T Rich Michael: 0/2/none

[ChaseStuart]

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

It's actually the opposite; sacks have one of the higher correlations, especially compared to something like interceptions.

Dan Marino led the NFL in sack rate in 10 different seasons, including 7 in a row. That's not a fluke. And, apparently, Blanda did it five years in a row. Sacks are a pretty sticky statistic, based on stuff like that and on research showing that (i) when teams switch quarterback, sack rates fluctuate and (ii) when quarterbacks switch teams, a QB's sack rate is pretty consistent.

Joe Namath, Peyton Manning, and apparently (based on the data I was looking at yesterday), John Hadl were also great at avoiding sacks.

[ChaseStuart]

Did Blanda have an exceptionally good offensive line? This would show up in postseason superlative selections such as All AFL and All Star teams.

It appears so:

G Bob Talamini: 6/6/allAFL
T Al Jamison: 3/2/none
C Bob Schmidt: 0/3/none
T Rich Michael: 0/2/none

How much faith do you put in these teams for OL of that era? There's a part of me that wonders that since Houston's offense was so great, the awards tended to just flow to those linemen. Were sports writers of that day really looking at OL across the AFL?