Was George Blanda incredible 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. 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.

Yeah, these are the questions I have. I haven't really heard anything about Blanda being great about avoiding sacks, which is why I posed the question. But honestly, I'm not sure how much people were looking at these things. I'm sure people could tell you among modern QBs who are good/bad at avoiding sacks, but that's probably because that data is out there now. Were people focusing on that in the '60s? I doubt it, since the sack wasn't nearly as popular a term as it is now. Then again, I do know that there was always talks about Namath's quick release.

Perhaps with Blanda it wasn't about a quick release, but perhaps he just had a great internal clock and threw it early in the play, even if someone wasn't open?

[ChaseStuart]

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.

Yeah, that was a bad sack game for the team, but a severe outlier:

ttp://pfref.com/tiny/Cyja6

Also, as you implied, he and Truitt split the duties. In the games where only Blanda played, Houston's sack rate was great. That's why, even though Houston has a league-leading 3.7% sack rate that year, I have Blanda at a 3.3%.

[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

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?

The Oilers were a top-flight team from 1960-63. Honors for OL (am referring to AFL all star game as "pro bowl" here):

1960: Jamison (all pro)
1961: Jamison (all pro, pro bowl), Schmidt (pro bowl)
1962: Jamison (all pro, pro bowl), Talamini (all pro, pro bowl), Schmidt (pro bowl), Michael (pro bowl)
1963: Talamini (all pro, pro bowl), Schmidt (pro bowl), Michael (pro bowl)

Talamini continued to be an all pro/pro bowler for the next four years, regardless of how good the team was. And the Oilers were lousy in 1964-66, good again in 1967. There doesn't seem to be correlation between team excellence and honors for him.

If there were a clear correlation as you suggest, one might wonder if there would be more uniformity to the awards -- and other players besides Jamison and Talamini would have been all pros. There doesn't seem to be, though. Maybe "flow" happened for the pro bowl in 1962-63, but am unsure if it occurs otherwise.

[Bryan]

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.

Its an interesting topic. The QB I've seen who was the most oblivious to the pass rush was Rob Johnson. He bounced around the league for many years, and was actually a pretty good passer, but he had no feel for the pass rush. I thought that was the biggest difference between himself and Doug Flutie when they had the QB controversy in Buffalo...Flutie could avoid the rush while it seemed like every 3rd or 4th pass attempt by Johnson ended in a sack. I would be interested in knowing if that concept was just in my mind, or if there was an actual significant statistical difference between Flutie's and Johnson's sack rate while playing behind the same O-line.

Other QBs I'd be interested in are Jim Hart (did his sack rate go down tremendously under Coryell?) and Steve Bartkowski (the most immobile QB i've seen when he was on the Rams).

[bachslunch]

The Oilers were a top-flight team from 1960-63. Honors for OL (am referring to AFL all star game as "pro bowl" here):

1960: Jamison (all pro)

Looks like there was actually a split on one of the OT spots this year. Jamison took AP honors while teammate Rich Michael took UPI and AFL honors. Michael would never be a 1st team all-pro again regardless of how well the Oilers did in the standings, though he did make the pro bowl in 1962 and 1963.

Ron Mix was unanimously all pro at the other OT.

[Ken Pullis]

Rob Johnson and Doug Flutie played together with the Bills from 1998-2000
Johnson had 526 dropbacks (447 atts + 79 sacks) so he was sacked 15% of the time he dropped back to pass. Flutie was sacked on just 4.3 % of his 1111 dropbacks (1063 -48)

Jim Hart was sacked 5.5 % before Coryell (1967-72)
and 4.0 during the Coryell years (1973-77)

Bartkowski was sacked on 8% of his dropbacks with the Rams in 1986.

[Reaser]

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

Sacks being meaningful explains why the Packers beat the Seahawks in the NFC Championship last year and why the Colts beat the Patriots in the AFC Championship, because the winners of those games won because they had more sacks in the game ... oh wait, sacks (statically) don't mean jack.

Best defense over the previous three years? Seattle, tell me where the defense has ranked in sacks each of those years (hint: it's not #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 ... )

Starting QB in the Super Bowl the past two years, Wilson, tell me where he's ranked in "sack rate" and how the numbers show that he's poor at avoiding sacks (because of course getting sacked isn't about OL, assignments, receivers, talent around you, scrambling or anything else, it's just about the QB and whether or not he's good at avoiding sacks ...)

The great 2000 Ravens defense, where did they rank in sacks? The 15-1 Packers in 2011, great regular season team, how many sacks did their defense have? How many times did Rogers "not avoid the sack"? What was their sack differential?

Sacks are killing it, so meaningful of a stat. Why even play the other 1000 plays of the season when it's just those 40 plays that determine who's going to win or lose?

I don't care to look up sack rate but applying common sense I'm sure that this stat is telling us that Tarkenton, Staubach, Elway, Russell Wilson and the like are poor at "avoiding sacks" while Marino, Manning, Brees and Brady would be "great at avoiding sacks" ... Hmm, I wonder what it is that's different between the former and the latter? One thing I do know, that Fran Tarkenton was terrible at avoiding sacks, guy was a statue back there and that's the reason the Vikings never made the playoffs and didn't get close to sniffing a Super Bowl. Sack rate, man. His sack rate was probably too bad of a number because playing QB isn't played on the field, it's played on calculators with made up and poorly distributed stats ... and Russell Wilson, the sole reason the Seahawks haven't won the last two NFC Championships, the guy just takes too many sacks. Sacks, sack rates, all meaningful - it isn't like the greatest defensive minds of the era and GM's who have put together great defensive teams haven't said "sacks are overrated" or anything . . .

Putting all sacks on the QB for a 'sack rate' and saying "(player) is good at avoiding sacks" is akin to saying: "Earl Thomas had a defensive passer rating of 80.4 last season, he was great against the pass", as if it's all on one player.

[Bryan]

Putting all sacks on the QB for a 'sack rate' and saying "(player) is good at avoiding sacks" is akin to saying: "Earl Thomas had a defensive passer rating of 80.4 last season, he was great against the pass", as if it's all on one player.

You could probably say the same thing about every stat in football. They are all 'team efforts'.

[oldecapecod11]

by Reaser » Tue Aug 04, 2015 2:26 pm

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

"Sacks being meaningful explains why the Packers beat the Seahawks in the NFC Championship last year and why the Colts beat the Patriots in the AFC Championship, because the winners of those games won because they had more sacks in the game ... oh wait, sacks (statically) don't mean jack..."


Matt, calm down.
The next time one of these guys stands in there, unloads, takes a helmet to the chin, and gets up to see his receiver dancing
in the EZ is the next time avoiding the sack will be meaningful.
In fact, the only time sacks are important is if you choose paper instead of plastic on a rainy day and your car is parked
way in the back of the parking lot.

Those that differ...
Please, pick any five seasons, display by Final Standings where the team also ranked in sacks. You will be disappointed.
Until 1st in sacks means 1st in the standings and 1st in the Super Bowl, take that stat and shove it, we don't need it any more.

Actually, we never did.
The league has changed the rules so many times to favor the offense that they had to throw a few bones to the defensive players.
So, they gave them sacks, even half-sacks and hurries - which could be termed an almost-sack, and the players watch the play-offs
on TV bragging about their stats.

Only one stat matters: W - L

[Reaser]

You could probably say the same thing about every stat in football.

Most, definitely. Greatest team sport in the world, in my opinion.