Ringer Article: Value of Avoiding a Sack

[SunnySide]

This is related to, but not completely the same as, the league’s move toward mobile quarterbacks in the past decade. After spending the 2000s chasing cerebral, statuesque quarterbacks in the Peyton Manning–Tom Brady mold, the NFL started to find competitive edges with dual-threat quarterbacks such as Cam Newton and Robert Griffin III, and expanded on those edges with Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, and others. In 2022, it’s known that the league’s elite quarterbacks—Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen—can beat you with their arms, no problem. But if you somehow manage to quiet them in the air, they’ll just beat you with their legs instead.

It was with this shift in mind that the Philadelphia Eagles selected Jalen Hurts in the second round of the 2020 NFL draft. A run-first quarterback at Alabama who grew as a passer at Oklahoma, Hurts was considered by NFL.com draft analyst Lance Zierlein to be a developmental player for his “ability to grind out yards on the ground” despite his tendency to “break the pocket when throws are there to be made.” A decade ago, the league wouldn’t have considered the juice worth the squeeze. But the Eagles took him on, and two years later, he’s in the thick of the MVP race as the leader of the league’s last undefeated team.

While Hurts has improved, he is not any different from what he was described as two years ago. Hurts still grinds out tough yards on the ground and still leaves the pocket when there are throws to be made. Through seven weeks, Hurts is third in the league in the percentage of his dropbacks that become scrambles, at 11.2 percent, per TruMedia.

This is where quarterback scrambling raises the floor of an offense. A quarterback who can scramble when pressured is not just creating a positive play, but also erasing a hugely negative play: a sack. Just one sack on a drive makes it three times less likely that that drive will end in a touchdown than when compared with a sack-less drive—and accordingly, the ability to avoid sacks is perhaps the most valuable skill a quarterback can have.

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2022/1...yan-scrambling

Ive heard a lot about this article on sports radio leading up to our Colts game.

Interesting .. is the NFL changing how it views QB play? I find myself in old school thinking .. I want a pocket QB who can read a D pre snap, get the ball out quick if its a blitz, make those next level throws.

But now, flawed passers like Hurts and Fields and Heinike etc are getting playing time. OCs are crafting playcalls to what they do well, tucking and scrambling is baked into the pie.

As an old school opinion holder of what a QB should be ... I think I need to be more open minded.

If heinike misses a 10 yard pass he should have seen and made ... maybe I need to give him credit for plays where he gets a 3 yard gain on what would have been a negative 8 yard sack.

Avoiding a sack/negative play of -5 yards > a 15 pass.