Stats You Need to Know—QB Hits

By Nick Webster

The NFL, through NFLGSIS, tracks QB hits and has since 1999. However, for some reason, they have always included some (but not all) sacks in that total. If a sack results in a quarterback fumbling then it is not a QB hit. Also, the way it is presented it gives a sack a "double count".

I've been posting a QB hit stat for a few years that is Hits on the QB sans any sack at all. Many NFL coaches (John Levra being one) had several levels of "pressure".

First was a sack, then a QB knockdown, then a QB hit, then a hurry—essemtially four levels of pressure. The NFL Gamebooks don't distinguish between hits and knockdowns but from observation, the "hits" are more often than not a knockdown.

So, in that spirit, we have the QB hits leaders (and knockdowns are included, but not sacks or hurries).

Leonard Williams led the league with 21 and is a classic case of someone not getting a lot of sacks (two) but putting good pressure on the quarterback consistently. DeForest Buckner is similar—though he had just three sacks he was one of the better 3-techniques in the NFL this season.

Aaron Donald did have 11 sacks and led all interior linemen and Chandler Jones led the NFL but they also each had 18 additional hits on the QB. Chris Long wasn't a starter, he played in nickel and as part of a rotation but led all non-starters in hits on the quarterback.

Long is the perfect example to explain the oddity with the NFL stats. Long hit 15 quarterbacks without sacking him, but also had 5 sacks so that totals 20. But the NFL credits him with 18 QB hits. That is because he forced fumbles on some of his sacks. Four to be precise. But for some reason two of them counted as a QB hit and two did not. I think the way we track QB hits is cleaner.

NextGenStats Adds Hurries To Its List of Stats

By John Turney

Hurries in some form have been in the NFL lexicon since at least the late 1960s. In 1967 the Rams coaches credited Deacon Jones with 100 hurries, which presumably included the 26 sacks they credited him with. Recent research by Pro Football Journal (PFJ) reveals that Jones had 5 fewer sacks than that in 1967 but that is another story for another day.

In 1971 when Alan Page won the Associated Press (AP) NFL MVP Award the accompanying article mentioned he had 42 "hurries" that season and that it was a "new stat".

All through the next forty or so years coaches stats have recorded some form of hurries or "pressures". The Cowboys, Jets, Lions, Bears, and just about every team kept track of these stats. Some were kept internally, others were published in media releases or media guides.

In the 2000s a few organizations began to tote hurries and/or pressures. Among them are Football Outsiders, Stats, LLC, Pro Football Focus, NFLGSIS and now NFL's "Next Gen Stats." Pro Football Focus (PFF) states, "Sacks are, at least up until Pro Football Focus came onto the scene, how we judged pass-rushers." Well, that's probably dubious since if one is diligent they could find hurries/pressures stats from many team media guides of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. PFF does a fine job but they were not first in using esoteric stats (such as hits, hurries, or pressures) apart from sacks to look at the effectiveness of pass rushers. Coaches got there long ago and NFL beat writers often published those or used them when they chose All-Pro teams.

Additionally, sacks were only part of how pass rushers were judged pre-PFF because back in the day pass rushers were also judged on how they played the run. Not in all cases, but often, the All-Pro defensive ends, tackles and outside linebackers were the ones who could stop the run as well as the pass. This was especially true in the personal All-Pro teams of writers such as Paul Zimmerman (more on him later in the post), Gordon Forbes, Larry Felser, and others. 

Next Gen Stats is the NFL's own creation and describes itself as "NFL's Next Gen Stats captures real-time location data, speed, and acceleration for every player, every play on every inch of the field."

The following chart shows the career stats of 2017 AP NFL Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald—

(click to enlarge)

Elias Sports Bureau and Stats, LLC. are the usual sources for tackles and assists used by Fox Sports, ESPN, and Pro Football Reference.com. However, the Rams coaches also tally tackles and sacks as does PFF. We have shown them in the above chart.

Outlined in red are the various forms of hits, hurries, and pressures by the known sources.

In 2014 Rams coaches credited Donald with 12 hits and 32 pressures. NFLGSIS credited him with 13 QB hits (and that includes sacks sans forced fumbles so it is really a different animal). PFF shows him with six QB hits, 28 pressures and adds his nine sacks for 43 total "pressures." Football Outsiders (FO) shows five hits and 21 hurries for a total of 26 "hits plus hurries" add the 9 sacks and it is a final total of 35.  

In 2017 we don't have FOs totals year, they are released in the late spring or summer. NFLGSIS shows 27 quarterback hits which again, includes sacks minus the sacks that resulted in a forced fumble so the "net total" is 18 according to Nick Webster of (PFJ). PFF has a line of 12 sacks, 13 hits, 66 hurries for a total of 91 pressures. Rams coaches had 27 hits but did not record pressures in 2017 after the previous staff did record them from 2014-17. Stats, LLC., had a 36.5 total for hurries.

Actually, when you take the time to do an apples-to-apples comparison the numbers are not that far off, it's simply a difference of opinions on likely a small number of plays. For example in 2015 the Rams coaches gave Donald 29 hits. NFLGSIS, minus the sacks would be 26 hits. PFF had 25 and Football Outsiders had 27. So, there is a margin of four on "hits". And since hits are fairly easy to define from looking at the All-22 coaches film, you can see that they generally agree within a fair margin of error. And that is reasonably consistenthroughoutut the years for which we have data.

Also in 2017 is the aforementioned newcomer, Nex Gen Stats. They totaled 65 pressures for Donald. In a nice change, Nex Gen Stats gave an explanation and expresses that their pressures are based on actual measurements based on sensors in the player uniforms.

Here is the explanation.

Years ago we had a "hurries" discussion with Paul "Dr. Z" Zimmerman. He would say "nothing happened" on a play when a rusher hurries the quarterback and still completed the pass. He felt that a hurry should only count if it negatively impacted the play.

And he has a point. On "The Catch"—the famous play when Joe Montana hit Dwight Clark there were three Cowboys defenders in Montana's face. It can be argued through film study which player was closest (within two yards) or who came late, but the question is valid—Should D.D. Lewis, Ed Jones and Larry Bethea be credited with a "hurry" or "pressure"? Many would say yes, Zim said, "no".

Defensive line coaches are sure that if the player did his job, like the trio of Cowboys they get credit. We've spoken to many of them. Jack Youngblood will tell you "(I)t's still pressure" referring to if the pass is completed. 

In Dr. Z's incredible article in the September 1, 1982, issue of  Sports Illustrated he gleaned this great quote from Al "Bubba" Baker concerning this subject. "We figure 500 hurries equals one sack" in a big sense downgrading the value of a sack to defensive linemen. In that same article Zim quoted the Jets defensive line coach as having a statistic called a "spook" which is when one defensive lineman hurries a quarterback into another's arms and the second guy gets the credit for the sack, which happens a lot.

When I first interview Deacon Jones in Calgary in the early 1990s he told us, "I'd rather have 40 hurries and no sacks (in a game) than 3 sacks and no hurries. Because if I am in your ass 40 times, you are going to lose the game." So sufficeth it to say he thought hurries were more important than Bubba Baker did.

Side Bar—not sure why defensive linemen are into the "ass" of the quarterback. Zimmerman had a few ideas on that as well. Here is another example, aside from the Jones quote above, it is a fairly recent Facebook post from Leonard Marshall about him and Lawrence Taylor about to presumably sack some quarterbacks. The verbiage can speak for itself.

Now back to the main topic—

Over the years we've tallied some hurries as well and have used the John Levra approach. Levra was a defensive line coach for the Bears, Vikings, and Bills, coaching up Dan Hampton, Richard Dent, John Randle, Bruce Smith and others. In his book  "Coaching Defensive Lineman" outlined his methodology which is this:

Sacks is the highest level of the rush. Quarterback knockdowns are when a quarterback is on the ground after a pass play as the result of a hit that does not result in a penalty. A quarterback hit is hitting the quarterback legally but is not knocked to the ground. A hurry is when the quarterback is affected when he is throwing. Levra gave point values for those as well as for tackles, forced fumbles, holding penalties drawn and also for a "nasty". 

What is a nasty? Well, in today's quarterback protecting game it is not too politically correct but it is knocking an opposing player out of the game (predominately the quarterback) presumably legally though it was not specifically mentioned.

Here are the totals for Jack Youngblood in 1983 and 1984 using that methodology.

Like the Next Gen Stats the sacks and knockdowns and hits are definitive, there is no question as to the result of the play. If the QB is hit, he is hit. If he's sacked he's sacked. If he's knocked down he's knocked down. The only grey area is the hurries, which is subjective, as are the hurries of FO, PFF, Stats, LLC, etc.

But always remember, even though pressure is very important and the pass rushers we've quoted prove that there is more to a sack. A guy who gets a lot of hurries but cannot get a reasonable number of sacks has "(W)arning track power" according to Youngblood. So, "get all the hurries you can" but you are "paid to put the quarterback on his back."

So, how many hurries or pressures did Aaron Donald have in 2017 or in his career? Depends on who you ask.

A Few Esoteric Stats on J.J. Watt, Aaron Donald and Khalil Mack

LOOKING AHEAD
By John Turney

With apologies to Josh Norman, who is also a strong candidate for Defensive Player of the Year by the Associated Press and Pro Football Writers of America, this post focuses on the three rushers that have garnered the most support (thanks Google search engines) for that award.

In the next few days Pro Football Journal's (PFJ) Nick Webster will do a fuller handicapping of the DPOY race, including the linebackers and defensive backs. However, in the meantime, going into the season's final Sunday there are a few stats that are pertinent.

Graphic: Pro Football Journal

The above chart shows the common defensive statistics, but does use PFJ's run/pass stuffs and PFJ's QB hits, which excludes sacks, since that results in a double counting. As folks can see it is a tight race among these three just based on stats alone.

Added to this is Pro Football Focus's (PFF) work on J.J. Watt and how often he is double teamed. In an earlier post, we repeated that statistic used by NBC on Sunday Night Football that was provided by PFF, which reported that on passing plays Watt had been, to that point, doubled-teamed 46% of the time and was double-teamed 24% of the time on running downs. We have not seen any update to that number, but assume it has been about the same in the time since that game. Donald, according to PFJ research, through game 15, has been double-teamed 41.9% on passing plays and 38.3% on running plays. Neither PFJ or PFF has published a number for Mack. Watt's 46% is significant based on earlier PFJ research. Donald's 42% is also very high.

Finally, we get to the obscure:

Graphic: Pro Football Journal

The above chart shows the number of penalties drawn and the number of penalties called on the three players. Watt has drawn 15, seven were holding calls on opposing players, three were false starts across from Watt, the five others were: two illegal hands to the face, one chop block and two forced intentional groundings. The final column "PenC" is the number of times the player gave back a penalty. This season, Watt has been called for four roughing the passer penalties, 4 offsides/neutral zone infractions. So, his net penalty total is seven, as is Mack's. Donald was held (and called) seven times plus was clipped once and has had four penalties called on him.

Again, not a lot of separation. But this is a season where little things may matter in the minds of the AP voters and the PFWA voters.

Stay tuned for Nick Webster's take on this award.

Follow PFJ on Twitter

Lavonte David being Lavonte David

 By John Turney

In the early 1990s a company then-called Stats, Inc., now called STATS, began publishing run stuffs in their publications. It was simply this—tackles for loss in the run game tallied the same way sacks were tallied. 

They, like us, felt that a stuff or tackle for a loss was a significant play, even if it was for only a 1-yard or 2-yard loss. If it was on a 1st and 10, it puts an offensive team 'behind the sticks' and 2nd and 11. Or if it's 2nd and 5 and it's a screen, and a 2-yard loss, it's 3rd and 7. And if it's 3rd and 1, then it's 4tn and 2. 

However, as our second example (if it's a screen) STATS had one flaw in their metric—they tracked just running plays.

Nick Webster, one of our writers, picked up on that quickly, noted that with screen passes, tunnel screens, etc. that there were more and more passing plays that resulted in a loss, so he began tracking pass stuffs in his personal research. 

In 1999 NFLGSIS, essentially the NFL official stats website began keeping track of tackles for loss (TFL) and they did include tackles for loss in both run and pass plays. But they also included sacks, which skews the TFLs towards the defensive linemen. 

Also, they don't count TFLs if there was a forced fumble. Let's say Lavonte David blasts through the LOS and hits Alvin Kamara behind the line of scrimmage who fumbles. Then, say, Drew Brees falls on the fumble, and then say Ndamukong Suh falls on Brees. 

In that case, Davis gets the forced fumble and Suh gets the tackle for loss. We get that the computer has to balance and the only way to do that is for Suh to get credit for "ending the play". But come on, what are we measuring here? David made the play and as a bonus, he forced a fumble. That's a twofer. 

A player who forces a QB to fumble gets credit for the sack and the FF, not not the tackle or the tackle for loss. It's nuts. But through looking at the play through NFL replay or a careful reading of the gamebook we can find the plays and score them meaningfully.

The Webster/PFJ  protocol keeps it simple and measures what is important the way a coach might. And Webster is currently working on pre-1982 totals which are harder to find due to poorly written gamebooks but he's nailed down the post-1982 total stuffs which matches with the "official" sack era.

After ten games this season David has 6.5 stuffs, taking his career total to 105 stuffs to go with his 23 sacks. It's amazing that he's only received post-season honors three times in his career. 

Chart credit: PFJ, Stats from PFR and Stats, LLC.

Here is the leaderboard updated through this weekend. David passed Urlacher, even though he's played just about 8½ seasons.

And when shown in a per-season chart, David is the clear leader. And this will rise because he has six more games to play. 

David was overlooked on the major All-Decade teams recently release, though he was First-team on ours and also on NFL.com's, and GridFe.com's teams. He plays a WILL position that is an off-the-ball spot that produces few sacks and the TFL or stuff stat rarely appears on television screens so many writers and fans are not familiar with it. That may explain some of the 'underratedness' of David.

Also, other factors play into it as well. Nonetheless, we've recognized David as a First-time All-Pro four times and a Second-team All-Pro three times in his nine-year career based on his run-stuffing skills and his ability to cover in both man and zone. Clearly the AP, PFWA, and SN voters don't agree. 

That's fine, we'll take the heat. We think the film and the numbers back us up.

More Stats You Need to Know - QB Hits, 2015

SEASON IN REVIEW
By Nick Webster

Vernon. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

First reported a few weeks ago. Pro Football Journal has been tracking QB hits sans sacks all season. How important is hitting the Quarterback? We might never know the cumulative effect, though watching Aaron Rogers this year, or David Carr in years past, one has to appreciate that there is a material cumulative effect of all that pressure.

We can, however, measure a more direct effect – look at this year’s final NFL passing statistics when the passer was hit versus when they weren’t:

A full 28-point drop in passer rating when hit, note however, this is not controlled for the passer, future research will investigate the relative rate at which various passers take hits in order to 100% fully control for the effect of the play. 

But for now – a focus on the defenders. Once again, J.J. Watt was the NFL’s leader in QB Hits.  A surprise in 2^nd place with Olivier Vernon of the Miami Dolphins coming on late in the season, excelling after Cameron Wake’s season ended with injury.  The remainder of the list reads like a list of the top pass rushers, with the notable exception of the league’s second-leading sacker Khalil Mack who finished with just 10, far behind Watt and Donald who he battled for Defensive Player of the Year.

Rk	Player	Hit
1	J.WATT	32
2	O.VERNON	30
3	A.DONALD	27
4	V.MILLER	23
5	E.ANSAH	21
6	M.BENNETT	21
7	C.DUNLAP	20
8	E.GRIFFEN	20
9	C.AVRIL	17
10	M.WILKERSON	17
11	E.DUMERVIL	16
12	A.LYNCH	16
13	L.WILLIAMS	16
14	C.CAMPBELL	15
15	T.JOHNSON	15
16	A.CLAYBORN	14
17	G.HARDY	14
18	P.MCPHEE	14
19	J.ALLEN	13
20	Many at	13

Other categories of interest:

Category	Player	Team	Hit
NFL Leader	J.J. Watt	Hou	32
NFC Leader	Aaron Donald	StL	27
AFC Leader	J.J. Watt	Hou	32
LB Leader	Von Miller	Den	23
DB Leader	Corey Graham	Buf	7
Rookie Leader	Leonard Williams	NYJ	16

Numbers You Should Know

Mid-Season Review

By Nick Webster

It’s mid-season (kind of, bye-weeks make it impossible to have a true mid-season) and its time to check in with some interesting numbers that people don’t always focus on.

We like to rate defenders on their ability to make big plays, so in addition to talking about sacks, we measure stuffs, a tackle of either a runner or a receiver on a completed pass behind the line-of-scrimmage. Stuffs, like sacks—but not like the NFL’s tackles for loss—are credited as .5 when two players share in that tackle. Stuffs also differ from tackles for loss in that contact with a ballcarrier who fumbles but is not taken to the ground are considered stuffs. 

Recall that in the NFL odd way of reasoning, forcing a fumble downfield is a tackle, forcing a fumble while sacking the QB is a sack, but forcing a fumble on that sack is not a tackle for loss. Don’t ask us—we like the stuff—its measured just the same way sacks are and therefore is comparable.

There’s lots of new blood on the leaderboard here at mid-season, a transition that really started a year ago after years of Lavonte David and JJ Watt passing the mantle back and forth. Of course, Watt has been injured and off the board sadly for a second straight season, but David—while still productive – has just seen his play fall off, in part due to smaller nicks and injuries.

Rk	Name	TOTAL Stuffs
1	Derrick Kindred	10.0
2	Zach Brown	7.5
3	C.J. Mosley	7.0
	Cory James	7.0
5	Christian Kirksey	6.5
	Timmy Jernigan	6.5
	Jahleel Addae	6.5
	Telvin Smith	6.5
9	Chandler Jones	6.0
	Anthony Barr	6.0
11	Jadeveon Clowney	5.5
	Michael Bennett	5.5
	Grady Jarrett	5.5
	Darron Lee	5.5
15	Blake Martinez	5.0
	Allen Bailey	5.0
	Jerry Hughes	5.0
	Matt Judon	5.0
	Nick Vigil	5.0
	Sean Lee	5.0

The season leader, by a margin, is a name you’ve probably not heard much about—in part due to being mired in Cleveland, but in part due to his being a young player without huge pedigree (4^th Rounder from TCU) who appears to be just coming into his own. Derrick Kindred through eight games is on a pace to put up more stuffs in a season than anyone other than JJ Watt in his monstrous 2012 campaign. There are plenty of other names of note on the list as CJ Mosley continues to be a quietly excellent force on the Ravens D, Telvin Smith continues to impress in Jacksonville and Jadeveon Clowney is putting to rest all talk of being a 1^st overall pick bust.

Rk	Name	Pass Stuffs
1	Anthony Barr	4.0
	Adrian Amos	4.0
3	Harrison Smith	3.0
	Eric Kendricks	3.0
5	Jamar Taylor	2.5
	Nick Vigil	2.5
	Cory James	2.5
8	D. Rodgers-Cromartie	2.0
	Orlando Scandrick	2.0
	Christian Kirksey	2.0

Reviewing stuffs on just passing plays, both Anthony Barr and Adrian Amos are actually on pace to exceed the most pass stuffs in a single season—7 by Ray Lewis and DeAndre Levy in their primes.  This is a function of their excellent play, it being early in the season, but also a more general trend to short screens and passes behind the line of scrimmage.

We also enjoy understanding which players have the most QB hits. Again, the NFL has a funny way of counting these, let’s explain; a sack in which the QB is taken to the ground with the ball is a QB hit, a sack where a fumble is forced and the QB is not taken down to the ground is not a QB hit, a play where a QB releases the ball on a passing attempt and is subsequently taken to the ground is also a QB hit. We count QB hits as plays where no Sack was credited and the QB was taken to the ground. So you can see, using our numbers, excluding a player's sacks, how often he took down the QB.

Rk	Player	Tm	QBH
1	D.Buckner	SF	12
2	G.McCoy	TB	11
	D.Wise	NE	11
	L.Williams	NYJ	11
5	A.Donald	LA	10
	T.Flowers	NE	10
7	J.Simon	Ind	8
	J.Casey	Ten	8
9	M.Bennett	Sea	7
	C.Wake	Mia	7
	C.Jones	Ari	7
	K.Mack	Oak	7
	C.Long	Phi	7
	R.Ayers Jr.	TB	7
	B.Orakpo	Ten	7
	Y.Ngakoue	Jax	7
	E.Griffen	Min	7
	C.Dunlap	Cin	7
19	J.Hughes	Buf	6
	P.Smith	Was	6

 This is a very interesting list in the fact that many of the top players are not high on the sack list, these pass rushers save a few, are getting close but not getting home. DeForest Buckner might be another under the radar budding star, 7^th Overall pick a year ago, he’s toiling in obscurity on a very poor 49er team. Gerald McCoy is already a star in the league, but viewed through the sack tables might be presumed to be having a down year . . . not the case, he’s been far more disruptive as a pass rusher than his 2 sacks would suggest. Leonard Williams also might be presumed to be down – no sacks so far this season – but is proving disruptive, punishing enemy QB’s frequently.  And finally Aaron Donald is just great in every aspect of the game, with Watt out for a second season he has to be considered the best D Lineman in the game, bar none.

Finally – there has been an absolute scarcity of blocked kicks this season in the NFL. Last year, all told including punts, field goals and extra points 39 kicks were blocked. Bennie Logan, Ra’Shed Hegman, Jason Jones and Shea McClellin each blocked two kicks last years and the 6-8 Margus Hunt blocked three. Until this past weekend, however, just 10 kicks had been blocked so far this season.  But thanks to a Fall storm bringing downpours to the East coast there were 6 blocks this last weekend, though no single player has more than one so far.

Let us know what you think; passing TD’s are fun, as are receptions and interceptions, but we enjoy the subtle and infrequent as well—hope you do too.