By John Turney
The details are as follows: Brady had been sacked 555 times and which surpassed Ben Roethlisberger who had been sacked 554 times.
What if someone in NFL history had been sacked more than Roethlisberger?
Someone was.
Frank Tarkenton was sacked 570 times in his eighteen-year career. Eighty-seven of them were prior to 1963 when the statistic became official but we are sure those two seasons are part of "all-time" as it pertains to the NFL.
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| Minnesota Viking Quarterback Fran Tarkington by Thomas A. Needham (18 x 12 inches) acrylic on illustration board. Source: |
As a team statistic, sacks were created by Seymour Siwoff of Elias Sports Bureau in 1963. Prior to that only the yardage lost by a team attempting to pass was tracked, not the number of times so Siwoff corrected that incongruity.
Six years later, in 1969, Elias and the NFL began publishing the number of times individual quarterbacks were sacked. Finding those numbers is relatively easy since they were found in the "NFL Record and Fact Books" and are now reproduced on the Pro Football Reference website.
However, by going through the play-by-plays (gamebooks) one could easily find who was sacked prior to 1969 (and 1963, even). That data was continuously recorded and though it may not be official it comes from the same source as all other NFL statistics.
Using Pro Football Reference as a source the findings are as follows:
As a young Bears fan, I saw Francis twice a year at noon in both stints with the Vikings, or at 3:00 o'clock whenever his team played on the West Coast. He was a hell of a good QB, yet seemingly forgotten today.
ReplyDeleteI would've not guessed he had the sack record, as elusive as he was.