For NFL quarterbacks, decision by indecision is a dangerous choice
It’s hard to throw a touchdown pass when you’re buried under a 300-pound lineman. Forget passing yardage and all the shinier stats of quarterbacking. The most telling measure of a quarterback’s performance is sack rate, and it might be the most damning. Washington’s Sam Howell — or any other young quarterback, for that matter — needs to get with that math if he wants to be NFL-capable, much less the franchise’s answer.
As analytics go, it’s as good a predictor as any of a player’s potential. And it’s not a particularly forgiving one because it tends to put the lie to that idea, “If only he had more help on the offensive line.” A passer with great pre- and post-snap judgment can bail out the most collapsing unit. Proof? Eli Manning won the Super Bowl after the 2011 season behind a unit that Pro Football Focus ranked 31st in the league. Any discussion of Howell’s record-pace sack total, with 40 in just seven games, of course must start with the merciful acknowledgment that no statistic is wholly on one person but is entangled among 11 teammates. Still, sack rate ultimately reflects the personal actions of the quarterback: his reads, recognition, clarity, decisiveness.
The most interesting thing about the sack rate stat — and the reason it’s such a useful, if undervalued, scouting measure — is that the number travels. It follows a quarterback like a bad rear fender making a funny noise behind the car. Guys who get sacked a lot do it no matter whom they play for, making offensive lines look instantly guilty. Howell had a high sack rate in college, taking 47 his senior year. Brock Purdy? Never suffered more than 21 at Iowa State. Jalen Hurts’s high was 24 between Alabama and Oklahoma.
Advertisement
Sack rate is a consistent tell “not only when QBs change teams but when teams change QBs,” says Jason Lisk, a data analyst and writer for the website Team Rankings. Example: In the space of a single offseason between 2017 and 2018, the Indianapolis Colts’ sack rate dropped from more than 10 percent to just 2.7 percent, best in the NFL. The main reason? Andrew Luck — who missed the 2017 season with a shoulder injury — returned to replace a young Jacoby Brissett.
It’s no accident that the quarterback with the lowest sack rate in the modern era is Peyton Manning (3.1 percent, tying him with Dan Marino) or that Patrick Mahomes (3.8), Drew Brees (3.8) and Tom Brady (4.5) also rank among the 10 lowest sack yielders. The Denver Broncos saw a miraculous improvement in a single summer in 2012, when Tim Tebow and his 10.9 percent sack rate departed and in came Manning, who though aging and zipper-necked after disk surgery promptly plunged Denver’s sack rate to 3.4 percent simply because he knew where the pressure was coming from and where he was going with the ball.
Mathematically, sacks are as bad as, or in some cases worse than, turnovers. This is obviously counterintuitive to a young quarterback such as Howell, with that tantalizingly pneumatic arm. He appears to think that holding the ball for something to develop, then eating it and taking the hit 13.5 percent of the time, is better than making a mistake or throwing it away — or dumping it off to running back Antonio Gibson, who has just 15 catches. It’s not. It’s really, really not. The numbers bear this out.
Advertisement
According to numbers compiled by The Washington Post’s Neil Greenberg, Howell has taken at least one sack on 32 drives this season — and his big-play potential has been unable to make up for those, with the Commanders punting on 59 percent of those possessions. That’s a huge donation of ground and clock time to the opposition, and it has a measurable effect on the scoreboard. Since 2018, according to sports analytics source TruMedia, an NFL sack has cost a team about 1.7 points. One way to think of Howell’s six sacks last week against the Giants is that he might as well have given up 10 points. Lisk observed: “Your ideal interception rate isn’t zero. If you throw zero interceptions and took six sacks, you’re probably worse off.”
One of the best-ever explainers of how costly sacks are was David Cutcliffe. Now retired, Cutcliffe was the fellow who coached such unhesitating, flashing recognition into both Mannings, first at Tennessee with Peyton and then at Mississippi with Eli. Cutcliffe always likened the field maelstrom for a quarterback to “air traffic control, and it’s fast.” He wanted such decisiveness from his quarterbacks that he got impatient if a guy even hesitated over a menu. He swears he used the “menu test” as a recruiting filter. If a kid paused and said, “What looks good to you?” Cutcliffe crossed him off the list.
The Mannings under Cutcliffe learned to make judgments in just three clicks: “Presnap, post-snap, alarm,” Cutcliffe demanded. Presnap assessment was about making sure you were in the right play and protection, or adjusting it. Post-snap, you had to make an instant assessment as to whether your presnap judgment was right or wrong, and if it was wrong, “go like hell” to get out of it, Cutcliffe taught. If you got to the “alarm” stage, “Now we’re bad wrong,” he explained.
Advertisement
“If you’re not careful, what you end up doing is making a decision by indecision,” Cutcliffe said. “And that’s the worst one you make. Decision by indecision — you catch yourself flat-footed while you’re waiting for an answer. Anytime you hold the ball, you have already made a mistake because the decision is going to be made for you. You’re going to be sacked or force a ball or quite likely turn it over.”
It’s not a bad description of how Howell has been playing. A second-year signal caller is learning on the job, and the good news is that enlightenment can come at any moment. But he’s reaching the alarm stage all too often. And decisions are being made for him.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGeAcH2PaGlxZ56buW691JqprZ2il66kt4ysmJyjo2Q%3D