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It’s long been said and accepted that a quarterback should have a mental clock in his head. After three seconds, you must get the ball out of your hands. The great ones will get the ball out quickly no matter what.
The reason three seconds is the generally accepted is because it's a pretty fair cutoff point for where a sack should no longer be blamed on the offensive line, but rather the quarterback. The average sack time in the NFL last year was 2.7 seconds, which was the same exact number as 2009. Obviously a line should be able to hold a three-man rush from getting to the QB longer than an all-out blitz, but for practical purposes, 3 seconds is the point where the QB should get rid of the ball. And then there are plays which we call “coverage sacks”, which is where the QB cannot find an open receiver to throw the ball to and thus gets sacked. But at that point, as a quarterback, you have to have a check down receiver or you have to throw the ball away; and you still need to take responsibility for the sack.
Below we have a data table that presents the amount of sacks the QB took over 3 seconds, under 3 seconds, and the percentage of sacks that where over 3 seconds and under. Here’s the bottom 10, the list you don’t want to be in, sorted in terms of % of sacks over 3 seconds:
| Player | Sacks > 3 Seconds | Sacks < 3 Seconds | % > 3 Seconds | % < 3 Seconds |
| Joe Flacco | 25 | 15 | 62.5% | 37.5% |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 20 | 12 | 62.5% | 37.5% |
| Michael Vick | 19 | 13 | 59.4% | 40.6% |
| Matt Cassel | 14 | 12 | 53.8% | 46.2% |
| Vince Young | 7 | 6 | 53.8% | 46.2% |
| Josh Freeman | 10 | 9 | 52.6% | 47.4% |
| Mark Sanchez | 14 | 13 | 51.8% | 48.2% |
| Brett Favre | 11 | 11 | 50.0% | 50.0% |
| Colt McCoy | 11 | 12 | 47.8% | 52.2% |
| Jason Campbell | 16 | 18 | 47.1% | 52.9% |
| Kyle Orton | 15 | 19 | 44.1% | 55.9% |
And now here’s the top 10, or the quarterbacks that rarely ever hold on to the ball too long
| Player | Sacks > 3 Seconds | Sacks < 3 Seconds | % > 3 Seconds | % < 3 Seconds |
| Eli Manning | 1 | 15 | 6.3% | 93.7% |
| Peyton Manning | 1 | 14 | 6.6% | 93.4% |
| Jimmy Clausen | 5 | 29 | 14.7% | 85.3% |
| Carson Palmer | 4 | 22 | 15.4% | 84.6% |
| Chad Henne | 5 | 23 | 17.8% | 82.2% |
| Drew Breees | 5 | 21 | 19.2% | 80.8% |
| Donovan McNabb | 9 | 28 | 24.3% | 75.7% |
| Jon Kitna | 5 | 15 | 25.0% | 75.0% |
| David Garrard | 8 | 24 | 25.0% | 75.0% |
| Matt Schaub | 9 | 23 | 28.1% | 71.9% |
Other notable quarterbacks, such as Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, Matt Ryan, Sam Bradford, etc. all resides around 30-35% > 3 seconds.
An interesting note is that Jay Cutler had 33 sacks of 3 seconds or less. He also had 19 of 3 seconds or more, making his % > 3 seconds 36.5%, which didn’t crack either top 10. By this, we can tell that the worst pass blocking units appear to be the Bears, Redskins, Panthers, Jaguars, etc. This is just going by sacks under 3 seconds though. And as we know, Peyton Manning and Eli Manning (surprisingly) almost always have the ball out before that time comes, so they don’t even have a chance to rack up sacks > 3 seconds. They simply know how to get rid of the ball and don’t take sacks under 3 seconds, which is a credit to them, not their offensive line.
As expected, Ben Roethlisberger and Joe Flacco are atop the list of quarterbacks who hold on to the ball too long. This can be a HUGE impact. Sacks have a high correlation to punts, and as we can expect, the teams with low sacks totals have low punt totals as well. Every team tries to minimize their yardage lost and try to gain positive yardage on every play to keep the ball moving.
I read an article comparing Peyton Manning’s 2009 season to Ben Roethlisberger’s 2009 season. The problem with it was, it didn’t even mention sacks. Roethlisberger lost 348 yards from sacks that year – 70% of them from holding onto the ball for greater than 3 seconds. This means approximately 244 sack yards were Big Ben’s fault. As for Peyton, he lost 74 yards due to sacks. 10% of them, or 1 total sack out of 10, was his fault. This means approximately 7 sack yards were Manning’s fault. If an interception is generally believed to be -50 yards, Roethlisberger could have/would have thrown about 4.74 more interceptions than he did if he took the same amount of sacks as Manning. This would have put him at around 16 interceptions, the same as Manning, in 65 less attempts. Peyton’s INT% was 2.8% that year, as Roethlisberger’s would have been 3.3% if we converted his sacks into an interception total.
In conclusion, I never want to hear people mention interception totals without sack totals. I think we all agree Peyton could throw 7 interceptions if he took a sack every time someone wasn’t open (after 3 seconds). If Manning took 50 sacks rather than 10, his interception total might be around 5. If Roethlisberger tried Manning’s style of getting the ball out quickly, we would expect higher interception rates from him (higher than Peyton) and around 16-20 interceptions a year. There’s no point to mentioning turnovers and not mentioning every negative play a QB can make. When we total up all negative plays QBs make (turnovers, sacks), Manning is not only better than Roethlisberger but probably in the top 10 because of his ability to get the ball out quickly. When we total up all positive plays QBs make, Manning is arguably #1.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this.
