2011 Pressure Plays, Offense

by Danny Tuccitto

Last week, we went over the DVOA ratings for defenses when they put pressure on opposing quarterbacks. Today, we'll flip things around, and see how quarterbacks performed when pressured by defenses. If you want more detail about how we define pressure and what types of plays are included in the stats below, feel free to go back and read the intro to the defense article here. And, let's not forget, you can find all these stats and more in the statistical appendix of our wildly popular and currently available book, Football Outsiders Almanac 2012.

In almost any era of football, performance in the face of an effective pass rush has been an important skill for a professional quarterback. But with increased use of tight ends in the passing game, and more teams going to spread-style looks on standard downs, it's never been as important as it is in 2012. Green Bay and Detroit couldn't use three-wide personnel groups about 60 percent of the time if Aaron Rodgers and Matthew Stafford were as panicked by a collapsing pocket as cats are by an approaching vacuum cleaner. Ditto for Tom Brady and the Patriots' prolific pair of pass-catching tight ends.

Of course, successfully combatting pressure isn't a one-dimensional skill. Quarterbacks like Michael Vick use their legs. Others like Peyton Manning use their quick release and omniscient grasp of play design. Ben Roethlisberger seems to have a sixth sense for oncoming opponents developed during schoolyard games of tag. Rarely, a guy like Rodgers comes along, and uses all of the above. Whatever the means, the ends of these offenses require success under pressure. Without it, the entire thing tends towards a sketch backed by "Yakety Sax."

So, with very few exceptions, our list of quarterback DVOAs on pressure plays reads like a Rosetta Stone for offensive schematics. The AFL-type offenses are liberated by the guys at the top, while the AAFC-type offenses are constrained by the guys at the bottom. We used a minimum of 250 pass plays for this list, although the NFL average includes all quarterbacks. As was the case with defenses, we've sorted this list from highest to lowest in "percent pressure." "Difference" is ranked from the players who are impacted least by pressure (Brees, Freeman, Stafford) to the guys impacted the most (Palmer, Moore, Sanchez).

If you recall from last week, the Texans defense led the league in pressure percentage last year. I'm guessing Houston readers aren't as excited about Matt Schaub topping this week's list, especially considering it's a bit of a surprise. Houston's offensive line ranked in the middle of the pack in Adjusted Sack Rate, not dead last, and the unit got a positive review last year from none other than Ben Muth. Schaub took a sack on only 5.2 percent of his dropbacks last season, so the culprit for his high percentage was hurries. If we look only at his throws, Schaub was hurried 30.9 percent of the time, which was 7.6 percent higher than the next-highest quarterback (in this case, Roethlisberger).

The silver lining for Schaub is that he didn't respond to all that pressure with a DVOA like Tim Tebow's. The silver lining for Tebow is that, as inefficient under pressure as he was last season, he was still better than new teammate Mark Sanchez. Perhaps that's unfair to Sanchez given Tebow's ability to return more value on scrambles, but limiting things to hurried throws actually makes Sanchez look worse. Tebow ranked 10th in DVOA difference on hurried throws, but Sanchez ranked 32nd. There's a convenient narrative in here somewhere about how a SoCal golden boy only gets the job done under ideal circumstances, while a scrappy NoFla overachiever embraces adversity, but only a hack would put that in a football column.

Instead, we'll use Sanchez and Tebow as a jumping-off point for a more general discussion of young quarterbacks. Like beating press coverage is for young receivers, beating pressure is a tried and true indicator of the career trajectory for young quarterbacks. The table clearly separates the ones who seem to "get it" from those that don't (at least not yet). Joining old standbys Brady, Roethlisberger, and Drew Brees in the top 10 of DVOA under pressure are neophytes Stafford, Josh Freeman, Cam Newton, and Andy Dalton. At 20th or worse, there's the aforementioned Sanchez, along with Sam Bradford, Christian Ponder, Blaine Gabbert, and John Skelton. I suppose you can give Ponder and Gabbert a pass because of their high DVOA-difference rankings, but those are simply byproducts of being the only two qualifying quarterbacks with a below-average DVOA without pressure.

Freeman's performance in particular, despite a down year overall, should give Buccaneers fans some optimism for the future, especially in the face of left tackle Donald Penn's injury. It gives us a clue that 2011 was Freeman's fluke, not 2010. That's because he ranked first in DVOA with pressure two years ago; third on hurried throws, while facing pressure on 34.7 percent of pass plays no less. What killed him last season was falling from eighth to 29th in DVOA without pressure, but that seems eminently more fixable than if he had all-of-a-sudden displayed the shell shock of David Carr. Also, contrast Freeman's stats with Bradford's, which were similar both in 2011 and his "good" rookie year in 2010 (20th in DVOA with pressure, 25th on hurried throws). In that context, it's no wonder we're more bullish on Freeman than Bradford going forward.

The one odd case among young quarterbacks is Colt McCoy, who at this point must be playing Nero to Cleveland's Rome. Back when he was the quarterback of the future in 2010, McCoy actually had the ninth-best DVOA with pressure and ninth-best DVOA difference. To boot, his rankings were ninth and 11th on hurried throws only. Last year, a season apparently bad enough to make him Cleveland's soon-to-be quarterback of the past, his DVOA difference ranking fell only two spots, and his DVOA with pressure, although worse, still ranked in the middle of the pack. If his agent is reading this, immediately below McCoy are those highly-paid faces of their franchises, Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco.

We'll close with a couple of older quarterbacks whose pressure stats provide insight into surprising 2011 seasons; one surprisingly good, one surprisingly bad. First, there's 37-year-old Matt Hasselbeck, who has all the makings of a dead man walking in his quarterback battle with Jake Locker. This isn't Brett Favre standing in the way of Aaron Rodgers or anything. (Yes, that was a hack making a gratuitous Brett Favre reference in a football column.) Nevertheless, Hasselbeck was one of the quarterbacks least affected on pressure plays last year, and ranked even higher in DVOA difference if we focus only on hurried throws (-22.9%, third).

Although as late as early November, even our esteemed editor-in-chief was at a loss for explaining what was wrong with Philip Rivers, it turned out to be some combination of missing Antonio Gates for the better part of September and October, as well as Rivers himself becoming less stoic in the face of a pass rush. Two years ago, Rivers ranked eighth in DVOA difference, among the elite on plays both with (No. 5) and without (No. 7) pressure. With his statuesque reputation, it wouldn't surprise you to know that he was also the best pressure passer in the league on hurried throws. Last season, his ranking in a clean pocket stayed the same as 2010, but his pressure splits fell off. The numbers for all pressure plays are in the table, and they're not good. Worse still, however, was how poorly he threw the ball under duress: His -25.4% DVOA on hurried throws ranked 23rd, and his -90.8% difference ranked 29th.

In the grand scheme of things, nearly 80 percent of Rivers' pass plays over the past two seasons have involved no pressure whatsoever, so this isn't a doomsday prediction. He's still great in that situation, which is the reason why his overall DVOA and DYAR only dropped to the top-eight range after being in the top-three range from 2008 to 2010. In previous years, the middle of the field was Rivers' comfort zone amid the disquiet of a collapsing pocket, so the compliance of Antonio Gates' chronically uncooperative feet is crucial for 2012. If early reports are accurate, he's got nothing to worry about.