The over/under in Vegas is 3.5 sacks Sunday, as in that's the target number of times Sam Howell is going to end up on the ground when the Commanders visit Philly. Grant & Danny think that the script for a Washington upset is keeping a low pressure rate and sack rate, and within that, they wondered how likely it was for the over to hit.
To Danny Rouhier, it's a lock.
"I'm going to advocate that the over should even be higher, because the answer is over," Danny said, revealing that all four of Denver's sacks this season were on Howell. "One team had all their sacks against you, Arizona had six in Week 1, and the floodgates opened with nine this past week – and this Eagles team is coming off a year where they had 70. I hope I'm wrong, and a major adjustment is made, but I think it's easily over 3.5."
Grant asked what it should be, with Danny going to 4.5 or even 5.5, and at either one, the over would have hit twice this season, and GP has a theory on that.
"Here's why I'm interested in that number: I'd be willing to bet that if you get sacked zero times in a game, the percent of the time you win is X…I'm just gonna throw a number out like 74 percent, and it goes down the more you get sacked. Three sacks in a game or fewer is cost of doing business in a way, not a huge discrepancy between one and three, but once you go beyond that, how are you finding the yards and the points necessary to win a football game?"
Danny pointed out that of the 10 teams that gave up the most sacks, seven had losing records and the 9-7-1 Giants were in there, too, so yes, it's indicative of offensive issues and not winning sometimes.
"These are drive-killers most of the time," Danny said, and that's when Grant went all analytics.
"There have been 212 touchdown drives in football this season, and on only 13 of them did the offense allow a sack," GP said. "Only six percent of the time has a team overcome a sack to score a touchdown. Sack avoidance is becoming more significant, and I think it's become you're paying for these edge rushers, so everyone is committing attention and pressure and getting guys home."
Not surprisingly, Washington is last in the league in sack avoidance at less than two percent, so, yeah.
"You have to find a way to mitigate these plays so that you can stay on schedule and have a chance to call the plays you want in reasonable downs and distances," Grant said.
"I think there's been a paradigm shift in the way defense is happening in the league," Danny replied. "Scoring last year was actually down compared to years past in a league that's emphasizing offense, so here's my theory on that: I think nobody wants to get beat deep and everybody got tired of blitzing and sending pressure, so no one is going deep – they're gonna make you execute 11, 12, 13 times right in front of them and chip away. So, because of that, there aren't as many big plays now, fewer big chunk yardage plays – so avoiding the negative play has become that much more of a premium."
