Quote:
Originally Posted by Phildo
tom brady got sacked 21 times in 2008. matt cassel got sacked 47 times in 2009. the offenses around them were largely the same. what could cause such a large difference?
This is what I said in the NFL Offseason thread a few days ago:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Needle77
Well a good way of judging a QB is comp% and ANY/A. Cassel put up a good comp% and most likely a good ANY/A for the second half of the season. I think what strikes me is his sack%. 8.3 in a quick strike, timing offense is high. Not to mention its over double of what Brady's was in 2007.
Now I know pocket presence can improve but thats not an encouraging number. I'd be happy with any compensation for him to be honest. I'm not gonna lie but I did expect a first rounder to be involved just because of the value of QBs but a second rounder doesn't surprise me that much. Guess we'll just have to see what the final deal is before truly evaluating it.
Now I've had time to think. There are numerous reasons as to why Cassel's numbers rose that don't just involve it being "pocket presence."
One could be how you attacked the Patriots offense in 2007. There were two ways of "beating" Brady, the first was to attack attack attack. All out blitzes, zone blitz packages, line stunts, ect. What happened was he found the hot receiver and the offense didn't change. The second was to sit back and try to force him into a mistake. From the games I saw I noticed teams tended to sit back.
Now if that QB changes but the offense stays similar what are you going to do? You are going to put the pressure on the new QB to try and find that hot receiver. Blitzing became more common. The Pats OL is slightly above average pass protectors for their offensive scheme. Cassel, most likely a .3 or .5 slower than Brady at getting rid of the ball, was sacked more, actually over twice as much sack % wise.
Now I don't have his sack% over the last part of his season but I'm sure its better, for numerous reasons. I think another factor needs to be considered is that Cassel did play against the easiest schedule in football last season. I don't know much about scouting QBs so I won't pretend to know and say he will or won't succeed. Just throwing some stuff out.
An interesting thing, Matt Light had 6.5 sacks in 07 and that raised only 1 in 08 and Nick Kaczur's went down from 6.5 to 3.0. The pressure came from up the middle, meaning a lot of blitzing.