Marcus Davenport, a bust illustrated in one graphic

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Not all sacks are created equal
Beasley sacked the quarterback 16 times, but eight of those sixteen were either unblocked or clean-up sacks that owed more to somebody else flushing the quarterback towards where Beasley was than they did to him beating a blocker to make the play.PFF grading takes into account the quality of the play made to get the sack, and excellent plays to defeat blocks will be graded higher than sacks where the quarterback just happened to be flushed past a player as he was being blocked only to get taken down.

Pressures matter
All pass-rushers are trying to sack the quarterback, but even the best will only do so on around three percent of their snaps on the field. Hits and hurries combine with sacks to form a much more robust picture of total pressure generated.

Pressure that does not result in a sack is important too, as just pressuring the quarterback sees an average drop in passer rating of 32.0 points from 94.4 to 61.8 over the past ten years. That’s the equivalent of turning Ben Roethlisberger into Blaine Gabbert just by hurrying him in the pocket.

Beasley led the league in sacks, but was just 18th even among edge defenders, when it comes to total pressures. Compare that to a player like Oakland’s Khalil Mack who led the league with 96 combined sacks, hits and hurries, and Beasley has a significant deficit in total pressure.

When we used our analytics to run numbers to find out just how valuable pressure was compared to sacks, our Expected Points Added data showed that a sack is worth around 2.1 pressures of any other kind. So a player like Mack would only need to have had an extra 11 hits or hurries to have added more value as a pass-rusher than Beasley despite having five fewer sacks over the season. Mack in reality had 40 more pressures, and so had a significantly higher PFF grade than Beasley.

Run defense matters
Mack’s overall grade of 95.2 was also far higher than Beasley’s 74.2 because Khalil Mack was one of the best run defenders in the game, capable of shedding blocks and knifing into the backfield to blow up plays. Beasley wasn’t nearly as accomplished in this area, an area that can get lost in all the talk of sacks, but is counted in the PFF grading.

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