Originally Posted by sharpe1027
I'd heard somewhere that a sack is roughly the equivalent of one-third of an INT, which seemed kind of a funny way to put it. The idea being that most drives that have a sack or an offensive penalty end without points. Personally, I think an INT can be pretty devastating, but a 40 yard heave that gets picked off is basically a punt and is less hurtful than a corner who picks off a late throw to the flat and houses it.Among other reasons, this is why TD/INT ratio is becoming a near useless statistic. The worst plays for an offense are no longer interceptions, because they are so rare. The worst plays now are sacks, which happy more than three times as often, and are about 35-40% as harmful as a given interception.
Avoiding interceptions and being turnover-adverse is important, but not at the expense of avoiding throws to certain parts of the field, or just taking what a defense is giving you. I noticed Rodgers started to really have an issue with that late in teh M3 years, and it's continued with MLF. He's proud (and protective) of his legacy as having the best TD-to-Int ratio, etc. I liked knowing that Rodgers wouldn't throw a pick, and it was always a shock when he did. Seeing open receivers on a TV broadcast be ignored is pretty annoying though. There's room for a middle ground there...it's not either/or. They can avoid turnovers AND use the MOF.
As for sacks, most football analysts and insiders believe it's largely a QB stat now, i.e., most sacks are the QBs fault. i'm not sure I'd go that far, but it's probably 2/3 their fault. Point is, the QB has the ball, they should have an internal clock telling them to either throw it on time or away.
Speaking of which, remember when (early in his career) the crowd used to cheer Brett Favre for throwing the ball away instead of trying to laser it into a non-existent window? I always thought that was funny.
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